Chapter 5 Summary

The Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated by the inmates of the camp at the end of the summer of 1944. They come together and pray, praising God’s name. Eliezer finds it difficult to join them and thinks that this God is powerless and vindictive. He mocks the idea that the Jews are the chosen people and states that they are chosen only to be massacred. His loss of faith makes him alone among the 10,000 Jewish celebrants in Buna. He also eats on Yom Kippur, the day on which Jews traditionally fast to atone for their sins.

A selection day arrives where the weak and the old are segregated from the rest to be sent to the crematoria. Eliezer worries that his father will not pass the selection. He indeed turns out to be too weak to work—he will now be executed. Eliezer is forced to leave his father, never to see him again. However, in a miraculous turn of events, when Eliezer comes back from work in the evening, he sees his father alive. A second selection had been conducted amongst the condemned, and Shlomo had passed that. However, Abika Drumer hadn’t survived, having lost his will to live when he lost his faith. A rabbi confesses to having lost his faith in God after witnessing the horrors of the concentration camp.

With the arrival of winter, Eliezer’s leg swells up, and he undergoes an operation. While he is recuperating, the inmates learn that the Red Army is approaching, which gives them a fresh lease of hope. The Germans decide to evacuate the camps to escape the Russian army. The Jews think that everybody in the infirmary will be killed and despite his unhealed wound, Eliezer joins the Jews who are being evacuated. Later, Eliezer comes to know that the Jews in the infirmary weren’t killed, and the Red Army rescued them a few days later. The Jews start evacuating Buna at nightfall with a snowstorm raging. They begin marching for an unknown destination. Eliezer carries only two pieces of bread in his pocket.

Chapter 5 Analysis

The High Holidays are the time of divine judgment in Jewish tradition. According to the prayer book, Jews pass before God on Rosh Hashanah like sheep before the shepherd. God then decides who will live or die the following year. In a cruel twist of fate, it is the Nazis now who will decide which Jew gets to live or die. They are the gods now performing the selection of the prisoners at Buna. The reference to the last judgment is a religious allusion, signifying the end of the world. Dr Mengle now impersonates God, who possesses the power to keep a Jew alive or dead.

When Abika Drumer realizes that the evil of the Nazis is more powerful than the power of God, he loses his faith, subsequently losing his will to live. This emphasizes how faith and hope are critical for a man to survive; without this, the determination to endure the atrocities is severely challenged with some succumbing to death and others bereft of all emotions.

Eliezer’s experience at the hospital highlights how there is no trust in a fellow human being at the camp. When an inmate counsels him to escape the hospital before there is another selection, he is unsure about his motives. Similarly, his interaction with the doctor reveals his insecurities and extreme fear. It is a matter of tragic irony that Eliezer and his father decide to be evacuated and in two days the Red Army arrives and everybody is released from the hospital. They had to gamble, and they gambled wrong. The casual, offhanded way in which Eliezer describes this conveys how bitter he is about making this fatal decision and how things could have been so different had he chosen to stay.