Resumo

BLIKSTEIN, Izidoro. The annihilation of the body at Auschwitz: semiotic analysis of the account of Primo Levi. Ide (São Paulo) [online]. 2016, vol.39, n.62, pp.135-146. ISSN 0101-3106.

In the context of the subject of the body, my purpose in this article is to demonstrate how the "originality" of the methods of extermination of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps began with the annihilation of the body. Such methodology has been described, in detail, by a survivor of Auschwitz, the chemist and, above all, blunt writer, Primo Levi. An eminent semiotic observer, he focuses particularly on the relations between the signic representations and the internal "truth" of the prisoners. With such a semiotic approach, Levi can demonstrate that the policy of extermination practiced by the Nazis took place before the gas chambers and crematorium: the "originality" of Nazism - to use historian Raul Hilberg's expression (1985) - it was, first of all, to annihilate the individual. This policy of annihilation consisted, as Levi has so well illustrated, in the destruction of the inner truth of the individual from the destruction of external signic representations.

Palavras-chave : Corporal annihilation; Concentration camps; Holocaust; Kinesics; Proxemics.

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