What was Chapter 5 of night about?

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The Jewish year passes and on New Year's Day, the prisoners gather to celebrate and give thanks to God. Elie remembers that at one time, New Year's Day had dominated his life. But now, he refuses to offer up any prayers or praises to God. He feels no longer capable of lamentation, blaming God instead. But he also feels lonely in a world without God. As the Jews wish one another a Happy New Year, Elie finds his father, takes his hand, and kisses it. A tear falls on it and Elie asks, "Whose was that tear? Mine? His?" They both remain silent. Elie concludes, "We had never understood one another so clearly." Chapter 5, pg. 65 On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Jews debate whether they should fast or not. Partly in obedience to his father and partly as a revolt against God, Elie swallows his food. But again, in his heart he feels a great void.

Topic Tracking: Faith 4

Elie is separated from his father. He is transferred to another building where he hauls heavy blocks of stone for twelve hours a day. The veterans talk about how terrible Buna used to be and how it is now a paradise compared to before. But Elie is not comforted because there are rumors of another selection process. Elie is worried about his father because he has does not know if he can pass the selection. The head of Elie's new block tells them that in order to pass the selection they must run in front of the SS doctors. The SS officer in charge of the selection is the notorious Dr. Mengele. When Elie's turn comes, he runs as if his life depends on it. After the selection process, Elie finds his father and they share good news they had both passed. The bell rings and they separate. Elie hates the unceasing regulation of the bell. Elie notes, "Whenever I dreamed of a better world, I could only imagine a universe with no bells." Chapter 5, pg. 69-70

Topic Tracking: Death 6

Several days pass and the prisoners forget about the selection. But the head of the block reads off a list of ten prisoners who are to remain behind. Dr. Mengele has not forgotten. Elie's father comes running and says that he too has been selected to be left behind. All day, Elie worries about his father. After work, he is relieved to find that his father has passed a second, decisive selection. Many in the camp, however, do not make it. Akiba Drumer, having lost his once strong faith, becomes a victim of the crematory. A rabbi from Poland, who spends hours reciting the Talmud, concludes hopelessly that God is no longer with them. Before being taken away, Akiba Drumer asks some of the prisoners to recite the Kaddish for him. After only three days, they forget the promise.

Topic Tracking: Memory 5
Topic Tracking: Faith 5

During the winter, Elie's foot starts to swell. He goes to the hospital and there, a Jewish doctor tells Elie that the foot must be operated on. After the surgery, as Elie recuperates in the hospital, his neighbor, a faceless Hungarian Jew, tells him that Hitler will annihilate all the Jews. In anger, Elie asks why Hitler should be regarded as a prophet. The faceless neighbor counters, "'I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.'" Chapter 5, pg. 77

Topic Tracking: Faith 6

There is news that Buna will be evacuated. Elie and his father decide between staying at the hospital or going on with the other prisoners. They choose the latter. (Later, Elie finds out that two days after the evacuation, the Russian army liberates the hospital). Elie remembers that last night in Buna:

"Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?" Chapter 5, pg. 79

Topic Tracking: Night 5

Just before they evacuate, the head of the block tells the prisoners to wash the wooden floor. He wants the liberating army to know that men lived there, not animals. The bell rings again. The march is like a procession of the dead. Night falls, but outside the gate, Elie feels that "an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side." (Chapter 5, pg. 80)

Topic Tracking: Night 6

LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Having and Losing Faith in God

At the end of the summer of 1944, the Jewish High Holidays arrive: Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Despite their imprisonment and affliction, the Jews of Buna come together to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, praying together and praising God’s name. On this solemn Jewish holiday, Eliezer’s religious rebellion intensifies, and he cannot find a reason to bless God in the midst of so much suffering. Eliezer mocks the idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people, deciding that they have only been chosen to be massacred. He comes to believe that man is stronger than God, more resilient and more forgiving. His denial of faith leaves him alone, or so he believes, among the 10,000 Jewish celebrants in Buna. Leaving the service, however, Eliezer finds his father, and there is a moment of communion and understanding between them. Searching his father’s face, Eliezer finds only despair. Eliezer decides to eat on Yom Kippur, the day on which Jews traditionally fast in order to atone for their sins.

Soon after the Jewish New Year, another selection is announced. Eliezer has been separated from his father to work in the building unit. He worries that his father will not pass the selection, and after several days it turns out that Eliezer’s father is indeed one of those deemed too weak to work: he will be executed. He brings Eliezer his knife and spoon, his son’s only inheritance. Eliezer is then forced to leave, never to see his father again.

When Eliezer returns from work, it seems to him that there has been a miracle. A second selection occurred among the condemned, and Eliezer’s father survived. Akiba Drumer, however, is not so lucky. Having lost his faith, he loses his will to live and does not survive the selection. Others are also beginning to lose their faith. Eliezer tells of a devout rabbi who confesses that he can no longer believe in God after what he has seen in the concentration camps.

With the arrival of winter, the prisoners begin to suffer in the cold. Eliezer’s foot swells up, and he undergoes an operation. While he is in the hospital recovering, the rumor of the approaching Russian army gives him new hope. But the Germans decide to evacuate the camp before the Russians can arrive. Thinking that the Jews in the infirmary will be put to death prior to the evacuation, Eliezer and his father choose to be evacuated with the others. After the war, Eliezer learns that they made the wrong decision—those who remained in the infirmary were freed by the Russians a few days later. With his injured foot bleeding into the snow, Eliezer joins the rest of the prisoners. At nightfall, in the middle of a snowstorm, they begin their evacuation of Buna.

Analysis

In Jewish tradition, the High Holidays are the time of divine judgment. According to the prayer book, Jews pass before God on Rosh Hashanah like sheep before the shepherd, and God determines who will live and who will die in the coming year. In the concentration camps, Eliezer hints, a horrible reversal has taken place. Soon after Rosh Hashanah, the SS (Nazi police) performs a selection on the prisoners at Buna. All the prisoners pass before Dr. Mengele, the notoriously cruel Nazi doctor, and he determines who is condemned to death and who can go on living. The parallel is clear and so is the message: the Nazis have placed themselves in God’s role. Eliezer has decided that the Nazis’ actions mean that God is not present in the concentration camps, and thus praying to him is foolish.

Read more about religious observance as a motif.

The Nazis’ usurpation of God’s role is further emphasized when an inmate tells Eliezer, “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises . . . to the Jewish people.” Akiba Drumer’s death makes it painfully clear that humankind requires faith and hope to live. After losing his faith, Drumer resigns himself to death. Eliezer promises to say the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, on Drumer’s behalf, but he forgets his promise. Eliezer’s loss of faith comes to mean betrayal not just of God but also of his fellow human beings. Wiesel seems to affirm that life without faith or hope of some kind is empty. Yet, even in rejecting God, Eliezer and his fellow Jews cannot erase God from their consciousness. Though he has supposedly lost his faith in God, Akiba Drumer requests that Eliezer say the Kaddish on his behalf; clearly religion still holds some power over him. Similarly, in the third section, Eliezer, having rejected his faith in God forever, still refers to God’s existence when making his oath never to forget the Holocaust “even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.” In the first volume of his autobiography, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Wiesel speaks at far greater length about his religious feelings after the Holocaust. “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it,” he writes. “I had seen too much suffering to break with the past and reject the heritage of those who had suffered.” Wiesel, in his personal life, kept his faith in God throughout the Holocaust. His narrator, Eliezer, seems unable to reject the Jewish tradition and the Jewish God completely, even though he declares his loss of faith.

Read more about Eliezer’s struggle to maintain his faith.

As Night is a record of Wiesel’s feelings during the Holocaust, it is often seen as a work that offers no hope at all. Though it ends with Eliezer a shattered young man, faithless and without hope for himself or for humanity, it is Wiesel’s belief that there are reasons to believe in both God and humankind’s capacity for goodness, even after the Holocaust. One might argue that the very existence of Night demonstrates Eliezer’s continued belief in the importance of human life in general and his own life in particular. It would seem incongruous to write a memoir if, as Eliezer swears in Section Three, he has forever lost his will to live. The mere fact of writing Night seems to conflict with Eliezer’s hopelessness.

Read more about Elie Wiesel’s life.