Night: Section 5

The section starts off with the arrival of the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah, which celebrates the coming of the new year, and Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. Even though they are imprisioned the Jews of Buna come together and celebrate, but Eli's religious beliefs have seemed to have dissappeared. He connot fund a good enough reason to bless God in the presence of all this suffering. He later mocks the Jewish peoples idea of them being God's chosen people and that same God deciding to massacre all these people. Finally he comes to the decision that man has a stronger will than God. Feeling alone in the crowd Eli finds comfort in his fathers face because he sees a great dispair of his dads face. So on Yom Kippur, a day which Jews traditionally fast, he decided to eat.

Soon after the holiday is over another round of selections is made and Eli is separated from his father to work in the building unti. Yet he worries greatly about his father, whom he doesnt know will pass the selection. Days later he finds out his father did not pass the selection and he will executed. Eli's father comes to him a gives him his knife and spoon, Eli's only inheiritance. Thinking that he will never see him again, Eli is overjoyed when he see that there was another selection and his father had survived, but their friend Akiba Drumer isnt so lucky and looses faith and he later dies. Eli confides in a Rabbi and tells him that he can no longer believe in God because of what he has seen at these camps.

Winter comes along, but for Eli this isnt good, His foot begins to sweel and he goes into operation for it. While recovering a rumor of the Russion army gives the prisoners new hope. The Germans catch wind of the rumor and decide to evacuate the camps before the Russians arrive. Eli and his father make a fatal mistake of leaving the infirmary because they think the would be put to death, but they later learn that all those that stayed in the infirmary were freed days later by the russians.