"But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!" Chapter 8, pg. 106

"After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more." Chapter 9, pg. 107

"From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me." Chapter 9, pg. 109

As Elie's father cries out for water, an officer gives him a severe blow to his head. On January 28th, 1945, Elie sees his father for the last time: "his blood-stained face, his shattered skull."

"I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more."

"'Don't shout, son. Take pity on your old father.Leave me to rest here. Just for a bit, I'm so tiredat the end of my strength' He had become like a child, weak, timid, vulnerable."

Eliezer’s father has dysentery, which makes him very thirsty, but it is extremely dangerous to give water to a man with dysentery. Eliezer tries to find medical help for his father but the doctors will not treat the old man. The prisoners near Eliezer’s father’s bed steal his food and beat him. Eliezer, unable to resist his father’s cries for help, gives him water. After a week, Eliezer is approached by the head of the block, who tells him what he already knows—that his father is dying, and that Eliezer should concentrate his energy on his own survival. The next time the SS patrol the barracks, Eliezer’s father again cries for water, and the SS officer, screaming at Eliezer’s father to shut up, hits him in the head. The next morning, Eliezer wakes up to find that his father has been taken to the crematorium. To his deep shame, he does not cry and instead, he feels relief.

Eliezer remains in Buchenwald, thinking neither of liberation nor of his family, but only of food. That’s all that matters now. With the American army approaching, the Nazis decide to exterminate all the Jews left in the camp. Daily, thousands of Jews are murdered. On April 10, with about 20,000 people remaining in the camp, the Nazis decide to evacuate, and kill, everyone left in the camp. As the evacuation begins, however, an air-raid siren sounds, sending everybody indoors. When it seems that all has returned to normal and that the evacuation will proceed as planned, the ‘enemy’ (not so much for Eliezer) strikes, driving the SS from the camp. Hours later, the American army arrives. Now free, the prisoners think only of feeding themselves. Eliezer is struck with food poisoning and spends weeks in the hospital close to death. When he finally raises himself and looks in the mirror (he has not seen himself in a mirror since leaving Sighet) he is shocked: “From the depths of the mirror,” Wiesel writes, “a corpse gazed back at me.”

Night does not end with optimism and an inspiring,happy message, but neither does it end as bleakly as many believe. What we are left with are questions—about God’s and man’s capacity for evil—but no true answers. Night does not try to answer these questions; perhaps this lack of answers is one of the reasons that the story ends with the liberation of Buchenwald. The moral responsibility for remembering the Holocaust, and for confronting these difficult questions, falls directly upon us, the readers.