Reporting to administration, Lale is happy to see Gita. She and Cilka have become good friends. Lale is told all tattoos today will have the letter z in front of them. He does not know what this means.

To Lale’s horror, children are among the new arrivals in Auschwitz. Baretski explains that the new arrivals are “‘the filth of Europe, even worse than you. They’re Gypsies’” (98). Thankfully for Lale and Leon, they do not have to tattoo the children.

Gita and Cilka’s work is interrupted. Cilka is then dragged off by SS soldiers. Gita is smacked and told to get back to work. Cilka is thrown into a room with a bed. Schwarzhuber, the head of Birkenau, arrives; he is described as “a man whose soul has died and whose body is waiting to catch up with it” (100). Schwarzhuber pushes Cilka over and undresses her. She is powerless against him; she “closes her eyes and gives in to the inevitable” (101). Gita is horrified. She knows nothing of her friend’s fate, only that she has been taken.

Lale now has an entire block to himself. The Nazis’ atrocity is in full swing, and “[t]hree crematoria now play their part in the planned execution of an entire people” (101).