Chapter 5

At this point in the story, Rosh Hashanah is coming for the Jews. On the eve of the holy day, all tensions were strung tightly, wondering if it would be the "last day of the [calender] year" or really the last day. As the evening's soup was distributed, everyone refrained from eating. They would wait until after prayer. As night fell, everyone began to assemble in the the camps center square, the Appelplatz. Almost 10,000 of the prisoners, the Blockälteste, and the Kapos gathered together in order to pause and recognize the time of meaning in their church year.

Elie's thought process was concentrated on the interrogation of God, asking who He was and what He had to say about such evil days as these. For what Elie had been through, his questions were a logical part of his coping with such unexplainable massacres. He resisted and rebelled, straining in an effort not to follow along with the group reciting the prayer. In the end, he decided within himself that he was stronger than God, "felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty" being to whom his neighbors were praying. Now he was only "an observer, a stranger."

Then came Yom Kippur, "The Day of Atonement," but the debated question was, "Should everyone fast?" Most felt that they had no need to fast, they were already fasting as it was. Others though felt that the intention of fasting was still good, and that they could give up one days worth of food in order to sacrifice for their sins. Elie, having anything but a strong faith at this point, decided he would eat in protest, in protest of a God who was not there for them in their time of need.

The next horrible event to take place was the selection. It was simply known as "selection" and was everything that the name implies. Those who were deemed to be weak and unhealthy by the SS had their numbers taken down and they were acknowledged as being good for the crematorium. Elie's Blockälteste had been through selection before and he spoke to his block before they went before the examination board saying,

"In a few moments, selection will take place. You will have to undress completely. Then you will go, one by one, before the SS doctors. I hope you will all pass. But you must try to increase your chances. Before you go into the next room, try to move your limbs, give yourself some color. Don't walk slowly, run! Run as if you had the devil at your heels! Don't look at the SS. Run, straight in front of you!"

When Elie's turn came, he "ran without looking back." The run seemed to last forever for him, but when he finally reached Tibi and Yossi, two of his young companions, on the other side, he was relied to hear that the infamous Dr. Mengele had not taken down his number. Yossi smiled and said, "Anyways, they couldn't have. You were running too fast..."

When the bell rang to signal the end of selection, Elie raced towards Block 36, his father's block. Meeting him in the middle, both were relieved when they heard that the other had pasted. Life was insured for now.

Chapter 4

Many of the occurrences in this chapter exemplify the depravity which Elie must endure, suffering beyond what humans should even experience. The magnitude of the events is even unrealized at the time by the young Elie. His experience in the camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buna changed his attitude and outlook on life for the rest of his life, but he did not come to realize this until after he had escaped the confines of such an evil environment, gave his mind time to unwind, and his conscience time to stabilize again.

Chapter 4 begins with the entrance into Buna, a new camp where Elie and his group of fellow inmates would be staying. After receiving the routine showers upon entry, the group was given new clothing (if it could even be called that, rags more specifically) and placed in two tents to wait for their block assignments. Once given the blocks they would be staying in, the inmates waited for the Kommando leaders to select their work crews. Word spread quickly that overall, Buna was a good labor camp, one could easily hold their own, that is, as long as they didn't get assigned to the construction Kommando. Elie was given an opportunity to secure a good Kommando, even getting a place for his father too, but the price was his pair of shoes. One of the shifted-eyed aides in the camp offered to give Elie the good slot, but the price was too high for him. Ironically, his shoes were later taken from him with nothing in return, a sorry end to a deal which could have gotten him another pair of shoes and a ration of bread with margarine. This little occurrence shows the deeper unsettlingness of Elie's situation, where he really has no control of his own life's direction.

Elie and his father got selected for the electrical warehouse crew, a position that wasn't difficult or dangerous. They worked diligently when the SS were around, but the normal circumstances were relaxed and slow-paced.

One day at the warehouse, the overseer, Idek, was venting his anger on the workers and Elie happened to cross his path. Idek beat him severely and when Elie was able to get away from him, he was only crawling. A nice, young French woman came over to Elie and wiped his bloodied face with a cool cloth, talking to him and reassuring him that it would be okay. Elie, years later, met the woman again in Paris, spending the whole day talking with her.

Amongst other events which adversely affected Elie was the hanging of a young boy, a boy called pipel, who was hung for suspected involvement in a sabotage plot on the central electric plant in Buna. The pipel, along with two other prisoners, was hung one days the workers were returning to the camp. The horrible part of the hanging was that the young child, the innocent pipel, was too light, and remained alive for over half an hour, struggling and writhing before the entire camp's population. That would forever change Elie, causing him to lose sleep at night and to question the very existence of a loving God.

After the triple hanging, Elie remarked that the soup of the evening "tasted of corpses."