Final Post: Pgs 98-115

The prisoners are pressed tightly into cars and are made to throw out the dead bodies. Elie’s father is almost thrown from the car because he was thought to be dead. Some of the people in the towns they pass are throwing bread into the car. Elie talks about an experience after the Holocaust, in which when a tourist in Aden throws coins to some of the boys. Two of the poor boys try to kill each other for the coins, and this is why they are throwing the bread. One night, someone tries to strangle Elie while he is asleep. Elie's father calls on a friend named Meir Katz to rescue Elie. When thee get to Buchenwald, only 12 out of the 100 men are still alive.

The journey to Buchenwald has fatally weakened Elie's father. On arrival, he sits in the snow and refuses to move. He seems at last to have given in to death. Eliezer tries to convince him to move, but he will not or cannot, asking only to be allowed to rest. When an air raid alert drives everyone into the barracks, Eliezer leaves his father and falls deeply asleep. In the morning, he begins to search for his father, but halfheartedly. Part of him thinks that he will be better off if he abandons his father and conserves his strength. Almost accidentally, however, he finds his father, who is very sick and unable to move. Eliezer brings him soup and coffee. Again, however, Eliezer feels deep guilt, because part of him would rather keep the food for himself, to increase his own chance of survival.


Elie tries to find help for his father, who is slowly dying. The prisoners whose beds are around his father's, steal his food and beat him. Later, Elie is told by the man in charge, that his father is dying, and that he should concentrate on himself surviving. His father cries for water, and is beat by an SS patrol officer. On January 29, Elie wakes up to find out that his father has been taken to the crematory. Elie remains in Buchenwald, and on April 5, the Nazis decide to kill all the Jews left in the camp. As the evacuation begins, a siren goes off that sends everybody inside. On April 11, the American army arrives at Buchenwald. Now that ther are free, the prisoners think of feeding themselves. Elie comes down with food poisoning and spends weeks in the hospital, and very sick.

At the end of the novel, He sees the effects his unfortunate journey have taken on him. He says, "One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me."