This chapter opens with the prisoners already forced onto a train, leaving Gleiwitz. As they travel, Wiesel tells of sons and fathers who die fighting over a piece of bread, of the cramped, foul conditions, and the hundreds that died on the journey.

Wiesel states their destination in a brief, powerful sentence: "We had arrived at Buchenwald" (98). For contemporary audiences, those words have a certain grim connotation. Buchenwald is now known to be one of the most terrible of the concentration camps, brutal and cruel in its operations.