Quote 70
I soon forgot him. I began to think of myself again. My foot was aching, I shivered with every step. Just a few more meters and it will be over. I’ll fall. A small red flame … A shot … Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue, nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road … (6.17)
Eliezer’s body is in so much pain that death begins to sound appealing as an escape from suffering.
Quote 71
We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn’t freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death. My head was reeling. I was walking through a cemetery. Among the stiffened corpses, there were logs of wood. Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence. Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.
I saw myself in every stiffened corpse. Soon I wouldn’t even be seeing them anymore; I would be one of them. A matter of hours. (6.37-38)
Eliezer is literally surrounded by death and realizes his own mortality thoroughly.
Quote 72
"Don’t worry, son. Go to sleep. I’ll watch over you."
"You first, Father. Sleep."
He refused. I stretched out and tried to sleep, to doze a little, but in vain. God knows what I would have given to be able to sleep a few moments. Bet deep inside, I knew that to sleep meant to die. And something in me rebelled against that death. Death, which was settling in all around me, silently, gently. It would seize upon a sleeping person, steal into him and devour him bit by bit. Next to me, someone was trying to awaken his neighbor, his brother, perhaps, or his comrade. In vain. Defeated, he lay down too, next to the corpse, and also fell asleep. Who would wake him up? Reaching out with my arm, I touched him:
"Wake up. One mustn’t fall asleep here …"
He half opened his eyes.
"No advice," he said, his voice a whisper. "I’m exhausted. Mind your business, leave me alone."
My father too was gently dozing. I couldn’t see his eyes. His cap was covering his face.
"Wake up," I whispered in his ear.
He awoke with a start. He sat up, bewildered, stunned, like an orphan. He looked al around him, talking it all in as if he had suddenly decided to make an inventory of his universe, to determine where he was and how and why he was there. Then he smiled.
I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from?
Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses. (6.43-53)
In the concentration camp, there is more than one kind of death: there are the violent deaths in the flames of the crematorium, but also the silent deaths, giving in to cold, bodily weakness, and sleep. Eliezer and his father, like his neighbors, are in serious danger of giving in to peaceful sleep and never waking up.