At the so-called gypsies' camp, Elie and his father enter a mud-floored barracks. A Kapo demands new shoes from anybody who has them; Elie's new shoes are concealed in mud and escape notice. An SS officer warns them that inmates must work or go to the crematory. Separated from skilled locksmiths, electricians, and watchmakers, Elie and Chlomo leave Birkenau and move toward a stone barracks. After a half-hour march through electric fencing, they arrive at another camp in Auschwitz, Block 17, where SS officers menace them with machine guns, revolvers, and dogs. Through a shower and into late-night air, they approach garden plots and a smiling, compassionate young Polish prisoner-overseer who alleviates their terror with the first humane words Elie has heard in a long time: "Good night."
After a night's sleep, the new prisoners receive clothes and black coffee. Elie, comparing this place to Birkenau, says that Auschwitz seems like a rest home, after all; he's able to drowse in the spring sun. That afternoon, however, veterans tattoo him with the number A-7713. At roll call, bands play martial music as officers log in returning workers by number. The days pass in a routine of work, food, roll call, bed. Elie reunites with a relative — Stein of Antwerp, who worries about his wife and little sons. At the end of three weeks, the authorities replace the too-humane Polish overseer with a savage man assisted by "real monsters." Not long afterward, the one hundred ordinary workers are ordered out of the block and, after marching through Germans streets, past flirting German girls, reach a new camp: Buna. An iron gate closes behind them.
