From the first sentence of the Preface to Surviving Auschwitz we learn that Primo Levi attributes his survival in the concentration camp to luck, that is, his "luck of being deported to Auschwitz only in 1944" (9 ). It was fortunately that Levi had a background in chemistry, qualifying him to spend part of the day during the most brutal months of his last winter in Auschwitz in the chemistry laboratory, and fortunately he formed and maintained relationships with Alberto and Lorenzo. Levi perhaps considered himself luckier for having resisted “selection,” the method used by camp guards to choose prisoners who died instantly in the gas chambers. Levi writes: “[t]he fact that he was not selected depended above all on chance” (125). Levi understands that selection is an arbitrary process. As Levi comments, "the important thing for the Lager is not that the most useless prisoners are eliminated, but that free places are quickly created" (129). The selection is so frivolous that Levi and Alberto determine that when René is selected to be sent to the gas chambers and Levi is not, it is “probable” (128) that this is due to a “mistake with [their] papers” (128 ). Because selection is a mostly indiscriminate process, Levi understands that prisoners have little influence on their own survival. The Nazis were determined to kill a certain number of prisoners, and it made little difference to the Nazis which prisoners were sent to die. It is a few moments after the selection in October 1944 that the transition takes place. In this passage we witness the responses of some inmates to the selection, narrated by Levi. Levi's perception of the situation is shaped by his understanding that survival in the Lager is due to a stroke of luck. Bepp...... half of the paper...... lesson. This choice is not something Kuhn should be grateful for. This passage ends with Levi bitterly observing, “If I were God, I would spit on Kuhn's prayer” (130). It is through this line that we realize that Levi is not condemning Kuhn. In fact, Levi realizes that Kuhn is an old man, whose body and spirit had been crushed by the Nazis, just like the bodies and spirits of Levi and the other prisoners, and Kuhn is simply trying to comfort himself. Other than the fact that the Germans legally considered Kuhn to be a Jew, we know nothing of Kuhn's religious beliefs and practices, and thus his "prayer" could have been a mere secular expression, like a modern American college student's "thank God" for a snowfall. day. Yet it is Kuhn's "prayer", and the sentiment it contains, that Levi finds troubling, both for deceased prisoners and for those still temporarily alive..