Night

On another Sunday at 10 A. M., block leaders secure prisoners as air-raid sirens wail. Elie remains unafraid as American planes bomb Buna for over an hour. The prisoners rally, even though they have to remove an unexploded bomb from the prison yard and clear away debris of damaged buildings. A week later, Elie and his fellow workers witness a pre-breakfast hanging of a young man from Warsaw who stole during the alert. Later, in retaliation for the sabotage of the camp power station, the SS torture a Dutch Oberkapo and hang three more people, including a small, angelic-looking thirteen-year-old. Elie is incensed by the fact that the boy is so undersized that he takes over half an hour to die of strangulation. A prisoner demands to know where God is; to himself, Elie replies, "He is hanging here on this gallows."