Upon arriving at Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz, the SS immediately segregate the deportees by gender. It is a chaotic scene, and Eliezer and his father are separated from Eliezer’s mother and sisters, not realizing they will never see each other again. Clinging to his father’s arm amid the commotion, Eliezer notices an old man behind them fall to the ground, shot by an SS soldier. A prisoner asks Eliezer and his father how old they are, and angrily tells them they need to claim they are 18 and 40 years old, respectively, when questioned by the camp officials. Another prisoner violently accosts the newly-arrived deportees, telling them they have arrived at Auschwitz to be burned in the crematory.

The male deportees are marched to a square where the notorious SS doctor, Josef Mengele, selects those he considers healthy enough to be interred in the camp and those who are to be killed immediately. Eliezer is relieved when he and his father are assigned to the same group, although they don’t know if they’re bound for the prison or the crematory. The road before them leads to large, flaming pits, and a truck delivers a load of children’s bodies to be dumped into a burning ditch.