In this chap­ter of “Moth­er Night,” the nar­ra­tive intro­duces Andor Gut­man, a guard who relieves Arnold Marx at noon, both being around the same age of forty-eight. Gut­man, an Eston­ian Jew, has a haunt­ing his­to­ry tied to the Auschwitz exter­mi­na­tion camp, where he nar­row­ly avoid­ed death after being assigned to the Son­derkom­man­do, a group respon­si­ble for lead­ing con­demned pris­on­ers to gas cham­bers and remov­ing their bod­ies after­ward. How­ev­er, when the order came from Himm­ler to shut down the ovens, his fate changed.

The term “Son­derkom­man­do,” which trans­lates to “spe­cial detail,” evokes the grim real­i­ty of camp life. Par­tic­i­pants in this unit faced an inescapable fate—their exe­cu­tion fol­low­ing their ser­vice. Despite the hor­ror, Gut­man reveals that some men vol­un­teered for this role, prompt­ing reflec­tion on the moti­va­tions behind such a deci­sion. When asked about the rea­son­ing behind these vol­un­teers, Gut­man admits that under­stand­ing that ‘why’ would require a great book, one he would will­ing­ly pay for to read. Despite hav­ing been one of those who vol­un­teered, he finds him­self unable to guess the rea­son.

Gut­man shares unset­tling mem­o­ries of life in Auschwitz, char­ac­ter­ized by an over­whelm­ing pres­ence of loud­speak­ers that dis­sem­i­nat­ed both music and announce­ments through­out the camp. He recalls that, although the music was reput­ed to be of good qual­i­ty, there was a notable absence of Jew­ish com­po­si­tions, as they were pro­hib­it­ed. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of melody and announce­ments cre­ates a chill­ing atmos­phere, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the announce­ments includ­ed a recur­ring call for the Son­derkom­man­do: “Leichen­träger zu Wache” (Corpse-car­ri­ers to the guard­house), under­scor­ing the grim real­i­ty of their exis­tence.

Despite ini­tial­ly per­ceiv­ing the corpse-car­ri­er posi­tion as desir­able amid the sys­tem­at­ic hor­rors, Gut­man ulti­mate­ly reflects on this choice with shame and dis­com­fort, sug­gest­ing a deep inter­nal con­flict regard­ing sur­vival at the expense of oth­ers. His acknowl­edg­ment of shame sur­round­ing his past actions empha­sizes the com­plex moral land­scape faced by indi­vid­u­als in the camp, lead­ing him to express a desire to nev­er dis­cuss the sub­ject again. The chap­ter cap­tures the haunt­ing rec­ol­lec­tions of Gul­man, expos­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal scars left by his expe­ri­ences dur­ing this dark time.