In the story, Night, the main character, Eliezer, is a Jewish boy who is put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Eliezer's relationship with his father is quite significant throughout the book as it allows them both to live through the agony and misery brought upon them and their love for each other helped them both stay alive during the torture and the anguish that the Jews were put through. Eliezer works extremely hard throughout the story to keep his father close and avoid being like the other cruel sons he saw, avoid death, and survive the Holocaust.
Three times Eliezer saw relationships between fathers and their sons go rotten. One of these accounts was when the pipel was reprimanding his father for not making his bed properly. Another time was during the forty-two mile run from Buna to Gleiwitz, Eliezer saw Rabbi Eliahou's son run faster toward the front of the line to flee from his father and leave him behind. The third terrible father-son relationship Eliezer saw was near the end when everybody was packed into the train leaving Gleiwitz they stopped in a German township and somebody on the road threw a piece of bread into the train and one son, named Meir, beat his own father to death over the piece of bread.
Throughout the book it is the relationship between Eliezer and his father that keep them alive. One instance of this is when they are running the forty-two mile run to Gleiwitz, Eliezer says that his father's presence was the only thing that has kept him alive. Another example is when they were on the train leaving Gleiwitz and the train had stop and the SS guards were clearing out all of the dead people. Eliezer's father was grabbed by an SS to be removed because he looked dead from the train and Eliezer threw himself on his father and proceeded to wake up him up by slapping him in the face, which worked. Another occasion they keep each other alive is when Eliezer woke up one night while they were still on the train and somebody was strangling him.