Character Analysis
Of all the prisoners in the Lager, Henri is the one bothers Primo the most. This guy is the Poster Child for a master manipulator: he's able to play on people's sympathies to get what he wants and no one is immune from his maneuvering. He strings along all sorts of fellow prisoners and higher-ups: English soldiers, German "politicals," Polish workers, camp doctors, and even an SS Officer. Here's Primo's take on all this:
"From all my talks with Henri, even the most cordial, I have always left with a slight taste of defeat; of also having been, somehow inadvertently, not a man to him, but an instrument in his hands" (9.50).
We get the sense that Primo feels Henri treats him like an object, not a person. He later states that he doesn't ever want to see him again, although he's curious about Henri's life on the outside (9.51).
Toward the end of the book, when Primo and Alberto start developing schemes of their own to get extra food, Henri treats them more like equals (16.3).