When winter finally arrives at Buna, the experience is unimaginable: conditions torturous and unmanageable in normal weather become deadly. With imagery, the story paints the chilling conditions in which the prisoners are held:

Winter had arrived. The days became short and the nights almost unbearable. From the first hours of dawn, a glacial wind lashed us like a whip. We were handed winter clothing: striped shirts that were a bit heavier. The veterans grabbed the opportunity for further sniggering:

“Now you’ll really get a taste of camp!”

We went off to work as usual, our bodies frozen. The stones were so cold that touching them, we felt that our hands would remain stuck. But we got used to that too.

Christmas and New Year’s we did not work. We were treated to a slightly less transparent soup.

In this example of imagery, nearly all of the senses are exploited, allowing the reader to understand the winter conditions with realism and sympathy. The prisoners can feel winter in the way that the wind whips their cheeks. They can see that the hours of daylight are few and far between. They feel that their clothes are a bit heavier, though not nearly enough to keep them warm. They hear the derisive comments of prisoners who know what suffering winter will bring. They feel the cold stones, so icy that the prisoners’ hands would stick. They taste the soup, perhaps a little thicker and tastier than usual during the holidays.

Moreover, there is a hint of irony when Eliezer mentions that they were “treated to a slightly less transparent soup,” demonstrating the feeble efforts of the SS guards to treat the prisoners humanely. Eliezer outlines the experience of winter with exacting imagery – any reader might shiver upon digesting this passage.