Night Section Four

 

The prisoners are forced to march quickly in the terrible cold with barely any winter gear. The Nazis told the prisoners that all those who fail to keep pace with the marching will be shot. Eliezer feels the wound on his foot reopen, but he keeps running and he keeps encouraging his father to keep up with him. He witnesses the death of one of his friends from the camp, who is unable to bring himself to continue with the demanding pace of the march. He falls to the ground, and Eliezer is unable to stop to help the man even as he watches him being trampled to death by the marching crowd of desperate prisoners. They finally arrive at a deserted village, where the whole column stops for rest. Many of the people that lie down in the snow, never wake up again. Eliezer and his father find shelter for themselves, but they cannot allow one another to fall asleep. Eliezer wants to fall asleep very desperately, and even the snow seems comforting to him but he manages to remain awake with his father’s help. Rabbi Eliahou comes into the shelter seeking his son, and though Eliezer had seen the son, he decides to lie to the Rabbi about not having seen him. The Rabbi’s son abandoned his father during the march when it seemed like the Rabbi would not be able to keep up with the desired pace of the Nazis. Eliezer is severely affected by the son’s actions, and he prays to God for the strength to never do what Rabbi’s son had done.

The column resumes its march with significantly fewer people, as many of the prisoners succumbed to the cold and deprivation of the concentration camps. They finally arrive at the Gleiwitz camp, but the panicked prisoners cause a stampede when they reach the barracks so Eliezer becomes trapped under men struggling to find a place to sleep. He is separated from his father and encounters Juliek, one of the musicians he had met in his block back at Buna. The violinist is trapped below several struggling bodies, and yet he finds the room to pull out his violin and play it. Eliezer falls asleep due to the exhaustion of the march, as he finds comfort in the soothing music of the violin. When he wakes from his sleep, he finds Juliek dead, and his violin smashed to pieces. Eliezer reunites with his father, and they spend a terrible three days without food and water. At the end of this period of starvation, the prisoners are exposed to another selection, one that Eliezer is certain his father will not pass. This proves to be correct, as Eliezer’s father is sent off to be killed, but Eliezer can rescue his father from the queue in the confusion of selection.

The prisoners are taken to an empty field and they are then loaded into cattle cars once again. This is the start of a harrowing ten-day journey, as the prisoners are forced to travel in the cold without any food or water. The prisoners are forced to eat snow to remain alive, but even then several men begin to die. Eliezer watches his fellow prisoners throw out the bodies of the dead whenever the Germans stop the train and ask them to get rid of the dead. His father is nearly thrown out of the train as well because he looks as if he is dead. Eliezer manages to wake his father before the other prisoners mistake him for dead and throw him out of the cattle car. As the trains cross German cities, some of the citizens throw bread at the starving prisoners, and Eliezer watches them fight over the morsels of fruit. He witnesses an old man being beaten to death by his son as he tries to steal bread and then watches the son being beaten to death by the others. The author recounts seeing a similar scenario when a Parisian tourist had thrown coins at starving children in a city in Yemen. He had asked the woman to stop, but she had countered that she enjoyed charity. By the end of the train ride, there are only twelve people alive in Eliezer’s cattle car out of the hundred men that had been loaded into their cattle car.

Analysis

This section further develops the theme of the father-son bond through the account of Rabbi Eliahou, and the father who steals bread during the train ride. Many literary critics have postulated that Night is a reversal of the biblical story of Issac and Abraham, which is called Akedah in Hebrew. In the biblical story, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac to prove his faith. Abraham willingly agrees but God saves Issac’s life at the last moment. Night is a reversal of the Akedah as God seems to ask the son to sacrifice his father, but God does not intervene during the act. Eliezer’s relationship with his father is severely strained by the hardships of the Holocaust, but he never treats his father as badly as some of the other people he encounters. However, it is evident that Eliezer feels a significant amount of guilt about his father’s death, and he considers himself responsible for his death in many ways. This guilt is perhaps one of the main motivating factors in the creation of Night for Weisel. He begins to talk of his father’s death in the very first section of the book, and references to his failure in coming to the defense of his father are peppered throughout the book.