In the chap­ter titled “Leather Straps” from “Moth­er Night,” we are intro­duced to Bernard Men­gel, a Pol­ish Jew and a late-night prison guard who shares a unique bond with the nar­ra­tor, reflect­ing on their expe­ri­ences dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Men­gel saves his life by feign­ing death, allow­ing a Ger­man sol­dier to extract three gold inlays from his teeth with­out real­iz­ing he was still alive. This act of sur­vival under­scores the har­row­ing choice many faced in the war.

As they con­verse, Men­gel remarks on the nar­ra­tor’s trou­bled sleep, sug­gest­ing that his rest­less nights hint at a guilty con­science for actions tak­en dur­ing the war—a stark con­trast to those like Rudolf Franz Hoess, the Auschwitz com­man­dant who met a grue­some end via hang­ing. Men­gel, who helped exe­cute Hoess, recounts that his own emo­tion­al detach­ment devel­oped as a result of the war. He believes he is a prod­uct of the atroc­i­ties around him, unable to feel any­thing pro­found about even the most sig­nif­i­cant acts of vio­lence.

Men­gel’s descrip­tion of hang­ing Hoess reveals his mor­tal­i­ty: he tight­ened the straps around Hoess’s ankles, but felt no per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion from this act of vengeance or jus­tice. Instead, he views it as just anoth­er job, which par­al­lels the mun­dane act of strap­ping his bro­ken suit­case. This com­par­i­son lays bare the emo­tion­al numb­ness that war can impose, where life and death become equal tasks devoid of mean­ing or emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, Men­gel high­lights the pre­vail­ing notion that peo­ple jus­ti­fy their actions dur­ing crises, with sol­diers believ­ing they could­n’t have act­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. The chap­ter invites the read­er to con­tem­plate themes of guilt, moral­i­ty, and the human con­di­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of pro­found tragedy and con­flict. Through Men­gel’s per­spec­tive, we see the com­plex­i­ty of guilt and the lengths indi­vid­u­als go to ratio­nal­ize their expe­ri­ences dur­ing wartime.