Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8 starts off with Elie and his father's arrival to Buchenwald. They are ordered into groups of five and receive the information that they will be getting a shower. Elie says that he is "fascinated" by the idea of a shower. This shows the lack of hygiene and basic luxuries that these prisoners have had. Elie's father begs Elie to let him sit down and die. Elie, who has fought death up to this point purely for his father, is frustrated with his father's lack of a will to live. He yells at his father to get up. This shows the companionship that the two have formed over this experience. They look out for each other and give each other motivation to live. After Elie and his father get some much needed rest, Elie wakes up to find his father missing. While he is looking for his father, a thought flashes in his head. A thought about what it would be like if he was alleviated from this burden of his father. He immediately feels ashamed. This shows that the temptation that many other sons faced and succumbed to in the earlier chapters is still there. Luckily, Elie has a strong relationship with his father and is able to resist the temptation to leave his father. He finds his father and rushes to get him some coffee. When Elie gives the coffee to his father, he gets a look of extreme gratitude in return. The next pages chronicle the last days of Elie's father. He is left inside the cabin and beaten by fellow inmates. At one point, he is no longer able to get up from his bead. One day when he is given no soup, Elie gives up the remainder of his soup "grudgingly". Elie then becomes disappointed in himself because he treated his father like a nuisance, like Rabbi Eliahu's son did to his father. I think that Elie was being too hard on himself. It was only natural that he should be feeling those feelings towards his father. None of us are perfect and we fall for temptation sometimes, but at least he acted on it in a way that was not harmful towards his father. They try to get a doctor's help, but the doctors will not help Elie's father. A few days later, Elie gets some advice to let his father die and take the bread and soup rations. For a split second, Elie considers the option, and immediately feels guilty. Elie's father gets worse and worse. He keeps calling for Elie to help him, but Elie cannot do anything. Then, on January 28 or 29, 1945, Elie's father passed away and was thrown in the crematorium. Elie says he cannot weep because he "was out of tears". This shows the emotional hardening that the camp has caused him. He knows, deep inside, he is having thoughts of relief.

This chapter puts a large focus on the relationship between Elie and his father. He feels the desire at some points to abandon his father to relieve himself of the burden and possibly gain an extra ration of soup and bread. However, he always feels guilt after having these thoughts. At one point he claims that he is as bad as Rabbi Eliahu's son, who abandoned his father, but I don't think this is true. Although he had the temptation, ultimately Elie was extremely devoted to his father. He stayed with him throughout the entire journey and stuck with him until the very end.

Chapter 9 starts off with Elie describing his life in the camps without his father. He became a mindless drone with no other thoughts other than eating and sleeping. He became the shell of a man with no reason to live. Then, Buchenwald was liberated. The Americans took it over and drove out the SS. Elie was free. A couple weeks after the liberation, he fell victim to poisoning and was sent to a hospital. He looked at himself in a mirror which he had not done in a long time. He said a corpse gazed back at him and that "The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me." Elie realizes the full extent of what this camp had done to him. Not only was his physical appearance marred, but his soul was disfigured.

Here's a link to to some further information about the Allies liberating the concentration camps: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131

Here's a picture of Buchenwald being liberated:

Chapters 6 and 7

Chapter 6 starts off with the prisoners running to the other camp under the orders of the Nazis. They are forced to run over 20 kilometers. On the journey, Elie's friend Zalman, a young Polish boy, begins to get painful stomach cramps during the journey and stops running. He is trampled by the thousands of other runners and dies. Elie quickly brushes off this tragic event like it was an everyday occurence. Elie begins to reflect about how death envelops and surrounds him frequently. He admits that the idea of death began to fascinate him rather than scare him. This mentality led to hopelessness or even suicide with some victims. After a while they become like mindless machines, not thinking, just doing. When they reach an abandoned village, the prisoners collapse from exhaustion. Many don't wake up. Elie and his father take turns sleeping and waking each other up. Elie thinks to himself, with disturbing calmness, about how he will soon be a corpse, like the ones that litter the ground around him. Then, Rabbi Eliahu came searching around for his son. Elie claims that he hasn't seen him, but he soon remembers that he did see the Rabbi's son, running away from his father to rid himself of the burden. Elie quietly says a prayer that he will have the strength to not abandon his father, since he is all Elie has left. When the prisoners arrive at Gleiwitz, they are shoved into tight barracks and Elie soon hears cries of mercy from a boy to stop crushing his body. Elie recognizes this voice as the voice of Juliek, a boy who played the violin in Buna. Juliek is faced with the threat of suffocation and death, but all he worries about is his violin. This violin is all he has left, a sign of hope in a seemingly hopeless atmosphere. Then he begins to play. Elie claims that he has "never before heard such a beautiful sound". Elie is overcome by fatigue and falls asleep. The next morning, he sees Juliek, lying dead, with a trampled violin. This beacon of hope was destroyed. While in Gleiwitz, Elie's father is chosen to be killed. Elie, desperate to save his only companion, creates a mass confusion in which his father is able to switch to the group staying alive. His father's frequent encounters with death seem to foreshadow that the end is coming soon.

One detail that I found interesting about this chapter was the fact that Elie said a prayer to not abandon his father. He said, "'Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done.'" Throughout the later chapters, Elie has made it clear that he had given up on faith, and even preceding this statement he said he was praying to "this God in whom I no longer believed." So why do you think he said a prayer if he doesn't believe in God? Was it out of habit? Does he still actually believe? I think that he said it so that he could reassure himself. We all like to believe that there is some greater force, looking out for us and giving us strength to do what is right. Elie may not believe in this God, but he is trying to convince himself that he wont abandon his father. He thinks that he is weak and believes that he, being human, is inherently selfish. However, with this idea of a God, he can give himself the confidence that he will have the strength to overcome his selfishness.

Chapter 7 starts off in the cattle cars. Elie is tightly fit into this car with several others, whether they are alive or dead, he cannot tell. He sees his father next to him and a pang of fear surges through him as he realizes that his father might be dead. The Nazi police stop the car and begin to throw the dead bodies out of the car "like a sack of flour". They approach Elie and his father and, thinking Elie's father is dead, try to throw him out as well. Elie, not giving up hope in his father, hits his father in an attempt to help him regain conciousness. He eventually wakes up, but is obviously in bad health. The Jews traveled great distances in this cattle car, and even passed through some German towns. The inhabitants of these German towns watched the prisoners with little interest, and one townsperson even through bread in so as to get amusment from the prisoners fighting over the crumbs. Elie describes a similar experience years later when a French woman watched poor children fight over some coins she threw. She described it as "giving charity". During one of these bread fights, a child kills his own father for some bread. This is another instance of sons abandoning their fathers, just like in chapter 6. A little later, Elie is strangled by a random stranger. He cries out to his father and is able to live, but this is an instance of the animals that the prisoners have become as a result of being put in these capms. They are willing to kill each other for reasons that do not justify killing. At the end of chapter 7, the Jews in the wagons begin to lament and cry. Out of 100 passengers on the cattle car, only 12 remained.

One important event in this chapter was how the citizens of the German villages did not do anything against the Holocaust. They even participated in the killing and torture. When General Eisenhower discovered these camps, he wanted to make sure they were not forgotten. So he made the citizens of the surrounding villages, who sat idly by while this atrocity occurred, go through these camps and even bury the dead. If the German citizens realized what was happening instead of merely ignoring it, the Holocaust could have been far less severe. Here's a link to some information about General Eisenhower in the camps: http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/stories/death-camps.htm

Eisenhower at the camps: