Section 8-9

In this chapter, Elie seems to look at his situation in an every man for himself way. He starts to think that he should worry more about his own health and not so much on his fathers.

The journey to Buchenwald fatally weakens Eliezer's father. He seems at last to have given up living and started to not care about life. Eliezer tries to convince him to move, but he refuses to.

Later, an air raid alert forces all of the prisoners back into the barracks. Eliezer leaves his father during this alert and then falls into a deep sleep. In the morning, he begins to search for his father, but halfheartedly, because part of him thinks that abandoning his father and conserving his strength will help him in the long run. However, he ends up later running into his father, who is getting worse in his health and strength.

When the U.S army approaches the camp, the Nazis decide to evacuate and kill all of the prisoners before the troops arrive. This process is delayed however when another air raid alarm takes place and the prisoners are forced into the barracks. Luckily, Elie survives it all and is rescued by the U.S army. When he gets out, he ends up getting food poisoning and has to stay in the hospital for a while. While in the hospital, he looks at himself in the mirror for the first time since the Holocaust and is horrified by what he sees.

Section 6-7

Throughout this chapter, the condition of Elies father gradually gets worse and worse. In the beginning of the chapter, the prisoners are evacuated from Buna and are warned that any prisoner that stops running will be shot. Eliezer keeps himself running along with the other prisoners for his father, who is running near him. After running all night and covering more than forty-two miles, the prisoners find themselves in a deserted village.
While they are in the village, Elie and his dad decide not to sleep, because they fear that they will die while they are sleeping. After this night, the prisoners travel more untill they reach the Gleiwitz camp. Here at this camp, the prisoners go through another selection process and Elies dad is considered unhealthy. But with the help of Elie, his father manages to make it to the healthy side.
After this selection process, the healthy prisoners are loaded intop catle cartds and instructed to get rid of the dead bodies. While they are traveling on the carts, local citizens in a german town throw loaves of bread onto the trains so that they can watch the prisoners kill each other for the bread.

Section 5

In the beginning of the chapter, we learn that the high holy days of rosh hashana and yom kippur are occuring. The prisoners are able to observe these holy days and come together secretly, but Elie does not pray. He does not pray because he sees no reason to pray, because of all the suffering that G-d allowed to occur. He actually mocks G-d in a way, when he talks about how his chosen people are only chosen to be killed. This leads on to Elie eating on yom kippur, the day which jews traditionally are supposed to fast on.

Later, Elie and his father are seperated from each other when his father is said to be too weak to work, and would have to be executed. After knowing this, his father gives Elie the only things he has, his knife and spoon. Later however, a second "selection process" takes place and his father is actually said to be ok to work and survives.

When winter comes, the prisoners begin to suffer from the harsh cold temperature. Elies foot begins to swell up and has to have surgery to fix it. Later, a rumor begins to bring hope to the prisoners. The rumor says that the Russian army is approaching to help the prisoners. Knowing this rumor, the Nazis decide to evacuate the camp and kill teh prisoners that choose to stay. Elie and his father decide to leave for the evacuation. Elie later realizes that he made the wrong decision in leaving the camp, because the prisoners were later freed by the russian army.

This chapter proves to be a true test of faith for Elie and the other jewish prisoners. Elie loses his faith in G-d and sees it that if G-d existed, he would never let something this bad happen to his "chosen people". I understand where he is coming from on his decision to lose faith in G-d, because if i was in his situation, i too would have probably lost faith in G-d for the same reason he did.

Section 4

Not long after Eliezer and his father arrive in Buna, Eliezer is summoned to the dentist to have his gold crown pulled. He manages to plead illness and postpone having the crown removed. Then, after he is working in the warehouse and some days go by, the story skips into the future, in which the narrator talks about meeting a girl that he had met in the halocaust after it is over.

After this reference into the future, the story returns back to the concentration camp, where a guard at the camp sees Elie's gold crown and beats Elie's father until he gets it. Later, Eliezer accidentally sees Idek having sex in the barracks, and in order to punish him, Idek whips Eliezer publicly until he is unconscious.

During an air raid on Buna, when every prisoner is supposed to be in their barracks, two bowls of soup were left unattended, and Eliezer as well as many other prisoners watch as one man puts his life at stake to get the soup. The man reaches the soup, but as he stands over the soup, he is shot and falls lifeless to the ground. Elie then tells stories about some of the hangings which he has witnessed.

Chapter 3

In the beginning of this chapter, the men are seperated from the women and the sick or weak are killed. In this seperation, Eliezer and his father are seperated from his mother and sister. Then Eliezer and his dad wait in a line along with other male prisoners. While waiting in line, Elie lies about his age and says that he is 18. Once they reach the front of the line, the Elie and his dad are given ranks and are assigned barracks.
When they go into the barracks, the prisoners are stripped of their clothes and possesions and shaved, disinfected using gasoline, showered, and dressed in thier prison uniforms. They are then lectured by a Nazi officer and and are given two options, either: hard work or the crematorium. Soon after, they make a short march from Birkenau to Auschwitz, another concentration camp, where they they stay for a short while. Here, the prisoners recieve prison numbers, which get tatooed onto their arms. Around 3 weeks later, the prisoners are escorted on a 4-hour walk to a work camp called Buna.
Despite all of these terrible things the prisoners see, most of them remain faithful to their religion except for Elie, who not only begins to doubt his faith, but he begins to doubt humanity its self saying, “humanity would never tolerate” such a terrible thing, as he sees babies being burned in a huge pit.