Chapter 8

This chapter contains all of Elie's experiences while he and his father are at the new camp. It is finally at this camp, so close to freedom, that Elie's father dies. Over the course of 1 week, Elie's world changes completely.

The whole time they had been at all of the different concentration camps, Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald, Elie's only thought was to not lose his father. On several occasions he was able to bring him back from the brink of being killed. But now, at Buchenwald, his father had become so sick that he could barely even breathe. He had just about lost his mind and had pretty much accepted death. "He had become childlike: weak, frightened, and vulnerable." The SS officers did not give them food because they were too sick and they would die soon anyway. However, because of what they had been through and how de-humanized they had become, the inmates also said that Elie should give up on his father and take his rations. Their ordeal had been one which made them return to theirm most basic animal instinct of survival. No longer did anyone matter but oneself; there were no "father[s], brother[s], [or] friend[s]." Through the whole week, Elie's father's condition only gets worse; he is barely able to crawl, he is slowly going insane, his fever keeps getting worse, and at times he can barely recgonize Elie. He keeps asking for water which will only make his dysentary worse. When he lays awake at night moaning for water, the SS officer in the barrack will come over and beat him; afraid of being beat too, Elie leaves his father's calls unanswered. Elie falls asleep that night with his father in the bunk below him, and he wakes in the morning to see another sick inmate lying in his place. Like Rabbi Eliahu's son, he felt free from his father at last.

Sick inmates at the concentration camp