Third Delivery

1. Why were the prisoners tatooed or marked on their forearms? Does this action have a religious implication or not? Why?
The numbered tattoos that Jewish prisoners have today become an identifying mark of Holocaust survivors originated in Auschwitz. After their heads were shaved and their personal possessions removed, the prisoners were officially registered. Beginning in 1941, this registration consisted of a tattoo, which was placed on the left breast of the prisoner; later, the tattoo location was moved to the inner forearm. This action did not have any religious implication. These tattoos were just one of the ways in which the Nazis dehumanized their prisoners.

2. Who were the kapos? Why did their fellowmen fear these leaders?
The Kapos were trustee inmates who supervised the prisoners and carried out the will of the Nazi camp commandants and guards in the German concentration camps. Some of these Kapos were Jewish. Their fellowmen feared them because they were as brutal as as their SS counterparts and they inflicted harsh treatment on their fellow prisoners. They did this duty because they were threatened to be punished or killed if they didn't do so.

3. Mention three characters who influenced Elie in the camp.

1. Juliek
2. Elie's father
3. Yosi and Tobi

4. S.O.S.
When they arrived to Buna, Eliezer is ordered by the Kapo to serve in a unit of prisoners whose job is counting electrical fittings in a civilian warehouse. Elie and his father are sent to live in a block inhabited by musicians. Here, Elie meets Juliek, a violinist, and his two brothers called Yosi and Tobi. Elie and Juliek's brothers (who are Zionists) start planning to move to Palestine when the war finishes. In Buna, people who have gold crowns in the teeth are called by a dentist who takes the gold crowns out from the prisoners' teeth. As Elie had a gold crown, he is called by the dentist, but he pretends to be ill and his operation is postponed. Later, it is known that the dentist have been hung for trading the gold. Eliezer's kapo, who was called Idek, was a mad man and one day he hits violently Elie without any reason. Due to the state in which Elie finishes after this violent treatment, a kind French girl helps Elie. Then, Elie tells the readers, that years later, he found this girl (already a grown woman) in France and that she told him that she wasn't a prisoner but a laborer and that she was a Jew pretending to be an Aryan.
Another day, Idek had another attack of craziness, and he attacks his father. Elie didn't get angry with Idek but he did with his father for not having done anything at Idek's attack. Elie tells the reader that at that moment he only cared for him and for his survival.
One day, the prison guard called Franek, found Elie's gold crown and he asks for it. Elie refuses to give it because his father advised it and because of that, Franek beats Elie's father for having told him that until Elie agreed to give it to him. Another day, Elie caught Idek having sex with a Polish girl, so he beats Elie in front of everybody until he falls unconscious.
One day, there was and Allied air raid on Buna, and all the prisoners were sent to their respectively block. Two cauldrons of soup were left without supervancy during this attack, and everybody saw how a man went to these cauldrons and when he stood up to eat soup, he was shot and killed. Days later, the Nazis hung in the public square a man who wanted to steal something during this air attack. They also hung two men and a boy who were part of a resistance. After this, almost everybody began wondering where was God and if he really existed.
I think that in this point of the story, the desperation of people has increased so much as well as the cruelty against them, that they don't have faith anymore. These Jews that believed in God begin wondering if he's real because a good God wouldn't allow his people to suffer that much. The story has reached a point in which the Jews are already being extermined.