Night Section Five

Eliezer and his father arrive in Buchenwald with the other prisoners, but their health has significantly deteriorated. Eliezer’s father sits down in the snow upon reaching the camp and refuses to move despite all of Eliezer’s efforts to try and get him to move. He is forced to abandon his father when an air raid siren begins to wail, and the Nazis drive the prisoners indoors. He falls asleep in the shelter and wakes with the realization that his father was still outside. He begins to search for him, but his search is rather half-hearted since he feels that survival might be easier without the weight of his father. Eliezer finds his father almost accidentally and helps him with his potion of food and coffee. He shares it with a significant amount of guilt, as he feels that his life would be much easier if he could have his food. Eliezer helps his father find a bed and learns that his father is suffering from dysentery. None of the doctors in the camp are willing to expend effort in saving the old man’s life, and Eliezer is forced to care for his father by himself. His father’s health continues to devolve and the people lying in the beds next to his father begin to steal his rations when Eliezer is away. When Eliezer confronts them, they tell him that he needs to realistically examine his father’s chances for survival. Eliezer refuses to listen to them, and he refuses to acknowledge this even when the leader of his block tells him the same thing.

Eliezer continues to administer to his father as best he can, but the man’s health continues to deteriorate. Eliezer is aware that people with dysentery should not be given water, but he still gives it to him as he is unable to see his father starving. Eliezer’s father attracts the unwanted attention of a Nazi patrol man who commands the moaning man to stop making noise. His father is unable to contain himself, and he continues to call for Eliezer, who is lying on the cot above him, uncaring of the officer’s increasing anger. The officer begins to beat his father, and Eliezer cannot help but feel anger at his father for inciting the anger of the officer. The next morning, Eliezer wakes to find that his father’s body had been taken to the crematorium, and he is unable to feel anything except relief. Throughout the next few days, Eliezer thinks about nothing else besides food even as he begins to hear the others talk about the advancing American army. The Nazis decide to kill all the prisoners before they can be liberated by the American army, and they begin to kill many prisoners per day. The Nazis decide to evacuate the remaining twenty thousand prisoners in the camp when they learn of the advancing German line. However, the resistance in the prison expels the Nazis and they are soon liberated by the American army. Eliezer remembers being sick with food poisoning after being rescued. After recovering from the sickness, he sought a mirror as he realized that he hadn’t seen his face since leaving Sighet. He looks in the mirror and sees the face of a corpse staring back at him.

Analysis

Readers have often remarked on the bleakness of the ending, and of Night as a memoir. The reader may be aware that Eliezer went on to become a famous author and scholar, but none of this information is given in this memoir. We leave Eliezer staring at his reflection, seeing a corpse where he had once seen himself. The ending seems to suggest that Eliezer may as well have been dead. That the holocaust had killed his faith in God and Humanity, and without those things he might as well have been dead. Other readers have argued that the ending is not necessarily hopeless, since the ending raises questions and forces the reader to think about the answers. Questions about God, the human capacity for evil, evil itself, and the nature of existence. The reader is forced to confront this horrific account of the Holocaust from Eliezer’s lens, and perhaps conclude that by bearing witness to this account, the reader is entrusted with the responsibility of preventing it from ever occurring again in whatever capacity they possess.