As a whole, our society takes our luxuries for granted far too often. Rarely do we contemplate how lucky we are to live in a world with health care, technology, automobiles, and other conveniences that are mostly contemporary devices today. In the Nazi concentration camps, these luxuries were a fragment of the past. People had to concentrate on receiving their ration of food for the day, not on the latest style of Persian Rug. The Jews not only dealt with survival, but also with their own personal caste system. As soon as they were tattooed with their prisoner ID number, they became another cattle in the herd, and nothing more.
Before the Jews were deported, they had a small yet basic class system among the ranking people of the community. Elie's father, Chlomo, was respected by all and sought for advice quite often. His words were always helpful and brought hope into the homes of his followers. Elie himself was very proud of his father for who he was, although Chlomo wasn't at home to help his own family as much as Elie would have liked him to. Yet when they were captured and dragged to Auschwitz, any social standing Chlomo had was stripped from him. The new ranking social class belonged to those who were young enough and strong enough to survive the brutal labor at hand. Elie was much too young to defend himself, and his father was much too old to fight off dysentery.
While the Jews were of no military standing, many of the prisoners of Auschwitz had been captured as prisoners of war. The lower ranking soldiers were thrown into the mud with the rest of the Jews, while the higher ranking officers were given lighter workloads and larger food rations for the day. This can be seen in the film "Le Grande Illusion", which tells the story about a group of French officers captured during World War I. Even though they were prisoners of the Germans, they were treated with respect and dignity because of their officer status during the war.
