Chapter 2

This chapter describes their trip to the concentration camp. Elie Wiesel takes us through all of the events and conditions on their way to Auschwitz. Much of the content of this chapter consists of the mood of the 80 people stuffed in the rail car and how they lose more and more hope as they see themselves passing through stations further and further from home.

The people of Sighet are shoved into railcars without being told where they are going or how long it will take to get there; they were simply given scraps of food and 2 pails of water. The railcars are dark, dingy, dirty, and stuffy with not even enough room for them all. The car is so small that they all couldn't stand, sit, or kneel at one time. There are so few windows that breathing is near impossible in the railcar. When they stop at a station, they peer through the barred window and see that the station's name is Kaschau, one that is on the Czechoslovakian border with Hungary. This makes them realize that they are being deported out of the country, what they had hoped wouldn't happen. They are almost certain that, if they leave the country, they won't be coming back; they feared becoming a repeat of what happened to the foreign Jews a few years earlier, what Moishe had warned them about. "Their eyes opened" but they opened "too late." The Germans keep them in line among all this high-nerved fear by threatening death to them all if one does wrong. This leads them to turn against one another in some cases as they fear for their lives. When Mrs. Schachter breaks down into a comatose insanity because of separation from her husband and two sons, she acts on the high fraught nerves of the others in the rail car, driving them to the brink of insanity. She spends most of each night screaming of a fire that no one else sees. They finally bind and gag her to keep their own heads and avoid the wrath of the German officers. Through this, only her ten-year-old son is there, trying to comfort her. Their hopes rise when they receive word that, at Auschwitz, the conditions are good, families are not separated, and only the young would be put to work in the factories; they fill the void in their hopes by now telling themselves that this is salvation in its own way.

Now, all of their inflated illusions and hopes up until this point have been shattered, debunked, torn up and burned, and crushed. I think that this one is no exception; this one was proved to be no exception, seeing as Auschwitz turned out to be the most notorious concentration camp, death camp, whatever you wish to call it. Obviously enough, this was only the beginning of their struggles.

The depth of the situations on the railcars can only be fully apreciated when you see them for yourself.