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.