Quote 58
My father’s view was that it was not all bleak, or perhaps he just did not want to discourage the others, to throw salt on their wounds:
"The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal …"
(Poor Father! Of what then did you die?) (1.73-75)
People’s racial identity becomes their death (or the marker of death), as symbolized by the yellow star.
Quote 59
Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb. (1.137)
Wiesel describes the emptying of the Jewish ghetto in language descriptive of death—which is what it was, literally.
Quote 60
In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been about midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau. (2.63)
Eliezer is welcomed to Birkenau by an overwhelming sense of death; the smell of death is literally in the air and the flames before his eyes. To enter Birkenau is to understand that you will likely die.