Eliezer feels that the person he was has been destroyed and cannot believe that he has only been at the camp for a single night. At this point the prisoners have ceased to be men. Eliezer tells a friend not to waste his energy crying, and he feels his fear vanishing and being replaced by "an inhuman weariness." Everyone feels numb and without any sort of emotion, and Eliezer describes them as "damned souls wandering the half-world." At five in the morning, the prisoners are then made to run naked to a different barracks where they are doused in petrol and hot water as disinfectant and then given clothes. People began to greet friends and relatives and were filled with joy to see the people who were still alive. The new arrivals were then taken to the barber, where all their body hair was shaved off. SS officers selected strong men who were taken to work in the crematories. The new prisoners threw their clothes into a huge pile. On that night his faith was consumed, and the silence of the night made him lose his will to live.Īt the barracks, veteran prisoners began to beat the new arrivals and told them to get undressed. Eliezer says he will never forget that night and the children's faces that he saw burned in flames. The men march closer and closer to a fiery ditch, but at the last minute, they swerve away from the fiery ditch. As the parade of men starts to recite the prayer for the dead for themselves and his father begins to weep, for the first time Eliezer feels himself revolt against God. Eliezer's father is sad that he is going to see his only son consumed by fire, and he tells Eliezer that humanity is not present in the concentration camps.
#Survive the night book summary full#
Eliezer watches in horror as a truck full of children drives up to a giant, fiery ditch and the children are put into the flames. Eliezer and his father are placed in the same group, which they are informed is the one destined for the crematory. Mengele looks cruel yet intelligent, and Eliezer tells him that he is eighteen and a farmer. Mengele, who uses a baton to pick out who will remain alive and who will go to the crematory. Then, everyone is forced to march past SS officer Dr. Some of the young men talk about revolting but are silenced by their elders. The prisoners who have been at Auschwitz for awhile are brutal and cruel to the new arrivals, and one of them tells them about the crematory. A fellow prisoner tells Eliezer to say that he is eighteen (though he is really fourteen) and that his father is forty (though he is fifty). He holds onto his father and is determined not to lose him.
The men and women are separated, and Eliezer sees his mother and sisters vanishing in the distance. Chapter 3 "The cherished objects we had brought with us"
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