How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
The news arrived, as always, surrounded by a halo of contradictory or suspect details: the selection in the infirmary took place this morning; the percentage was seven percent of the whole camp, thirty, fifty percent of the patients. At Birkenau, the crematorium chimney has been smoking for ten days. Room has to be made for an enormous convoy arriving from the Poznan ghetto. The young tell the young that all the old ones will be chosen. The healthy tell the healthy that only the ill will be chosen. Specialists will be excluded. German Jews will be excluded. Low Numbers will be excluded. You will be chosen. I will be excluded. (13.19)
Even though there are times when the prisoners seem to engage each other with a sense of community, the selections always demonstrate how everyone is really utterly alone in the camp. Speculation about which prisoners will be excluded from the selections give rise to tribalism, and eventually a me-versus-you mentality. This is a defense mechanism used to cope with the uncertainty and terror about the selections.
Quote #11
The ravaged Buna lies under the first snows, silent and stiff like an enormous corpse; every day the sirens of the Fliegeralarm wail; the Russians are fifty miles away. The electric power station has stopped, the methanol rectification columns no longer exist, three of the four acetylene gasometers have been blown up. Prisoners "reclaimed" from all the camps in east Poland pour into our Lager haphazardly; the minority are set to work, the majority leave immediately for Birkenau and the Chimney. The ration has been still further reduced. The Ka-Be is overflowing, the E-Häftlinge have brought scarlet fever, diphtheria and petechial typhus into the camp. (15.13)
Here's a glimpse into the camp as it starts to come under the attack of the Russian air raids. If things weren't bad enough, the prisoners are in for even more hardships as the camp starts to disintegrate before their very eyes.