from Night
Ellie Weisel
The train stopped at Kaschau, a little town on the Czechoslovak frontier. We realized then that we were not going to stay in Hungary. Our eyes were opened, but too late.
The door of the car slid open. A German officer, accompanied by a Hungarian lieutenant-interpreter, came up and introduced himself.
“From this moment, you come under the authority of the German army. Those of you who still have gold, silver, or watches in your possession must give them up now. Anyone who is later found to have kept anything will be shot on the spot. Secondly, anyone who feels ill may go to the hospital car. That’s all.”
The Hungarian lieutenant went among us with a basket and collected the last possessions from those who no longer wished to taste the bitterness of terror.
“There are eighty of you in this wagon,” added the German officer. “If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs. . . .”
They disappeared. The doors were closed. We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed.
We had a woman with us named Madame Schächter. She was about fifty; her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two eldest sons had been deported with the first transport by mistake. The separation had completely broken her.
I knew her well. A quiet woman with tense, burning eyes, she had often been to our house. Her husband, who was a pious man, spent his days and nights in study, and it was she who worked to support the family.
Madame Schächter had gone out of her mind. On the first day of the journey she had already begun to moan and to keep asking why she had been separated from her family. As time went on, her cries grew hysterical.
On the third night, while we slept, some of us sitting one against the other and some standing, a piercing cry split the silence:
“Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!”
There was a moment’s panic. Who was it who had cried out? It was Madame Schächter. Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield. She pointed her arm toward the window, screaming:
“Look! Look at it! Fire! A terrible fire! Mercy! Oh, that fire!”
Some of the men pressed up against the bars. There was nothing there; only the darkness.
The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time. We still trembled from it. With every groan of the wheels on the rail, we felt that an abyss was about to open beneath our bodies. Powerless to still our own anguish, we tried to console ourselves:
“She’s mad, poor soul. . . .”
Someone had put a damp cloth on her brow, to calm her, but still her screams went on:
“Fire! Fire!”
Her little boy was crying, hanging onto her skirt, trying to take hold of her hands. “It’s all right, Mummy! There’s nothing there. . . . Sit down. . . .” This shook me even more than his mother’s screams had done.
Some women tried to calm her. “You’ll find your husband and your sons again. . . . in a few days. . . .”
She continued to scream, breathless, her voice broken by sobs. “Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!”
It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit which spoke from the depths of her being.
We tried to explain it away, more to calm ourselves and to recover our own breath than to comfort her. “She must be very thirsty, poor thing! That’s why she keeps talking about a fire devouring her.”
But it was in vain. Our terror was about to burst the sides of the train. Our nerves were at breaking point. Our flesh was creeping. It was as though madness were taking possession of us all. We could stand it no longer. Some of the young men forced her to sit down, tied her up, and put a gag in her mouth.
Silence again. The little boy sat down by his mother, crying. I had begun to breathe normally again. We could hear the wheels churning out that monotonous rhythm of a train traveling through the night. We could begin to doze, to rest, to dream. . . .
An hour or two went by like this. Then another scream took our breath away. The woman had broken loose from her bonds and was crying out more loudly than ever:
“Look at the fire! Flames, flames everywhere. . . .”
Once more the young men tied her up and gagged her. They even struck her. People encouraged them:
“Make her be quiet! She’s mad! Shut her up! She’s not the only one. She can keep her mouth shut. . . .”
They struck her several times on the head—blows that might have killed her. Her little boy clung to her; he did not cry out; he did not say a word. He was not even weeping now.
An endless night. Toward dawn, Madame Schächter calmed down. Crouched in her corner, her bewildered gaze scouring the emptiness, she could no longer see us.
She stayed like that all through the day, dumb, absent, isolated among us. As soon as night fell, she began to scream: “There’s a fire over there!” She would point at a spot in space, always the same one. They were tired of hitting her. The heat, the thirst, the pestilential stench, the suffocating lack of air—these were as nothing compared with these screams which tore us to shreds. A few days more and we should all have started to scream too.
But we had reached a station. Those who were next to the windows told us its name:
“Auschwitz.”
No one had ever heard that name.
The train did not start up again. The afternoon passed slowly. Then the wagon doors slid open. Two men were allowed to get down to fetch water.
When they came back, they told us that, in exchange for a gold watch, they had discovered that this was the last stop. We would be getting out here. There was a labor camp. Conditions were good. Families would not be split up. Only the young people would go to work in the factories. The old men and invalids would be kept occupied in the fields.
The barometer of confidence soared. Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights. We gave thanks to God.
Madame Schächter stayed in her corner, wilted, dumb, indifferent to the general confidence. Her little boy stroked her hand.
As dusk fell, darkness gathered inside the wagon. We started to eat our last provisions. At ten in the evening, everyone was looking for a convenient position in which to sleep for a while, and soon we were all asleep. Suddenly:
“The fire! The furnace! Look, over there! . . .”
Waking with a start, we rushed to the window. Yet again we had believed her, even if only for a moment. But there was nothing outside save the darkness of night. With shame in our souls, we went back to our places, gnawed by fear, in spite of ourselves. As she continued to scream, they began to hit her again, and it was with the greatest difficulty that they silenced her.
The man in charge of our wagon called a German officer who was walking about on the platform, and asked him if Madame Schächter could be taken to the hospital car.
“You must be patient,” the German replied. “She’ll be taken there soon.”
Toward eleven o’clock, the train began to move. We pressed against the windows. The convoy was moving slowly. A quarter of an hour later, it slowed down again. Through the windows we could see barbed wire; we realized that this must be the camp.
We had forgotten the existence of Madame Schächter. Suddenly, we heard terrible screams:
“Jews, look! Look through the window! Flames! Look!”
And as the train stopped, we saw this time that flames were gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky.
Madame Schächter was silent herself. Once more she had become dumb, indifferent, absent, and had gone back to her corner.
We looked at the flames in the darkness. There was an abominable odor floating in the air. Suddenly, our doors opened. Some odd-looking characters, dressed in striped shirts and black trousers, leapt into the wagon. They held electric torches and truncheons. They began to strike out to right and left, shouting:
“Everybody get out! Everyone out of the wagon! Quickly!”
We jumped out. I threw a last glance toward Madame Schächter. Her little boy was holding her hand.
In front of us flames. In the air that smell of burning flesh. It must have been about midnight. We had arrived—at
Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz. . . .
The head of our block had never been outside concentration camps since 1933. He had already been through all the slaughterhouses, all the factories of death. At about nine o’clock, he took up his position in our midst:
“Achtung!”
There was instant silence.
“Listen carefully to what I am going to say.” (For the first time, I heard his voice quiver.) “In a few moments the selection will begin. You must get completely undressed. Then one by one you go before the SS doctors. I hope you will all succeed in getting through. But you must help your own chances. Before you go into the next room, move about in some way so that you give yourselves a little color. Don’t walk slowly, run! Run as if the devil were after you! Don’t look at the SS. Run, straight in front of you!”
He broke off for a moment, then added:
“And, the essential thing, don’t be afraid!”
Here was a piece of advice we should have liked very much to be able to follow.
I got undressed, leaving my clothes on the bed. There was no danger of anyone stealing them this evening.
Tibi and Yossi, who had changed their unit at the same time as I had, came up to me and said:
“Let’s keep together. We shall be stronger.”
Yossi was murmuring something between his teeth. He must have been praying. I had never realized that Yossi was a believer. I had even always thought the reverse. Tibi was silent, very pale. All the prisoners in the block stood naked between the beds. This must be how one stands at the last judgment.
“They’re coming!”
There were three SS officers standing round the notorious Dr. Mengele, who had received us at Birkenau. The head of the block, with an attempt at a smile, asked us:
“Ready?”
Yes, we were ready. So were the SS doctors. Dr. Mengele was holding a list in his hand: our numbers. He made a sign to the head of the block: “We can begin!” As if this were a game!
The first to go by were the “officials” of the block: Stubenaelteste, Kapos, foremen, all in perfect physical condition of course! Then came the ordinary prisoners’ turn. Dr. Mengele took stock of them from head to foot. Every now and then, he wrote a number down. One single thought filled my mind: not to let my number be taken; not to show my left arm.
There were only Tibi and Yossi in front of me. They passed. I had time to notice that Mengele had not written their numbers down. Someone pushed me. It was my turn. I ran without looking back. My head was spinning: you’re too thin, you’re weak, you’re too thin, you’re good for the furnace. . . . The race seemed interminable. I thought I had been running for years. . . . You’re too thin, you’re too weak. . . . At last I had arrived exhausted. When I regained my breath, I questioned Yossi and Tibi:
“Was I written down?”
“No,” said Yossi. He added, smiling: “In any case, he couldn’t have written you down, you were running too fast. . . .”
I began to laugh. I was glad. I would have liked to kiss him. At that moment, what did the others matter! I hadn’t been written down.
Those whose numbers had been noted stood apart, abandoned by the whole world. Some were weeping in silence. . . .
Several days had elapsed. We no longer thought about the selection. We went to work as usual, loading heavy stones into railway wagons. Rations had become more meager: this was the only change.
We had risen before dawn, as on every day. We had received the black coffee, the ration of bread. We were about to set out for the yard as usual. The head of the block arrived, running.
“Silence for a moment. I have a list of numbers here. I’m going to read them to you. Those whose numbers I call won’t be going to work this morning; they’ll stay behind in the camp.”
And, in a soft voice, he read out about ten numbers. We had understood. These were numbers chosen at the selection. Dr. Mengele had not forgotten.
The head of the block went toward his room. Ten prisoners surrounded him, hanging onto his clothes:
“Save us! You promised . . . ! We want to go to the yard. We’re strong enough to work. We’re good workers. We can . . . we will. . . .”
He tried to calm them, to reassure them about their fate, to explain to them that the fact that they were staying behind in the camp did not mean much, had no tragic significance.
“After all, I stay here myself every day,” he added.
It was a somewhat feeble argument. He realized it, and without another word went and shut himself up in his room.
The bell had just rung.
“Form up!”
It scarcely mattered now that the work was hard. The essential thing was to be as far away as possible from the block, from the crucible of death, from the center of hell.
I saw my father running toward me. I became frightened all of a sudden.
“What’s the matter?”
Out of breath, he could hardly open his mouth.
“Me, too . . . me, too . . . ! They told me to stay behind in the camp.”
They had written down his number without his being aware of it.
“What will happen?” I asked in anguish.
But it was he who tried to reassure me. “It isn’t certain yet. There’s still a chance of escape. They’re going to do another selection today . . . a decisive selection.”
I was silent.