In the narrative, the writer focuses on three types of people, the officers, the inmates in the camp, and the people transported to be executed by the gas chambers. The majority of the events explored by the author rotates around the last group of individuals and how every one of them is coping with the life at the concentration camp and how they were being sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. In the narrative, the leader can be seen as a charismatic individual who can easily replace morality and inhumane behavior, especially when many people face the ultimate issue of their survival. For example, in the beginning, Borowski gives a narrative of how people live in the camp; he is part of the group calling themselves Canada, and even more specifically, labor Kommando whose main task was to admit and process people that are to be sent to the concertation camps to be executed in the gas chambers. At this time, he had other inmates that sit on the bunk bed, eating a decent meal or bread on vegetation and sardines.
They are talking about the fact that the company had no transports to the camp; the Frenchman wishes for more transports as labor Kommando’s can take possession of the majority of items that those going to be executed with them like food, wines, clothes, and even perfumes. On the other hand, Borowski argues that life has been better since that transport has stopped and that the administrators will run out of people. Henri is angered at the statement that they will run out of people. When that happens, the facility will be starved to death. In this case, Henri does not care about people being executed, the innocent people he has never met, and there are thousands of children that have never been met. They all met their death at the hands of Henri. Henri only cares about the steady supply of food and drinks from the capital required for his survival.
Many inmates have a survival instinct that has positioned themselves in agreement with how Henri argues. When it is announced that a new transport arrives, and there are more Canadian men dispatched to the ramp, there are commotions, and inmates want to go the ramp as all inmates want to go there and gather the supplies. At this point, the author notes that not everyone is lucky to go to the ramp. As transport arrives in Canada, the old inmates help in unloading the new arrivals, and they gather their belongings as the people arriving are not even aware of where they were going. The inmates deceive them about their destination, and the author notes that people who are going to their deaths must be deceived to the end of their lives. The new arrivals must have guessed their destination but continue to live in denial. For example, their instincts misled them to believe that they were headed to the camp and not gas chambers. Moreover, the inmates are deceived by their receiving groups that their destiny is not to end in a gas chamber.