Night pages 98-115

The Jews, crammed into the cattle cars, are "pressed tightly against one another, in an effort to resist the cold, our heads empty and heavy, our brains a whirlwind of decaying memories. Our minds numb with indifference" (p. 98). These Jewish prisoners have been forced to endure inhumane treatment that has wreaked physical and emotional havoc upon them. They now feel indifferent to all that befalls them, most no longer even caring about their families, those they used to care about more than all else. Eliezer soon remembers his father, and turns to see him huddled with a blanket, indistinguishable between life and death. Eliezer is overwhelmed with the sensation that he is alone, that there is no longer a reason to live. The train stops by an empty field and the SS walk past the cars, shouting for the Jews to throw out their dead. "The living were glad. They would have more room...The volunteers undressed him and eagerly shared his garments" (p. 99). Again this Darwinian survival of the fittest emerges. These prisoners care only for themselves, eagerly throwing out their dead and dying countrymen in order to obtain more space and a few meager garments to better cover themselves. Two of the volunteers attempt to throw Eliezer's father into the field. Eliezer hits his father, desperately attempting to wake him up. His father wakes up, faintly breathing and eyes glassy; the "gravediggers" move on.

They receive no food, and so are forced to live on snow; "we remained lying on the floor for days and nights, one on top of the other, never uttering a word. We were nothing but frozen bodies. Our eyes closed, we merely waited for the next stop, to unload our dead" (p. 100). They no longer possess the energy or willpower to do anything but eat snow and fall there. They still reveal a measure of indifference in this. Days and nights of travel follow; they would occasionally pass through German towns; "one day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon . There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great violence" (p. 100). Once again these Germans treat the Jews as animals, and set them to fighting against one another over a scrap of bread. This plays on the appearance throughout history of a basic human desire for the witness of violence, for example in the Roman amphitheates in which gladiators were forced to fight each other and wild animals for the pleasure of the crowd. Eliezer then notes a similar incident years later in which a ship's passengers throw coins to the natives to watch their struggle over the meager amount.

In the cattle car, Eliezer notes as an old man steals away a crust of the bread. He crawls away to a corner, where he is assaulted by a younger man. The older man recognizes his assailant and cries, "Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me...You're killing your father...I have bread...for you too...for you too" (p. 101). The son kills his father, then searches him and takes his bread. Two men have been watching this, and they take the opportunity to kill Meir. This is another example of human indifference and of men fighting only for their own survival; they have been so morphed that they are willing to kill their own family for a meager scrap of bread.

Eleizer then notes the character of Meir Katz, a friend of his father's. On the third night of their journey, Eliezer woke up to a man attempting to strangle him, with no apparent reason. His father manages to call Meir, who pulls off the aggressor. But this is Meir's last real act. He loses strength following his son's death in the first selection. When the train stops at Buchenwald, Meir stays on it, along with the dead, to await his reunion with his son. This book gives witness to apathy from the sons, who often abandon or even assault their fathers to strengthen themselves, but their fathers always reveal powerful love, even as they are abandoned and assaulted; it is almost as if the younger generation is attempting to rid themselves of the perceived over-sentimental generation of their fathers.


Eliezer's father steadily grows weaker. Eliezer begins to argue with his father, attempting to reason with him to go on living. However, "I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death and that he already had chosen" (p. 105). This experience has devastated his father, leaving him weak in body and in will. He at least has reached the end of his journey; it is almost inevitable that he soon must die. Eliezer feels as if he is arguing against death as to why death must occur, why people give up their struggle to survive even though they have given so much of themselves to their cause.

When Eliezer awakens, it is daylight, and he is immediately aware that his father is not with him. He searches for hours before finding him, and when he does his father beseeches Eliezer for the coffee that is being poured. As he hands his father the coffee, "I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitude of a wounded animal. With these few mouthfuls of hot water, I had probably given him more satisfaction than during my entire childhood"(p. 107). This sickness has so weakened his father that he is more grateful for a few swallows of a hot beverage than he is of his son's entire childhood. The phrasing "I shall never forget" also suggests that the father will soon die.

Eliezer's father suffers terribly from dysentery. He quickly tells Eliezer everything that he believes Eliezer must hear before he dies. A few days later he cries that the other prisoners have been beating him and stealing his food. He beseeches Eliezer for water, and though Eliezer knows that water is as poison for one with dysentery, he cannot refuse his dying father. The survival of the fittest concept is again brought up as the Blockalteste advises Eliezer, "Don't forget that you re in a concentration camp. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone" (p. 110). Eliezer is advised to take his father's ration, and for a moment he is tempted to do so, but quickly realizes what he is doing as so grows ashamed of himself. Eliezer's father again begs him for water in the presence of an SS officer, and for this he is violently beaten with a club. His father dies the next day, thrown into the crematoria.

Eliezer remains in Buchenwald until April 11. Following his father's death, nothing really matters to him any more. The Germans begin to take out the Jews in blocks and to shoot them. The SS finally begins to herd Eleizer's block to be shot. At that time, however, the resistance movement decides to act, and Eleizer and his block run and hide. Following the German retreat, they only see fit to feed themselves. Even as this happens, Eleizer marvels that all only think of feeding themselves, and not of revenge. A few days later Eleizer comes down with some form of food poisoning. As he recovers he look at himself in the mirror; "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me" (p. 115). This experience has so changed Eliezer that he no longer recognizes himself; he has been through inhumane treatment, the separation from his mother and sister, and finally the death of his father. He is now almost the equivalent of a corpse, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, as he has lost his touch with God.