Like robots, the prisoners run. The SS shoot all prisoners who fall behind. Elie almost welcomes death as pain and cold impede his flight. Only concern for his father keeps him going through a deserted village and on to a rest stop an hour after dark gives place to light. Elie's father urges him out of the snow and into a ruined brick factory and keeps him awake to save him from freezing. Men lie trampled or freeze to death under a blanket of snow. The kindly old Rabbi Eliahou searches the factory for his son. Elie conceals the fact that the son tried to save himself by outrunning his stumbling parent. Disturbed by the son's disloyalty, Elie prays that he will never abandon his own father.
Even the SS seem weary of the endless flight through snow. On arrival at Gleiwitz, Kapos assign inmates to barracks. Heaps of prisoners nearly crush Elie, who claws and bites his way to a breath of air. In the struggling horde, he hears his friend Juliek, who has brought his violin from Buna. In the dark shed, Juliek produces a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. By morning, Juliek lies dead beside his trampled violin. For three days, closely guarded inmates receive no food or water; outside, the sounds of gunfire revive hopes of the Red Army's advance.
At dawn on the third day, Elie rushes to retrieve his father from an SS selection. The resulting disorder blends survivors with victims. Once more Elie rescues Chlomo. The inmates march to the rail lines and stand to eat their ration of bread. The SS guards are amused when the prisoners begin scooping snow from each other's backs to quench their thirst. Late that evening, the inmates are still standing when a train of roofless cattle wagons arrives. The SS press a hundred men into each car, and the convoy sets out.
