Night is Elie Wiesel’s account of his teenage years in Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a gripping portrayal of the horrors of life under the Nazis. This excerpt describes his terrifying departure by cattle car from Transylvania, in Hungary, to Auschwitz:
Lying down was not an option, nor could we all sit down. We decided to take turns sitting. There was little air. The lucky ones found themselves near a window; they could watch the blooming countryside flit by.
After two days of travel, thirst became intolerable, as did the heat.
Freed of normal constraints, some of the young let go of their inhibitions and, under cover of darkness, caressed one another, without any thought of others, alone in the world. The others pretended not to notice.
There was still some food left. But we never ate enough to satisfy our hunger. Our principle was to economize, to save for tomorrow. Tomorrow could be worse yet.
The train stopped in Kaschau, a small town on the Czechoslovakian border. We realized then that we were not staying in Hungary. Our eyes opened. Too late.
The door of the car slid aside. A German officer stepped in accompanied by a Hungarian lieutenant, acting as his interpreter.
“From this moment on, you are under the authority of the German Army. Anyone who still owns gold, silver, or watches must hand them over now. Anyone who will be found to have kept any of these will be shot on the spot. Secondly, anyone who is ill should report to the hospital car. That’s all.”
The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear.
“There are eighty of you in the car,” the German officer added. “If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.”
The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.
There was a woman among us, a certain Mrs. Schächter. She was in her fifties and her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two older sons had been deported with the first transport, by mistake. The separation had totally shattered her.
I knew her well. A quiet, tense woman with piercing eyes, she had been a frequent guest in our house. Her husband was a pious man who spent most of his days and nights in the house of study. It was she who supported the family.
Mrs. Schächter had lost her mind. On the first day of the journey, she had already begun to moan. She kept asking why she had been separated from her family. Later, her sobs and screams became hysterical.
On the third night, as we were sleeping, some of us sitting, huddled against each other, some of us standing, a piercing cry broke the silence:
“Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!”
There was a moment of panic. Who had screamed? It was Mrs. Schächter. Standing in the middle of the car, in the faint light filtering through the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a field of wheat. She was howling, pointing through the window:
“Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!”
Some pressed against the bars to see. There was nothing. Only the darkness of night. It took us a long time to recover from this harsh awakening. We were still trembling, and with every screech of the wheels, we felt the abyss opening beneath us. Unable to still our anguish, we tried to reassure each other:
“She is mad, poor woman. . .”
Someone had placed a damp rag on her forehead. But she nevertheless continued to scream:
“Fire! I see a fire!”
Her little boy was crying, clinging to her skirt, trying to hold her hand:
“It’s nothing, Mother! There’s nothing there . . . Please sit down . . .” He pained me even more than did his mother’s cries.
Some of the women tried to calm her:
“You’ll see, you’ll find your husband and sons again . . . In a few days . . .”
She continued to scream and sob fitfully.
“Jews, listen to me,” she cried. “I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!”
It was as though she were possessed by some evil spirit.
We tried to reason with her, more to calm ourselves, to catch our breath, than to soothe her:
“She is hallucinating because she is thirsty, poor woman . . . That’s why she speaks of flames devouring her . . .”
But it was all in vain. Our terror could no longer be contained.
Our nerves had reached a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound and gagged her.
Silence fell again. The small boy sat next to his mother, crying. I started to breathe normally again as I listened to the rhythmic pounding of the wheels on the tracks as the train raced through the night. We could begin to doze again. To rest, to dream . . .
And so an hour or two passed. Another scream jolted us. The woman had broken free of her bonds and was shouting louder than before:
“Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere . . .”
Once again, the young men bound and gagged her. When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval:
“Keep her quiet! Make that madwoman shut up. She’s not the only one here . . .”
She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying.
The night seemed endless. By daybreak, Mrs. Schächter had settled down. Crouching in her corner, her blank gaze fixed on some faraway place, she no longer saw us.
She remained like that all day, mute, absent, alone in the midst of us. Toward evening she began to shout again:
“The fire, over there!”
She was pointing somewhere in the distance, always the same place. No one felt like beating her anymore. The heat, the thirst, the stench, the lack of air, were suffocating us. Yet all that was nothing compared to her screams, which tore us apart. A few more days and all of us would have started to scream.
But we were pulling into a station. Someone near a window read to us:
“Auschwitz.”
Nobody had ever heard that name.
THE TRAIN did not move again. The afternoon went by slowly. Then the doors of the wagon slid open. Two men were given permission to fetch water.
When they came back, they told us that they had learned, in exchange for a gold watch, that this was the final destination. We were to leave the train here. There was a labor camp on the site. The conditions were good. Families would not be separated. Only the young would work in the factories. The old and the sick would find work in the fields.
Confidence soared. Suddenly we felt free of the previous nights’ terror. We gave thanks to God.
Mrs. Schächter remained huddled in her corner, mute, untouched by the optimism around her. Her little one was stroking her hand.
Dusk began to fill the wagon. We ate what was left of our food. At ten o’clock in the evening, we were all trying to find a position for a quick nap and soon we were dozing. Suddenly:
“Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Over there!”
With a start, we awoke and rushed to the window yet again. We had believed her, if only for an instant. But there was nothing outside but darkness. We returned to our places, shame in our souls but fear gnawing at us nevertheless. As she went on howling, she was struck again. Only with great difficulty did we succeed in quieting her down.
The man in charge of our wagon called out to a German officer strolling down the platform, asking him to have the sick woman moved to a hospital car.
“Patience,” the German replied, “patience. She’ll be taken there soon.”
Around eleven o’clock, the train began to move again. We pressed against the windows. The convoy was rolling slowly. A quarter of an hour later, it began to slow down even more. Through the windows, we saw barbed wire; we understood that this was the camp.
We had forgotten Mrs. Schächter’s existence. Suddenly there was a terrible scream:
“Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!”
And as the train stopped, this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky.
Mrs. Schächter had fallen silent on her own. Mute again, indifferent, absent, she had returned to her corner.
We stared at the flames in the darkness. A wretched stench floated in the air. Abruptly, our doors opened. Strange-looking creatures, dressed in striped jackets and black pants, jumped into the wagon. Holding flashlights and sticks, they began to strike at us left and right, shouting:
“Everybody out! Leave everything inside. Hurry up!”
We jumped out. I glanced at Mr. Schächter. Her little boy was still holding her hand.
In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.
Elie Wiesel. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006, pp. 23-28.
