Survival in Auschwitz

In his book, Levi details various survival methods his fellow comrades used to escape internment alive. These include trading cloth for bread or soup, as well as trading gold fillings for more cloths to begin the cycle anew. The economic system presented here is vast, with various suppliers and demand points. Currency became null and void, bread was the currency, and it gets you anything you wanted or needed. Anything one might want could be acquired provided s/he posses the proper amount of bread. Every item, he says, has value and if one drops their guard for a millisecond the item will be stolen.