Overcome by trauma, Elie's grief-laden spirit lies beyond pain. Desensitized to external stimulus, he joins the six hundred inmates of the children's block and lives in suspended animation as the front draws near Buchenwald. Only the thought of food permeates his numbness. Rumors arise that the Germans plan a mass annihilation. On April 5, an organized camp resistance refuses the Germans' orders to assemble; Elie joins others in returning to the block. At the rate of thousands per day, the camp is systematically emptied of inmates. No food is distributed to the twenty thousand remaining deportees for the next five days.
An alert sounds on April 10, when the camp officials plan to discharge 20,000 prisoners and blow up the buildings. The evacuation is postponed. Inmates sustain life by eating grass and discarded potato peelings foraged from the ground. The next morning, the resistance exerts pressure on their captors. The children lie on the ground while gunfire and grenades explode above them. Fleeing SS officers abandon the camp to the rebels. At 6:00 P. M., American tanks arrive at the gates.
The prisoners, distracted from revenge by starvation, relieve their hunger with rations of bread. Some young men venture into Weimar for potatoes, clothes, and sexual comfort with local girls. Three days after liberation, Elie contracts food poisoning. After two weeks of serious illness, he recovers enough to look at himself in the mirror for the first time since he left Sighet. He is unable to forget the cadaverous face that stares back at him.
