Chapter 9

As with all of the other camps, Buchenwald was soon in range of the Americans and Soviets. However, the Nazis had not completed their goal: eliminating every last Jew. They would do anything to finish the job, and so the began to in Buchenwald.

The inmates were stuffed, literally stuffed, several hundred into a barrack like sardines. As Elie puts it, "I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered." "Nothing mattered to me anymore." They were also starved even more than they already had been. Illness spread and doctors no longer offered help. At Buchenwald, there came a day when the SS officers were late coming to count them during roll call. It was also a general roll call, meaning everyone had to come. This all was highly suspicious. They were all told that the camp had been liquidated and that they were being evacuated the next day. Part of the resistance inside the camp warned them that when they assembled block by block that they would simply be mowed down in front of a blazing machine gun. An alert delayed half of the evacuation until the next day and that gave the resistance and the front just enough time. On the next day, the resistance decided to act and purged the camp of all SS and Nazis in minutes. "At six o'clock that afternoon, the first American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald." With their newfound freedom, no one bothered with or thought about revenge, they attacked the food, eating until they were stuffed. As we all know, this threw many of them into shock and they died, they had survived their ordeal and to die shortly after being set free. This happened to Elie but he was rushed to the hospital in time and spent the next two weeks tettering back and forth on the brink of death. He came to and saw in the mirrror, his own "corpse" "contemplating [him]."

In order: Liberation of the concentration camp, Many of the camps wereeither burned or blown up for some reason only to ever be known to the Nazis, The burial of all of those who died in the concentration camps throughout WWII