Chapter nine starts when they are on a journey to Buchenwald. Eliezer’s father is weak from all the running and walking so he takes a seat. When they arrive, he sits in the snow and refuses to move. Eliezer tries to encourage him to move about but he will not. Eliezer leaves his father and falls asleep in the barracks. The next morning he searches for his father. Eliezer thinks he should leave his father behind because it would give him strength. Eliezer was caught with food poisoning and spends a couple weeks in the hospital.

During the blizzard in Buna the prisoners were evacuated and anyone who ran was shot. A boy running next to Eliezer thinks he can run. He gets shot by the SS. Zalman. After running all night and covering more than forty-two miles, the prisoners uncover themselves in an isolated town.

At the end of summer in 1944, Rosh Hashanah came and the Jews celebrated and didn’t let the Germans stop them. Eliezer and 10,000 Jewish celebrants in Buna were punished for the celebration they had. Eliezer finds his father, and there is a moment of communion and understanding between them. Searching his father’s face, Eliezer finds only despair. Eliezer decides to eat on Yom Kippur, the day on which Jews traditionally fast in order to atone for their sins.

Eliezer is chosen by a Kapo to serve in a place with prisoners whose job is counting electrical wires in a warehouse. His father works in the same unit as Eliezer does. Eliezer and his father are living in a house ran by a kind German Jew. Eliezer meets Juliek because he lives in the same house and he plays the violin.

Not long after Eliezer and his father arrive in Buna, Eliezer has to go to the dentist to have his gold crown pulled. He faked being sick so he could delay the appointment with the dentist. Later the dentist is accused of stealing a gold crown so he is hung to death.

Eliezer and his dad are still together but they are no longer with his mother and younger sister. While Eliezer and his dad are waiting they can here screaming in the background. They can’t stand listening to the irony so they go away from the room where they heard the screaming.

As the Eliezer and his dad walk to Birkenau with a couple of prisoners, they see a huge pile of babies that where burnt and tortured. Eliezer and his father break down and they don’t know what to do about the situation. The next day the Jews were stripped of their clothes and had to shave their heads. Then a Nazi officer came out and said you can either wok or you will be killed.

The second chapter starts out with the Jews being tortured a lot. They sat them in cars and took them to a place with no air to breathe. They also didn’t feed them or give them anything to drink. After a couple of days of traveling, the train arrives at the Czechoslovakian area. A German officer takes official accusation of the train frightening to shoot anyone who refused to listen to them or tries to escape.
Madame Schachter was a woman on the train with her ten year old son. Soon one of the officers trakes her into a fiery room. The Jewish prisoners on the train find out that they have arrived at Auschwitz station when the train stops.

The setting of the novel is in 1941 in a Transylvanian town. Eliezer is a twelve-year-old boy who is telling the story. He is an only son in the Jewish family that strictly follows to the Jewish tradition and law. Eliezer has two sisters named Hilda, Bea, and Tzipora.

Both of his parents are shopkeepers of different supplies. Eliezer studies the Talmud or also known as the Jewish oral law. He also studies the Jewish mystical texts of the Cabbala. In 1944 the Hungarian government cascaded into the arms of the Fascists. The next day the German armies occupy Hungary.