Night pages 29-46

"The beloved objects that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions" (p. 29). These Jews, even while under this severe oppression and inhumane conditions in the cattle cars have clung to an illusion that this will soon end, and that they may soon return to their normal lives. This illusion finally ends for them as they are stripped of their beloved possessions. Every few yards there is an SS man with his machine gun trained on them. An SS wielding a club directs the men and the women to separate; "eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion...Yet that was the moment when I left my mother" (p. 29). The loss of his mother scars the narrator; it leads to his despair, anger, and eventual doubt of the justice of God. An inmate interrogates the narrator, insisting that the narrator and his father lie about their ages before he angrily disappears. Another inmate appears and curses at the newly arrived, asking why they have come to this camp; "you should have hanged yourselves rather than come here. Didn't you know what was in store for you in Auschwitz?" (p. 30). A few of the tough young men wish to assault the Germans, to make public the occurrences at Auschwitz, but their fathers earnestly attempt to dissuade them from this suicidal course of action. The newly arrive, including the narrator, are interviewed by a one Dr. Mengele. The narrator, his father, and a group of the others are pulled to the left, unknowing whether this path led to prison or the crematoria. They observe huge flames rising from a ditch ; "something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold; small children" (p. 32). The Germans, as influenced in the film viewed in class, wished to permanently eradicate the Jewish population, and to do this they chose to elimiate the next generation of Jews, involving the death of untold young children unfortunate enough to be Jewish at the time. For this crime the
narrator grows angry with the Lord; "the Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?" (p. 33).

The barrack they are assigned to is long; "this is what the antechamber of hell must look like. So many crazed men, so much shouting, so much brutality" (p. 34). They are ordered to strip down to their belts and boots in order to attain prison garb. A few of the SS officers wander through, searching for strong, sturdy men to load the dead into the crematoria. They are shaved
to appear even less human, and then allowed to go out and search for old acquaintances. The next morning they are made to soak in disinfectant, then given prison garb. As the narrator notes, "In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men" (p. 37). This fits into the German plan of dehumanization, making their victims appear as animals to lessen the feeling of guilt at the murder of the Jews. The Jews are then given new barracks, and finally it is explained to them that they are in a concentration camp. They are split into specialists and unskilled workers. The narrator's father asks simply to go to the toilet, and for this "offense" he is slapped brutally.

The narrator's first impression of Auschwitz is that it is better than Birkenau. The group is made to sprint to their new barracks, where they are greeted by a young Pole. He tells them, "by driving out despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever..." (p. 41). This young Pole already is likening their dawning experience at Auschwitz to be a Hell of sorts, and he warns them to join together, else they all fail separately. The narrator notes that these were the first human words. They are given numbers; the narrator becomes A-7713. The narrator's father, Wiesel, is then found by Stein, a distant relative. The narrator moves to comfort Stein by telling him that his wife and children are safe, a statement that is most likely untrue. A transport arrives from Antwerp, the region from whence Stein and his family came, and Stein goes for news of his family. The narrator never sees Stein again, as Stein realizes he has been lied to. Evenings the men pray in Hasidic melodies. The narrator remarks that "I concurred with Job! I was not denying his existence, but I doubted his absolute justice" (p. 45). The simple laborers, among them the narrator and his father, are sent in a transport to a new camp, Buna.