Night Chapter 6-9

They had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace.

Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure.

People mocked him because he was forever praying or meditating on some Talmudic question.

To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot.

We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs.

Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence.

Despite the ordeals and deprivations, his face continued to radiate his innocence.

And, strangely, his words never provoked anyone.

He had lost his son in the commotion.

He had searched for him among the dying, to no avail.

He had felt his father growing weaker and, believing that the end was near, had thought by this separation to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance for survival.

From time to time, SS officers on motorcycles drove the length of the column to shake off the growing apathy: “Hold on! We’re almost there!”

Knowing that I was crushing him, preventing him from breathing, I wanted to get up and disengage myself to allow him to breathe.

Someone had lain down on top of me, smothering me.

All I can say is that I prevailed.

His charred past, his extinguished future.

Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

A thick layer of snow was accumulating on our blankets.

Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.

Our minds numb with indifference.

My father had huddled near me, draped in his blanket, shoulders laden with snow.

Suddenly, the evidence overwhelmed me: there was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight.

The days resembled the nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness.

Our ship’s passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the “natives,” who dove to retrieve them.

In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued.

Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other.

An extraordinary vitality possessed them, sharpening their teeth and nails.

His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face.

Less undernourished than the rest of us, detention had been easier on him.

He dragged me toward a pile of snow from which protruded human shapes, torn blankets.

He continued to moan: “Don’t yell, my son...Have pity on your old father...Let me rest here...a little...I beg of you, I’m so tired...no more strength...” He had become childlike: weak, frightened, vulnerable.

I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage.

Suffering from dysentery, my father was prostrate on his cot, with another five sick inmates nearby.

No. I wasn’t asleep. They threw themselves on me. They snatched it from me, my bread...

And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!

Such lateness was unprecedented in the history of Buchenwald.

Two hours later, the loudspeakers transmitted an order from the camp Kommandant: all Jews were to gather in the Appelplatz.

The evacuation was postponed to the next day.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.