Night Ch. 6

   Today in class we read the end of Ch. 5 and some of 6. It was announced that Buna was going to be evacuaded the next day, due to the Russians drawing near, which was probably a downer for everyone in teh camp, being ever so close to freedom. Everyone in the infirmary was allowed to stay. There was wondering about if they were really allowed to stay and the SS would just let the Soviets liberate them, or if the SS were just going to come back the next day and kill them. As for Elie as his father, they hda a choice to stay or leave. If they stayed, Elie's father could just be admitted as a patient/doctor, and they may be freed, or run the risk of the SS coming back to finish them off. On the other hand, if they went with everyone else, Elie's father isn't doing so great, and Elie has a bad foot, so both could be killed if they didn't keep up. Elie decides for them that they go with everyone else. After the war ended, he learned that those in the infirmary were liberated just two days later.
   Talk about bad timing/choice/luck.
   When Elie made teh choice for them to evacuate with everyone else, Elie's father had said that he hoped that they wouldn't regret that choice. This is ironic because Elie must regret making the choice to go instead of stay, because by the end of the war, Elie's father will die. If Elie decided that they stay, they could've saved themselves from running 25 miles and other forms of suffering, and his father would be alive. In the end, Elie does regret his choice.
   The next day, they evacuate camp. The Blockalteste orders them at the last minute to clean the block. He said that it was so the Russians knew that men stayed there, not pigs. Elie seemed to scoff that they were even men at all, after being dehumanized so much. The Blockalteste wanted them to know they may be dehumanized a lot, but they still had their dignity. They left camp at night. During the march, which turned into a run, many of the inmates couldn't keep up with the pace that the SS wanted, so they were killed on the spot. Elie was tempted to just stop running and die, how easy that wouldn't been, but he and his father stayed together. By morning, they had run about 15 miles and were at an abandoned village, where they had to sleep outside in the cold. Elie and his father took turns sleeping so they wouldn't get hypothermia. Elie slept first, and after his turn was done, it was his father's. When Elie woke him up, he had a smile on his face that Elie would always remember. His father must've been dreaming about their life before the concentration camps, or about being liberated and having a better life. It's sad that he won't live to see the Jews be liberated. It's truly amazing how more inmates lived than died on that run. They were starving, weak, in horrible shape, and they had to consecutively run 20 miles in the freezing cold, because their survival depended on it. They have an incredible will to live, to be running with all of those conditions. This makes us running the mile in gym seem a little petty. I might try to complain less when we run the mile again.