Survival

Skinny's decision to take on the role of a prostitute to the German soldiers was in pursuit of physical survival, but the questions that follow present a more metaphysical challenge. She knows that a failure to act would almost definitely lead directly to the gas chambers and the end of her life, and it is this fact that ultimately determines her choice. When Rabbi Schapiro reassures her that she had no choice, however, she does not appear to agree with him wholeheartedly. Her responses, such as stating "I was in Poland" (158) when Rabbi Schapiro tells her she was in "heathen, German land" (158), are cool and detached, as if she has no personal connection to the matters being discussed and that they are mundane to her. That she is able to speak so calmly about an enormous atrocity suggests that not all of her has survived the...