Chap­ter 4 intro­duces Bernard Men­gel, a Pol­ish Jew and a late-night prison guard, who forms an unex­pect­ed con­nec­tion with the nar­ra­tor. This meet­ing leads to the recount­ing of a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence where Men­gel man­aged to save his life by pre­tend­ing to be dead. A Ger­man sol­dier, unaware of his sur­vival, extract­ed three gold inlays from his teeth, mark­ing a chill­ing moment in his life and under­lin­ing the des­per­ate lengths that indi­vid­u­als were forced to go to sur­vive the bru­tal­i­ty of war. The com­plex­i­ty of this event lies in its reflec­tion of the bru­tal­i­ty of wartime sur­vival, where even the small­est act of decep­tion could be the dif­fer­ence between life and death. Men­gel’s expe­ri­ence show­cas­es the extremes to which peo­ple had to go in order to pre­serve them­selves, high­light­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing and des­per­ate nature of sur­vival with­in the con­cen­tra­tion camps. His actions reveal the harsh truths of sur­vival in such a volatile envi­ron­ment, where moral choic­es were often sec­ondary to the pri­mal need for life.

As the con­ver­sa­tion pro­gress­es, Men­gel observes the narrator’s trou­bled sleep, sug­gest­ing that the rest­less nights are indica­tive of a guilty con­science, con­trast­ing the narrator’s inter­nal strug­gle with the detach­ment of fig­ures like Rudolf Franz Hoess. Men­gel explains that after his involve­ment in exe­cut­ing Hoess, he expe­ri­enced a deep emo­tion­al detach­ment, a cop­ing mech­a­nism forged by the harsh real­i­ties of the Holo­caust. He describes his inabil­i­ty to emo­tion­al­ly process his actions, empha­siz­ing how the bru­tal­i­ty of the war numbed him to the grav­i­ty of vio­lence, ren­der­ing him inca­pable of feel­ing remorse. In this con­text, Men­gel’s reflec­tions reveal how indi­vid­u­als like him, shaped by the unfor­giv­ing nature of war, became desen­si­tized to death, with each act of vio­lence becom­ing more rou­tine than extra­or­di­nary. His expe­ri­ence presents a chill­ing per­spec­tive on how peo­ple, when faced with the hor­rors of war, can bury their emo­tion­al respons­es to sur­vive, allow­ing them to func­tion in a world devoid of moral clar­i­ty. This detach­ment not only high­lights the per­son­al con­se­quences of par­tic­i­pat­ing in such atroc­i­ties but also under­lines the moral ambi­gu­i­ty that war forces upon those involved in it.

Men­gel con­tin­ues to reflect on his role in the exe­cu­tion of Hoess, recount­ing the moment when he tight­ened the leather straps around Hoess’s ankles with no sense of sat­is­fac­tion or cathar­sis. He com­pares this act of vio­lence to the mun­dane task of strap­ping his bro­ken suit­case, under­scor­ing the emo­tion­al numb­ness that devel­oped in him as a result of the war. This anal­o­gy empha­sizes how deeply the hor­rors of war can strip indi­vid­u­als of any emo­tion­al response to the vio­lence they per­pe­trate. What would be seen by many as a moment of jus­tice or vengeance for the vic­tims of Auschwitz becomes, for Men­gel, just anoth­er task to be done, devoid of mean­ing or ful­fill­ment. The image of strap­ping a suit­case, some­thing so rou­tine, in com­par­i­son to the act of end­ing a life, reveals the dev­as­tat­ing impact that war has on an individual’s abil­i­ty to feel any­thing pro­found about human life and death. Mengel’s detached reflec­tion reveals the chill­ing trans­for­ma­tion of his psy­che, where sur­vival at any cost becomes the pri­ma­ry goal, and the emo­tion­al toll of his actions is too over­whelm­ing to con­front.

The chap­ter ends with Men­gel reflect­ing on how peo­ple jus­ti­fy their actions dur­ing times of cri­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sol­diers who believed they had no choice but to fol­low orders. He points out that many felt as though they couldn’t have act­ed any dif­fer­ent­ly, ratio­nal­iz­ing their involve­ment in atroc­i­ties as part of the larg­er con­text of war. This ratio­nal­iza­tion is a cen­tral theme in the chap­ter, as Men­gel, him­self, strug­gles to come to terms with his actions and the moral com­pro­mis­es made for the sake of sur­vival. This moment of self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion high­lights the com­plex­i­ties of guilt, moral­i­ty, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of war. The nar­ra­tor, through Men­gel’s account, exam­ines how peo­ple in extreme cir­cum­stances often ratio­nal­ize their choic­es in order to cope with the emo­tion­al and moral reper­cus­sions of their actions. The explo­ration of these jus­ti­fi­ca­tions chal­lenges read­ers to ques­tion how eas­i­ly one can become com­plic­it in the face of fear and sur­vival instincts, and the lengths to which peo­ple go to pre­serve their sense of self dur­ing a time of unimag­in­able suf­fer­ing. The chap­ter leaves the read­er to pon­der the com­plex­i­ties of guilt, moral ambi­gu­i­ty, and the con­se­quences of mak­ing deci­sions in a world shaped by war and vio­lence.