View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Levi feel he is able to write on behalf of survivors?

2. Which of the following did Levi think is the worst crime of the Nazis?

3. Which subset of prisoners does Levi think make the best observers?

4. What did Chaim Rumkowski consider himself to be?

5. According to Levi, why did prisoners not commit suicide?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why do survivors simplify the past by using stark good vs. evil distinctions?

2. Why does Levi think prisoners are beyond neuroses?

3. Why were political prisoners envied?

4. What happeneds to people who become sonderkommandos?

5. What is Primo Levi's theory about judging any people associated with the lagers?

6. What is "willed ignorance?"

7. What does Levi consider to be his mission and why?

8. What was the classic militiamen defense that Eichmann and Hoss used?

9. Briefly describe the Nazi death camp system.

10. What does Levi think of the theory of "incommunicability"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How did the treatment of prisoners change over the course of the war? What happened as the Nazis began to suffer defeats on the battlefields?

Essay Topic 2

Why do the Nazis need or want prisoners in the lagers to be collaborators? Discuss different kinds of collaborators and how they benefited the Nazi agenda.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss some of the main issues regarding communication mentioned in the book. Make sure to touch on communication within the lager as well as the communication of survivors.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 746 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample