I found this chapter very sad and somewhat disturbing because it seems as though people are embracing death. After being run all night, some of the prisoners fall to the ground and die because of exhaustion, but there were some that slowly sank to the floor and drifted to sleep and then drifted further, knowingly, to their death. The deaths of Zalman and Juliek, in particular, stood out to me.
Zalman undressed himself, completely stripped away his prison clothing, right before falling to the ground and dying. Juliek, before dying, played Beethoven on his violin -- something that the Germans didn't allow him to do. I think their actions were, in a way, acts of liberation -- a way for them to feel free and bring back some of the humanity they'd been stripped of in the camp. It shows that they still had a sense of who they were, who they were supposed to be. It shows they had not turned into the dehumanized persons that the Nazis had tried to make them.
I agree Marisa, despite what they had gone through Zalman and Juliek faced death with strength and courage. The Germans had taken so much from them but they could not take their spirit.
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