Istvan

Ephraim's account of Istvan is a very sad story. At first Istvan seems to be a very optimistic individual; one who would take the horrors of the camps (relatively) well. But, it seems that Istvan's hope becomes his ruin: when Istvan finally realizes that he has no way to escape, he completely collapses and starts resisting the Nazis. The surprising part of the narrative was that Ephraim dubbed Istvan's resistance "reckless", and obviously condemmed the behavior. Ephraim seems to think that it would have been a lot smarter for Istvan to just have followed the Nazi's command, so that he wouldn't have hastened his death. I find this judgement peculiar, because in the chapter titled "Eichmann", Ephraim is exasperated that more people didn't resist the Nazis while they were in power. He said that NOW everybody wants to kill Eichmann, but when he was actually in power, "where were those heroes when we needed them?". It seems to me that Ephraim makes a clear distinction between the kind of resistance that is practical, and the kind that is mostly for morale. Killing Eichmann while he was in power would have slowed the Nazi killing machine quite a bit. It probably wouldn't have stopped altogether, but at least hundreds of lives would probably have been saved. Killing Eichmann is a practical kind of resistance: it would cripple the Nazis in a physical way. The kind of resistance that Istvan displays, however, is not as practical. Strapping the toy truck to his head did nothing to make the Nazis physically unable to exterminate the Jews, but it did make the Nazis embarrassed. It also gave the prisoners a laugh (internally); a rare thing to find in a concentration camp. Istvan's trick, although it caused his death, must have raised moral among prisoners and lowered it among the soldiers. Such a thing is unquantifiable, and so less easily held up as an achievement such as killing Eichmann could have been. Even so, I'm not sure I agree with Ephraim that the only useful kind of resistance is the physical kind. Being able to have hope can do wonders. :)