Chapter 6

In this chapter, Elie takes us through his experiences as they are evacuated further and further into Germany. He talks about what he thought as they ran, and ran, and ran even further. He "shows" us the suffering and death which awaits them around every corner. Through this chapter, the SS officers are exposed in a new, animalistic manner.

The chapter opens with them all on the road, running along at a breakneck pace. The SS officers are there running along with their guns in hand and fingers on the triggers. They were to shoot any who broke ranks, fell behind, or did just about anything but run. Elie makes it obvious that they enjoyed it when he says that, "they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure" of being able to shoot those who they hated with complete impunity. Not all were shot; some, like Zalman, simply fell for one reason or another and were trampled by the flood of people that followed them. They ran on through the day and into the night, slowly losing all emotion and feeling. They became like sleepwalkers, totally unconscious about what they were doing or how long they were doing it; "[they] had transcended everything-death, fatigue, [and their] natural needs]." They came to an abandoned village and the SS officers decided to stop there to rest. Everybody plopped down in the snow wherever they could. Elie's father made him come into the brick factory where it would be warmer. Elie sat down and drifted off to sleep almost instantly. He didn't know how long he slept but his father woke him up and told him that sleep was death. Elie looked out the ice-encrusted window and saw the hundreds and hundreds of dead which lie in the snow. This convinced him of the truth of what his father had said. Rabbi Eliahu came into their building looking for his son but no one had seen him recently; they all were relatively certain that he had been claimed in his sleep by the cold clutches of death like so many others. All those still alive left at dusk and this time marched toward their destination of the concentration camp Gleiwitz, leaving behind a cemetery in what was once a vibrant village. They reached the concentration camp and were stuffed into a guarded barrack. The violinist, Juliek, was among them and ended up underneath Elie. Somehow he managed to get out and he went on to play his violin. It comforted Elie so that he fell asleep and, sometime while he was asleep, Juliek died playing his violin and laid there atop the other dead with his battered violin when Elie awoke. Again, after just three days, the front of the war waged on Germany by the Red Army followed them so they were evacuated again, this time by train, deeper into Germany. As they prepare to leave, they again go through selection. Elie's father is sent to the left: those destined for the crematoria. Elie and many, many others rush back and forth between the two groups and, among the shots and discord, he managed to his father back to the right side. And so they were sent to wait in the snow for their train deeper into hell.

Boarding of one of the trains used to evacuate the concentration camps such as Gleiwitz.