- Eliezer is at Buchenwald for a couple more months, until April 11th. Eliezer says that during those months after his father died, nothing mattered to him.
- The Allies are approaching and it seems like the Germans will fulfill their promise to "liquidate" the world of Jews.
- The SS officers begin to evacuate the camp and start moving thousands of prisoners out each day. After all prisoners are removed, the camp will be blown up.
- But Eliezer and others in the camp are lucky. An underground resistance movement in the camp acts and gains control.
- At six o’clock that night, American tanks are at the door of Buchenwald.
- The first thing everybody does as free men is stuff themselves with food.
- Eliezer gets food poisoning and spends a couple of weeks recovering in the hospital, hovering between life and death.
- When he is better, Eliezer looks at himself in the mirror. He sees a corpse.
- That vision of himself has stayed with him forever.