Quotes from Fatelessness

Quote N°1 (page 22)
The narrator uses a tone based on the deep, on the dark, with a lot of nostalgia and reflections. This nostalgia is reflected with the "cigarrete smoke" that is triying to show depresion and fateless. This is also reinforced with the other descriptions of the setting, such as the annoying noises, the closed window; this "darkness" is the preamble that something bad, really bad, would happen...finally the father had to leave :/


Quote N°2 (page 31)
This quote is such an antithesis because in the first part George shows some sort of detachment to his Mom, but in the end there's a sort of personal mood (he wanted to help his mother, but he preferred to leave).

Fatelessness Chapter 5

This chapter shows us a description of the three concentration camps in which George Koves was: Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz.

The first was the worst. Auschwitz was an extermination camp in which the Jews were treated really as animals, with horrible life conditions, a lot of murders because of the “gas showers” and the transfer to the crematorium.

George’s “favorite” camp was Buchenwald because the food was better, the barbers were more careful and the water of the showers was warmer.

The most important thing that happened on Zeitz was the encounter between George and Bandi Citrom, a prisoner who defended him from a Gypsy and showed him the real value of being alive and that he had to take care of him.

This chapter is highly descriptive because he (George) is simply recounting what is happening, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Gyorgy shares his own thoughts without hadred or dislike; instead he leaves it to the reader to judge.

My Oral Presentation

It’s a dream of György "Gyuri" Köves (George Koves), based on the chapter 5 of the book "Fatelessness" written by Imre Kertész.

Where am I? Maybe I’m in… no please no, I’m in Auschwitz, the place where all began. Oh, what’s that smell? It’s disgusting; it comes from that factory, oh no wait, that’s not a factory, it’s another crematorium! Oh what’s going on? This smell remembers me the soup and the bread that we always ate on Auschwitz, probably the worst food that I ate on my life, but it was important for us to eat it because, as someone said on the camp, “the first rule for a good soldier is to eat up everything that is put in front of one, because there’s no knowing what tomorrow will bring”. Also, I remember the Gypsies that we saw next to our camp, I never considered them criminals, but they were also in a “concentration camp”. Oh, this is really weird, because also I discovered that this type of camps, as Auschwitz, has being here “working” since at least 4 years, and no one in school talked about them ever, and the worst thing is that this was not a concentration camp, this was a “Vernichtungslager”, an extermination camp!

Wait, I’m not in Auschwitz, I remember that in the third day we were transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, which was older than Auschwitz’s one. It lies on the crest of one of the elevations in a region of hills and dales, and the air was really clear, not as the one of Auschwitz. Everything in Buchenwald was great compared with the first camp: the bathhouse was warmer, the barbers were more careful, and the food was better. I also remember that they gave me a yellow triangle as well as a broad strip, and that in the middle of the triangle, was a big letter “U”, while on the strip was a printed number, “64921”. This was the number that identified me on Buchenwald, and it was important for me to pronounce it well in German. Oh, I remember that there was also a crematorium but only one, and even that wasn’t the purpose of the camp. It’s fair to say that I too soon came to like Buchenwald.

Oh, but wait, I was also transferred from Buchenwald to Zeitz in the trip in which I was separated from the boys because of the alphabetical order that the soldiers used to decide who goes to which camp! Zeitz was a tiny concentration camp compared with Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There was not a bathhouse or even a crematorium; those two were trappings only of the more important concentration camps. I also remember that guy called Bandi Citrom, the one who came from a labor camp, the one without teethes. He defended me from a Gypsy who punched me. The last thing that I remember is that I was on the block 5, which has a roll of two hundred…of two hundred…of two hundred and fifty men.