Night: Chapter Five

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the last day of that cursed year, the entire camp was agitated and every one of us felt the tension.

And more and more prisoners kept coming, from every block, suddenly able to overcome time and space, to will both into submission.

How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance?

How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance?

How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance?

What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?

What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?

Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?

SOME TEN THOUSAND MEN had come to participate in a solemn service, including the Blockalteste, the Kapos, all bureaucrats in the service of

The voice of the officiating inmate had just become audible.

Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.

Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?

I listened as the inmate's voice rose; it was powerful yet broken, amid the weeping, the sobbing, the sighing of the entire "congregation":

The melody was stifled in his throat.

I was no longer able to lament.

On the contrary, I felt very strong.

The Day of Atonement.

They had transferred me to another Kommando, the construction one, where twelve hours a day I hauled heavy slabs of stone.

Then we would know the verdict: death or reprieve.

The Blockalteste appeared, his face reflecting our collective weariness.

At that, the Blockalteste vented his anger: What!

You just like to wallow in your despair, you fools!

My father had a present for me: a half ration of bread, bartered for something he had found at the depot, a piece of rubber that could be used to repair a shoe.

He tried to calm them, to reassure them about their fate, to explain to them that staying in the camp did not mean much, had no tragic significance: "After all, I stay here every day ..."

All that mattered was to be far from the block, far from the crucible of death, from the center of hell.

Around us, the din of military music.

ALL DAY, I PLODDED AROUND like a sleepwalker.

But as soon as he felt the first chinks in his faith, he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death.

When the selection came, he was doomed from the start, offering his neck to the executioner, as it were.

If we wait, the toes and perhaps the leg will have to be amputated."

I could just hear his voice, the only indication that he was alive.

When I came to and opened my eyes, I first saw nothing but a huge expanse of white, my sheets, then I saw my doctor's face above me.

I barely understood what he was telling me, but the inflection of his voice soothed me.

"Doctor," I stammered.

Only this time, these prophecies seemed more founded.

"And in one last swoop, thrown into the furnaces."

We each had put on several garments, one over the other, to better protect ourselves from the cold.

The death knell.

The procession was beginning its march.

We had to await the exodus of the fifty-six blocks that preceded us.

We had to await the exodus of the fifty-six blocks that preceded us.