Chapter 2

In this section, the Jews continure to be tormented by agonizing conditions. They are packed into small cars, where there is hardly any air to breathe, it is extremely hot, and everyone is hungry and thirsty. After a few days of traveling in these brutal conditions, the train stops at the Czechoslovakian border. A German officer accompanied by a Hungarian lietenant takes official charge of the train, and threatens to shoot anyone who will not give away his or her valuables. The doors to the car are nailed shut, so no one can escape.

Mrs. Schachter is a middle-aged woman who is on the train with her ten-year- old son. On the third night, she begins to scream that she sees a fire, but apparently there is not a fire. She is tied up and gagged so that she cannot scream. Her child watches this next to her and cries. When she breaks out of her bonds and continues to scream about the furnace that is waiting ahead, some of the boys on the train beat her to keep her quiet. The prisoners on the train reach Auschwitz station. They are told by some locals that they are at a labor camp where they will be treated well and kept together as families. This is a relief to them, and the prisoners believe that everything will be alright. That night, Madame Schachter again wakes everyone with her screaming, and she is beaten again to keep her quiet. There is a wretched stench in the air, which is the smell of burning flesh. They arrive at the concentration camp in Birkenau.

This chapter begins to show us the harsh treatment of the Jews as victims. Madame Schachter is an example of this. She is beat so that she will remain quiet. By the Nazis treating the Jews this way, they cause the Jews themselves to act as if they were less human. Some of them begin to beat Madame Schachter in order to keep her quiet, and the others support the beating. Madame Schachter, who is supposedly crazy, sees the future, but the other Jews, who are apparently not crazy, do not see this coming.

Chapter 1

The name of the narrator is Eliezer, who is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet. He is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish family. He has two older sisters, Hilda and Bea, and a younger sister named Tzipora. Eliezer studies the Talmud, which is the Jewish oral law. He also studies the Jewish texts of the Cabbala. Eliezer finds a challenging teacher of Jewish mysticism in Moshe the Beadle. Soon, the Hungarians expel all foreign Jews, even Moshe. Despite their anger, the Jews of Sighet soon forget about this anti-Semitic act.

After many months, Moshe escapes and later returns and tells how the deportation trains were handed over to the Gestapo, which is the German secret police, at the Polish border. He says this is where the Jews were forced to dig graves for themselves and were also killed by the Gestapo. The town sees him crazy and refuses to believe his story.

Later in 1944, the Hungarian government falls into the hands of the Fascists, and the next day the German armies occupy Hungary. As the community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars. Eventually, the Jews are confined to small ghettos, and crowded together behind barbed-wire fences. Eliezer’s family is among the last forced to leave Sighet.

This first chapter expresses Eliezer’s problem with his faith. At the start of the story, he is a devoted Jew from a devoted community. He studies Jewish tradition loyally and believes faithfully in God. As the Jews are deported, they express their belief that God will save them from the Nazis. “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….” However, his experience in the concentration camps eventually leads to his loss of faith, because he decides that he cannot believe in a God who would allow this kind of suffering.