SUMMARY #5: pages 65-84
The Jewish Holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have arrived, and the prisoners at camp decide to celebrate them despite the harsh punishments. Everyone gathers around and praises their God, but Eliezer refuses to believe in God anymore. He cannot find a reason to bless God while everyone is suffering at the concentration camps. Eliezer mocks the idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people, deciding that they have only been chosen to be massacred. Eliezer decides to eat on Yom Kippur, even though the Jews are supposed to fast that particular day.
Soon after the Jewish New Year, another selection is announced, where Eliezer becomes separated from his father since he was declared too weak to work. His father gives him a knife and spoon, which is his only inheritance that is left. Miraculously, a second selection occurrs and Eliezer’s father survives. Eliezer and his father is reunited once again.
As winter arrives, the prisoners begin to suffer in the cold and Eliezer’s foot begins to swell up. He goes to the infirmary where he undergoes an operation. While he is in the hospital recovering, the rumor of the approaching Russian army gives him new hope that he will be free. But the Germans have decided to evacuate the camp before the Russians can arrive. Eliezer and his father decides to be evacuated with the others, thinking that the Jews in the infirmary will be put to death if they refused to evacuate. After the war, Eliezer learns that the people who remained in the infirmary were freed by the Russians a few days later. Eliezer's foot begins to bleed in the snow as he, along with the rest of the prisoners, begin their evacuation of Buna.
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I think that by eating on Yom Kippur, Eliezer is rebelling in his own way. I think this is very important in his life, because normally, his entire life would have been devoted to his religion.
ReplyDeleteIt made me so upset to read about the people that stayed behind, getting released when the Russians arrived. It makes me think... imagine id Eliezer and his father decided to stay back at the infirmary. They would have been freed. His father probably would have survived...
If they had changed their decision, then Eliezer and his father would probably still be together when they were free from that hell. It also makes me sad to think that they were so close to freedom, if only they had not made that decision to be evacuated with the others. I wish they had stayed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but at that time they weren't exactly sure because it was a 50/50 chance. And what if they did stay, and were sentenced to death, there wouldn't have been a book called The Night.
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