Critical Analysis on Elie Wiesel's Night

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."