Chapter 5

Chapter 5 starts out at the end of the summer of 1944 and jewish holidays are coming closer and closer. Eliezer keeps on having faith issues and rebels a lot more. He constantly asks God how the jews can be the "chosen people" when they are getting massacred more and more each day. He even decides to eat on Yom Kippur, a day that jews traditionally fast. There is then another selection made....Eliezer was chosen to go to the building unit, but his father was deemed unfit to work. He is scheduled to be executed. His father gives him his spoon and knife, his only inheritance items. 

Eliezer came back from work and learns that there was another selection between the weak and those who were unfit to work. His father made this selection and was a surviver. Eliezer was reunited with his father. Many others start to lose faith in God and become depressed and angry. Then winter came around and the cold was unbearable. Eliezer's foot suddenly swells up and he has an operation in the infirmary. He was in the hospital recovering when there was news of the Russians were advancing towards Buna. Thinking that the people in the hospital were going to be executed, Eliezer and his father go with the Germans moving the prisoners to a new location. They later learned that this was the wrong decision and that those in the hospital were freed by the Russians.