Night Section Three
In the summer of 1944, the Jewish people in the concentration camp prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New year. Despite the harrowing circumstances in Buna, the prisoner still comes together to pray to God. However, Eliezer cannot bring himself to sing praises of the Almighty, and he feels completely separate from the rest of the camp prisoners as he remains standing upright while the others bow to the almighty. Eliezer mocks the idea that the Jewish people were the chosen people of God since they had known very little besides torture and death. He comes to believe that human beings are ultimately more powerful than God. His conclusions about religion leave him feeling isolated, but he has a sudden moment of connection with his father when he encounters him after the conclusion of the prayer. Eliezer notes the despair on his father’s face and understands that his father experienced some of the same hopelessness that he was feeling. On the holy day of atonement, Yom Kippur, when most Jews fast to seek forgiveness for their sins, Eliezer decides not to fast.
Eliezer learns of another selection that is to take place at the camps, and he immediately begins to receive advice from the veterans of the camp. He listens to all of their words attentively and successfully manages to go through the selection without having his number written down. However, he finds out that his father has failed the selection. He finds him panicked and struggling to catch his breath as he hurriedly gives Eliezer all his inheritance which consists of a spoon and knife. He isn’t allowed to spend a lot of time with his father, since he is required to go off for his work detail. He leaves his father’s side believing that it might be the last time that he sees him. The others are very kind to Eliezer that day.
He returns to his block and experiences blissful relief as he finds out that his father had been spared from the selection. He later learns that Akiba the drummer, hadn’t been as lucky as his father and that he had perished soon after his faith had failed him.
Winter arrives and brings along worse conditions for the prisoners of the concentration camps. They are supplied with winter clothing, but it is barely sufficient for any significant amount of warmth. Eliezer’s health begins to deteriorate as one of his feet begins to swell up and pain him. He visits the doctor, and he is told that he needs to have surgery on his foot if he would like to retain its use. Eliezer is very reluctant to allow the doctor to operate on him, given the fact selection occurs so frequently among the prisoners that reside in the infirmary. The doctor reassures him with a promise of a short recovery period, and Eliezer agrees. The surgery is performed successfully, but they begin to receive reports about the advancing troops of the Russian army. The inmates of the concentration camp are hopeful that the Russian army will eventually free them from the captivity of the Germans but they receive no such relief. The Germans decide to evacuate the camp, though they decide to leave behind the people in the infirmary. Eliezer and his father decided to accompany the evacuating group despite Eliezer’s unhealed wound. They believe that the Germans will find a way to dispose of the sick in the infirmary before allowing them to be rescued by the Russians. This turns out to be incorrect as the people in the infirmary are freed by the Russians just a couple of days after the evacuation. Eliezer and his father march through a snowstorm with the rest of the inmates when the evacuation begins that night.
Analysis
The Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah is a time of divine judgment. The followers of Judaism believe that they pass before God during this time, and he determines who will continue to live that year and who will die. Ironically, the Nazis perform a selection right after the New year and perform the role that God is believed to carry out. This is a clear indication that the Germans were trying to usurp the role of God for the Jewish people, or trying to prove to them that their religion held no sway over them. Eliezer, along with the other characters in the novel, like Akiba the drummer, struggles to sever ties with God completely. The author talks about his faith in his other works, and he explains that the experiences he had to go through incited anger in him, but this anger was not against his faith in god, but rather within that faith. Akiba the Drummer claims to have lost faith in God, but he still asks the others to say the Kaddish for him once he has failed to go through the selection. He would not require the Kaddish if he had truly lost faith in God.
