Primo Levi (1988:38) describes the shock experienced by the newly arrived at the Lager concentration camp in the following way:

The world into which one was thrown was far from simple, he says, because it could “not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors” due to the existence of a “hybrid class of the prisoner-functionary” (Primo Levi 1988:37). The privilege enjoyed by certain prisoners and the collaboration they provided to the camp authorities constitute the Lager's “armature and at the same time its most disquieting feature. It is a gray zone,” Levi writes, “poorly defined, where the two camps of masters and servants both diverge and converge. This gray zone possesses an incredibly complicated internal structure and contains within itself enough to confuse our need to judge” (Primo Levi 1988:42).