NiiGht'S SUmmAry*

Pg. 23-46
The train advanced for days and Jews couldn’t even sit. They were all tired, hungry and thirsty, but they didn’t know where they were taken so that was so much important. During that time a woman called Mrs. Schächter, kept on shouting day and night, she said she saw flames and fire, but when Jews went to the windows there was nothing but darkness.
Ellie thought he would be shouting like the woman in just few more days.
After a long trip they arrived Auschwitz, someone told that was their final destination. They were told there was job for everyone, food and family, God was again with them, or at least they believed so.
The train moved again and after some Mrs. Schächter began shouting, Jews saw through the window and after some false alarms it was true. There was fire rising form a tall chimney and a second after they were taken out from the train. They arrived Birkenau around midnight.
They were told to separate men from women, this was the last moment Ellie saw his mother and his little sister, but he didn’t even notice… he was shaking, he was afraid of the next step.
Someone told him and his father to lie about their ages, he “was” 18 years old and his father was 40.
They passed the first step, they were not sent to the crematoria, they were still useful for the Nazis, Ellie thought of running into the electrified barbed wire, but he had to stay with his father, he was all the family left for him. They were alive but in some way they feel sad and with no reason to celebrate they were not dead.
Ellie describes how the camp looked, he won’t forget that night until the day he stop breathing, all the images in his head were repulsive, he no longer believed in innocence, not even in dreams or hope.
The next day the SS officers looked for strong men, they were lucky for not being chosen; otherwise they would have seen all their mates dying in the chimney. They were sent to the barber, they were forced to take out their clothes. Then some friends met each other and they started crying, I don’t know if they were because of finding the others alive or because Death was living with them.
Next day, they wake up early and Kapos ordered them to run naked as the day before, then a hot shower came and finally they were given new clothes, better called uniforms, all of them were of different sizes so they began to exchange clothes. They were transferred to different barracks and finally they got out of the concentration camp, a great day of May, the sun was shining and they were walking to Auschwitz. The entrance had an inscription: Work makes you free.
The first impression about the new camp was not that bad, they got some black coffee and soup, new clothes and at least, the first night they got their first human words until all this mess began, the man in charge told them good and helping words. They ate the same always, but that was not a problem, the also took naps.
One day, some men tattooed numbers in on Ellie’s left arm, his new name was A-7713, he had no other name, after that they had a roll call, as always.
Days went by, and then someone started to ask for Wiesel from Sighet, Ellie’s father. Later they realized the man who was asking was their relative, Reizel’s husband. Reizel was the sister of Ellie’s mother. He asked for Reizel, and Ellie had to lie, he saw his relative’s face and he couldn’t say the truth, he said Reizel and the children were ok, but Ellie’s mother hadn’t received any letter from her sister since 1940.
After a long time, their relative decided to go for news and they didn’t see him again. Sometimes Ellie asked himself where might be his mother and his sister, his dad tried to tell him they were ok, they pretended to believe so but at the end they knew that couldn’t be true.
They left too, after few some days, they were sent to a new camp: Buna.