Answer: They don't believe that they're smart enough or mentally strong enough to achieve something
the popular cultural trends of the time when the work was written
Answer:
Primo Levi was an Italian writer and chemist who as a young man took part in the fight against Nazis. He joined the partisan group which was caught by Nazis and they sent all of them to Auschwitz.
Life in the camp was not good, they all had to work hard and were treated badly - like they were animals. The only time they had a little bit of peace was in the bathroom while they were washing themselves. At first, he used that time for self-reflection, not washing, because he believed that was the way to keep his mental sanity and be aware of life. But, after a while that led him to accept his friend Steinlauf`s idea that he should wash himself in order to hold onto that small trace of civilization and not to let Nazis to completely make an animal out of him.
