Fourth SOS

Pages 67-85
These pages have become some of the most exciting and sensible of the book as Elie and his father underwent slection, took important decisions, and started the march towards a new camp.

One of the main events of these pages is the celebration of the Jewish New Year which was not celebrated as always. Elie still thinks where had God gone? Had God forgotten about them? as well as other religious tribulations.

The tension grows more and more when the selection takes place, and Elie had avoided being written down as well as his father. Akiba the drumer did not have the same luck. However, a second eselction is held in Elie's father's block. His father left him his knife and spoon. Those items were the last remains of the Wiesel family. Soon Elie learned that his father had again passed the selection.

Some time after Elie has his foot operated by a Jewish doctor that behaved quite benevolent towards him showing a bit of decency in Buna. Elie would stay for at least two weeks in the infirmiry, but he left it as the concentration camp was soon to be evacuated. Those in the infirmiry woudl be left there, and the others were off to another camp. He went to see his Dad, adn take a decision that would make their lifes lucky or more miserable than they were. They decided to march with the others. One night later they started the journey at night with SS officers running behind them during winter.

It made me angry that if they had stayed in Buna inside the infirmiry, perhaps they would have been freed by the Russian Army, both his father and himself.

Germans have started to lose in the eastern battlefield. The predictions for the German armies were not appealing. War was on its last legs, but the mass murders and tortures in extermination camps were still happening, and faster than ever.
One brilliant point in the book is when it mentions that Adolf Hitler had been the only one that had kept all the promises for the Jews. The tactic of evacuating the concentration camps was constant in the eastern border when Germany declared war to Russia, and Germany started getting surrounded by the Allies. No sooner had the Russians crushed the German borders than SS officers began the onslaught of every living soul in a camp.