If This is a Man

Kommando 98 is the Chemical Kommando, and it should include only skilled workers, but it does not. Moreover, the Kapo, Alex, is a green triangle who is not a chemist.

There are 12 people in this Kommando, five of whom explain that they are not chemists, but Alex nonetheless has them remain in the Kommando. The other seven, including Levi, are commanded by Alex to take a chemical exam, in German, which seems “a madman’s dream” (119). It does not make sense that the Germans need chemists from among the prisoners, and it does not make sense that the Germans would ask them to take such an exam in their horrific state of existence.

Of the seven taking the exam, Levi is disliked the most because he does not meet Alex’s expectations of virility. Levi understands how high the stakes are with this exam: getting placed in a lab might save him. He also, however, has “a mad desire to disappear, not to take the test” (122). Doctor Pannwitz administers the exam, and Levi wonders about him as a person. Pannwitz looks at Levi, and the look “came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds” and “not between two men” (123).