Summary

In Chapter 19, Yanek and many of the other male prisoners are transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz, which was a camp close by that needed workers. At Auschwitz, they were joined by new prisoners, who did not know what they were in for at the camps. They Nazis herded them into a single file line and Doctor Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi “doctor,” sorted them into two separate groups based on their ability to work. They old prisoners hurriedly whispered advice to the new prisoners on what to tell the Nazis about their physical health and age, though many of these new prisoners did not heed the advice. Yanek was sent with the group that will be allowed to live and work, while he watched a family be broken up by the flick of a baton, separating mother, son, and father into two divergent...