Cigarettes

In the chapter "Cigarettes," we learn that Ephraim earned an income of sorts by trading cigarettes with other camp inmates. I faced a bit of a moral mix-up while reading this chapter. Of course I'm glad that Ephraim was able to improve his standard of living and create some reassuring steadiness for himself in such a deplorable situation, but at the same time, the buying and selling of cigarettes pushes what I consider okay. I can forgive Ephraim for being a cigarette-monger; after all, he was just trying to survive. But let's examine the horrible irony here: Ephraim trades a product that claimed multitudes of lives in order to keep himself alive, then smokes the extra himself. What disgusts me is the fact that people were so addicted to the cigarettes that they traded food just so they could smoke. I feel very angry at cigarette companies for getting so many people addicted to something that has absolutely no benefits whatsoever. In the Nazis' concentration camps, the last thing the prisoners needed was another health hazard. It's true that the health risks linked with smoking only became known in the second half of the 20th century, but I still don't find the prisoners' addictions acceptable; they should have been bartering for food and clothing to keep themselves nourished and warm, instead of for cigarettes that shorten a person's lifespan by eleven minutes for every cigarette smoked. I have to wonder how much cigarette consumption further magnified the prisoners' health problems and lowered their bodies' defenses against the unbearable conditions.