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

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

Chapter 7

In this chapter, Elie relates his experiences as they were all herded onto cattle cars and shipped to a concentration camp deeper into Germany. They are stuffed in the open-topped cars like sardines and there is much competition among them. They fight for food, space, and survival. By this point in time, they have been reduced to an existence that can only be described as animal.

They begin their several day long journey to the new concentration camp in the open-topped cattle cars packed from 100 to 150 each. It is miserably cold and many begin to die off very quickly with the cold added to the fact that they have no food, water, or hygiene. The only "good" aspects of their situation are that there's plenty of snow to eat, they're so tightly packed that they are at least somewhat able to keep warm, and the SS officers are not worrying to keep them regulated and orderly. Every now and then they would stop to unload all of the dead bodies that had accumulated in the cars. Those still alive were relatively enthusiastic about it because they then had more space in the cars and they were able to search the bodies for anything they found to be valuable; to them, things considered valuable included just about everything, even clothes. One of these times, Elie's father is asleep and breathing so faintly that he is taken for dead and those unloading the cars try to unload him. Elie, however, starts yelling that he is still alive and his father comes to during all of the commotion, causing them to move on. Everywhere it went, the train left "snowy fields" filled with "hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb" " in its wake." As the train rolled through towns, people threw pieces of bread into the cars and entertained themselves by watching them fight for it like savages. One was thrown into Elie's car and everybody began fighting for it. He stayed out for he knew he was not strong enough to come out victorious from the fight. An old man takes two crusts of the bread and withdraws from the fierce battle. He eats one and his son, Meir, comes over and kills him for the second piece which he was actually saving for him; Meir is then killed by the others who stopped to watch the outcome. Elie's traumatizing experiences on the train left an indelible mark on him emotionally which showed itself one day when he saw a Parisian woman taking great joy in throwing pennies to the "natives" and watching them fight for them. To keep peace in the cars, they all appointed a leader in their car: Meir Katz. This Meir was more well nourished than the others and was stronger so therefore more able to keep the peace; one night Elie awoke to some man strangling him and his father called to Meir to help them. On the last day of the journey, Meir Katz finally had had enough and broke; he cried about his son who had been sentenced to the crematoria in the first selection, he cried about how he can no longer go on, he cried that he can not go on like this any longer. Later in the day, when the wind whips up and the temperature drops, they all decide to run in place in the cars so that they may keep warm. Many succumb to death's cold embrace on this final leg of the journey. Many more, including those who can't walk, are left in the cars as they disembark from the train, among them in Meir Katz. They had arrived in Buchenwald.

Top to Bottom: Train of transportation cars leaving the station at Gleiwitz, The open-top cattle cars packed with inmates, The sleeping and dead piled in the cars with no way to tell the difference between the two, The dead still left in the cars after those who had made it were off the train, One of the many dead bodies left beside the train tracks when they emptied the cars out.

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.

Chapter 5

This chapter occurs during the month of the Jewish new year. Winter is also rolling around and they all begin to prepare themselves for what it has in store. It is a very trying time and they all question their faith. There are more selections which occur in the weeks before winter which are cut short when the Red Army fights its way very close to Buna, forcing them to evacuate.

They have suffered greatly over the course of their stay in Buna and many of them have either lost faith or lost all hope in God saving them. Rosh Hashanah was a test for them all; some, like Elie, refused to say the prayers because they had been so traumatized. Throughout the service they were"weeping" and "crying." The next day, Yom Kippur, they wondered whether or not to fast. They already had so little to eat regularly that fasting would have been fatal. Some of them just ate in protest of their faith which seemed to be failing them. Soon after all of this, Elie is moved to the construction Kommando, away from his father. They still manage to see each other during the free time they have during the afternoon. One afternoon, things get very hectic when they are ordered to stay in their barracks so that a selection may take place. All of the frail and old fear for their lives because they are almost certain that they will be sent to the crematoria. Elie, not being a particularly big guy, fears that, because of which Kommando he is in, his number will be taken down, sentencing him for the crematoria. He looks to his friends Yossi and Tibi for guidance and help. Oddly enough, their German Jew barracks commander offers them advice on what to do so that they have the best chances of passing the test. This is one of the few moments of humanity that prevail over the evil in the camp. Fittingly enough, the notorious Dr. Mengele was the one doing the selection examinations. When the bell rang, thus ending the selections, everybody rushed outside to find friends and family and discover their fates. Elie and his father were both safe from selection for the time being. A few days later, the numbers written down during the selection were called back. Elie's father was among them. He began freaking out and gave everything he had, a knife and a spoon, to Elie in case he was sent to the crematoria. While those selected stayed back, the rest of the camp marched around elsewhere all day, most likely so that they did not witness the brutality taking place back at the camp. When they returned, those lucky enough to not be selected again and therefore put in the crematoria were waiting in the barracks. Among them was Elie's father.

The weeks after the selcetion only gat worse. The beatings increase and the weather gets cold and unplesant. Much of their thought is lost among this newfound distress. Akiba Drumer, a relatively close friend, was one of those who were not there when the rest of the camp returned. He had asked that they pray the Kaddish for him three days after the selection, when the smoke rises from the crematoria chimneys; they forgot. Elie's foot swells up a week later and he goes to the infirmary were a Jewish prisoner doctor says that it is urgent he go into surgery. While he waits, the man in the bed next to him warns him to leave so that he will miss the next infirmary selection, when practically all of them are sent to the crematoria. As he says, "Germany has no need for sick Jews." This captures the essence of what is happening throughout the camp as it has been "battening down the hatches" for winter. When the doctor returnes, he takes Elie into surgery. After coming around after the surgery, Elie is unable to feel his leg. He fears that it was amputated, something that would make him totally useless and would send him to the crematoria instantly. Luckily for him, it was simply a great abundance of pus which had swelled up his leg and needed to be drained out during the surgery. During his two weeks of recovery, Elie hears rumors of the Red Army advancing very close to their position. Unlike those which came before them, these rumors were well grounded by the fact that they could hear the cannons in the distance. Due to this "unplanned event" the camp prepares to evacuate. They know that the prisoners will be marched somewhere else but they are curious about what happens to those in the infirmary. They think that they will be killed as part of the last preparations for leaving camp. Elie fears this so he decides to walk out with the rest of the camp. So they all assembled and marched out of the camp, block by block. However, it turned out that, when the Russians arrived two days later, they were merely set free.

The daily rations at Auschwitz

Chapter 4

This chapter takes us through Elie and his father's experiences in the work camp Buna. By this point in their experience, they have ceased to feel emotion unless they are severely perturbed. The abuse they face becomes so commonplace that it causes their detachedness from emotion. Their situation only becomes more dire the longer they are in the concentration camp.

They arrive at the new work camp and they are again separated into different groups. This time, they are mixed into different work Kommandos. Since the separation process and medical assessments takes a few days, they ask around to find out about the camp and the quality of the work Kommandos. Everybody they find says that Buna is a good camp and that the work Kommandos are all okay, with the exception of the construction Kommando. They take notice of the orchestra playing the same march continuously as the Kommandos march to their "job sites" and back. The SS officers in this camp seem to take more kindly to them and offer more rations to young inmates, old inmates, sick inmates, and weak inmates. Later on, this kindness is proven to be only skin deep when the inmates see what cruelty the SS officers are capable of and willing to resort to. The SS officers make no attempt to hide the fact that they want anything worth something that the inmates have. Just as what happened when they arrived at Auschwitz, their new shoes are eyed and taken by the officers. The "dentist" they all must see is really only checking for the inmates' valuable gold crowns. Elie is able to avoid getting his taken out by faking illness. He simply bides his time until, luckily, the dentist's office is closed down. It turned out that he was dealing in the gold crown for his own purposes. This makes clear the fact that they only are concerned about themselves. Elie and his father are put in the Kommando that works in the warehouses organizing spare parts. One officer, Idek, was particularly lacking in his ability to control his anger and he lashed out at the inmates, including Elie. The French woman he worked next to at the warehouses consoled him and, in German, told him to not lash out in hate. When they serendipitously meet again later in France, she says that she was actually a Jew but she needed to pass off as Aryan. This meant that speaking to him in German was a risk for her, but she said she knew he wouldn't reveal his secret. The next to fall victim to Idek's anger was Elie's father. Franek, their barrack commander turns against Elie and his father when Elie refuses to give him his gold crown. This is just another example of how much they are victims to the whims of the SS officers of the work camps. When Elie stumbles upon Idek raping one of the inmates, Idek gives him 25 lashes and threatens more. When an air raid targets Buna, they all must hide in the barracks and anyone outside them would be shot on site. One inmate goes after unguarded pots of soup and is taken out by an SS officer. All of this attests to the fact that they were all subject to how temperamental their SS officers were.

Soon, they all became to witnesses to how far the SS officers would go to maintain an undeniable aura of power and the willingness to use it. When they gathered in the Appelplatz one night for roll call, they were met with a big, black, menacing gallows. A youth was brought out, "tried" by the Lageralteste, and then taken to the gallows. He was escorted by two other inmates, each in exchange for two extra rations. This is just an example of how the officers maintained control over the inmates and coerced them into doing their bidding: their lifeblood, food. The youth sentenced to hang began shouting freedom calls once on the gallows. Obviously, this ended when the hangman finished his work. To keep the inmates fearing their wrath, and death, the SS officers made them slowly process out of the Appelplatz past the hanged youth and take a good look at him. They all witnessed many more hangings like this one. One barrack was found to have hidden caches of weapons. Its Oberkapo was sent off to a concentration camp, its young pipel and 2 others found to possess weapons were sentenced to hanging in one of these "ceremonies." As they again processed out past the gallows, the young pipel was still there writhing for a half hour slowly suffocating his way to death, too small to have been killed instantly. These hangings served a double purpose, they kept the order and fear of the SS officers alive and they eliminated any direct "threats" to their authority.

The inmates were treated horribly by the SS officers that ran the show. This made them wish for liberation to come soon. However, as things worsened, they lost hope and simply hoped to die so they may escape the pain. They were slowly de-humanized to a level equal with animals. As Elie says, "The bread, the soup-those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time." They lost nearly everything that made them human and resorted back to their priman instincts; many also lost faith.

On top: The Gallows in Auschwitz
On Bottom: The Auschwitz Orchestra

Chapter 3

This chapter tells us about their first painful hours at the gates of Auschwitz, Birkenau. Elie Wiesel tells us about the selection and separation of all the new arrivals. He also conveys the cruelty of the SS officers and the brotherhood made among the inmates. Right now, it's all about the emotions that are rushing through the hearts and minds of the new and old inmates as they commingle and worry about their fates.

The moment they arrive at Birkenau, the separation process begins. The first thing that is done is the separation of the men and women. This is when Elie last sees his mother and sisters. While they are waiting in the different groups, inmates come up to them and warn them of what's in store. They bluntly tell them that they will be burned or otherwise slaughtered. One, whether it was out of kindness or fear, warns Elie and his father to not give their true ages for they would be deemed too young and too old respectively. He tells them to say they are 18 and 40 and not to ask him why. The fact that they lived past that day is because of that one inmate's actions. Numerous, seemingly small actions like this are what ended up deciding each person's fate. While they wait, they witness grotesque scenes of brutality. They see one SS officer murder an old man just because. They also see a truck arrive, and when it opens its doors, they are disgusted as they watch piles of infants thrown into the flames. This brutality makes many of them want to revolt, but they restrain themselves, hoping that they can survive until the war ends and they are freed. As they process forward toward Dr. Mengele, who is perhaps even more notorious that Auschwitz, they see themselves being further into two groups based upon some judgement given by him. They all move to their specified groups. They stand, separated into two groups, waiting, some of them praying the Kaddish (the prayer for the dead) for themselves for what must have been the first time in Jewish history. Some even begin fathoming suicide as a way to escape the torture, including Elie. Elie fears that his father will be put in the other group but is relieved when he is told to go to the same group as him. But still, "[They] did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which to the crematoria." They all were convinced that they were destined for the crematoria, no matter which group they were in, it was all just a matter of time.

Their group is told to depart and begin walking to some unknown destination. They all breathe a sigh of relief when they turn and head away from the crematoria, confident that they will not burn, not today at least. They arrive at the first barrack and are ordered to take off all of their clothes and put them in a pile, except their shoes and belts. Later on, any new shoes or nice belts are taken by the SS officers for purposes unknown. They wait in the barrack as the SS officers walk among them picking out the strong. It turns out that those deemed as strong were sent to the crematoria as Kommando; they learn this from a letter they receive from Bela Katz who was one of those sent to work in the crematoria, putting others in the furnace, even his own father. From there, they are taken to barbers where they are shaved clean. They were then ordered to run to a new barrack. They all took a dip in the barrel of disinfectant and they they were distributed shirts, pants, and jackets. This was done haphazardly, so many of them wound up with prison garb that did not fit and they began trading for clothes that did. They are herded into another barrack where an SS officer scares them into obedience by saying Auschwitz is a concentration camp and that there are two choices "work or crematorium-the choice is yours." Specialists are then taken away to do more technical work rather than manual labor. They are then marched into the actual concentration camp of Auschwitz, with its slogan of "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (Work Makes You Free). They are put in Block 17, a barrack under command of a polish man who shows them the first, and perhaps last, bits of compassion and understanding they were to receive at Auschwitz. The next day he is tattooed his "bar code," A-7713. From there, their days quickly fall into the routine of black coffee in the morning, soup at noon, an afternoon nap, roll call at 6:00 followed by bread, and 9:00 curfew. At roll call one day, they are greeted by a man who claims to be a relative from Antwerp: Stein, husband of Reizel, niece of Elie's mother. It takes them a moment, but they recognize him as the cousin who visited before moving to Belgium. He asks if they heard any word about his wife and kids; they do not know but lie and say yes. He keeps visiting them in the evenings until the transport from Antwerp arrives, with the real news. After three weeks, the Polish officer in charge of their barrack is removed for "being too humane." This is only the beginning of the downward spiral in the conditions they face at Auschwitz; within a week, they are told they are being put on the next transport.

Over the course of this chapter, they finally are forced to let go if their illusions of Auschwitz being their salvation and accept the truth of what is happening to them. They are constantly dehumanized, first with the work or death option and later with their loss of identity through stripping and shaving. This is all done to make them feel inferior, making them more likely to be obedient. Because of this, "[within] seconds, [they] had ceased to be men." They each became their won "different person." As for Elie, "all that was left was a shape that resembled [him]. [His] soul had been invaded-and devoured-by a black flame."

In Order: Birkenau Gates, Auschwitz Gates, Auschwitz Crematoria, Dr. Mengele

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.

Chapter 1



In the first chapter of his book Night, Elie Wiesel conveys the happenings of the days and years leading up to their deportation from Sighet. He relays the emotion of all the town's inhabitants as they prepared for the worst while still hoping for the best. The way he writes this first chapter fills one with all of the emotions which the Jews of Sighet mush have been feeling at the time, abandoning their homes.

The people of Sighet were aware of the war's progression and that Germany was losing. This, they thought, meant that they were safe from being rounded up and deported like some of the Jews from German-controlled lands. However, this was overturned when the new fascist leader rose up and allowed the Nazis into Hungary. They tried to remain optimistic through it all. However, this was simply trying to deny the truth and depth of the situation which was about them, which they had been warned about by neighbors and such people as Moishe the beadle. They looked for "alternate explanations" for what the German officers were doing, pushing them out of Sighet, such as "the war is almost upon us and soon we too will hear the gunfire." The reality of their situation bore down on them when they were finally moved to the smaller ghetto while they awaited the convoy that would take them away from there, and to where, nobody knew.

These such mass-deportations were oppressive and ill-mannered attempts by the Nazis to control what they saw as a threat. They singled out Jewish families and those who sympathized with them for the brunt of their harassment. Those who witnessed this and and survived the whole ordeal were not only lucky but were also indebted to keep alive the memories of those who didn't.
























These scenes of great distress and anguish became commonplace among Jewish communities during World War II.