On further questioning, he says that the dead boy is his illegitimate son, an assertion Abraham says is not true. When Saul arrives at the camp he is confronted by Abraham and realizes that during the turmoil in the woods he has lost the package. Saul disguises Braun as a member of the Sonderkommando and sneaks him into the camp. A Frenchman named Braun approaches him and convinces Saul that he is a rabbi. Saul again looks for a rabbi among the arrivals. After collecting the package, Saul deliberately falls into a line of newly arrived Hungarian Jews, who are being led into the woods for execution. She calls him by name, clasps his hand, but he withdraws. When Saul finds himself face to face with Ella, he clearly knows her. Biederman discloses the information to Abraham, who instructs Saul to head to the women’s camp, where he will pick up a smuggled package of gunpowder from a prisoner named Ella. This leads Biederman to believe that his unit will soon be gassed. Biederman walks in and is ordered to write up a list of seventy names. That night Saul is summoned to clean the dinner tables by SS-commandant Moll. Saul sneaks into the autopsy room and takes the body back to his own barrack in a sack. After searching in vain for the boy’s body, Saul confronts Miklós, who assures him that he has hidden it from the other doctors for safety. One of them pushes Saul around like a puppet and makes a mockery of Jewish dances, finally forcing him out of the room. Back at the camp, following roll call, Saul sneaks into Miklós’s office where he is caught by a group of Nazi officers. To mollify Mietek, Saul gives him the piece of jewellery. Saul is then confronted by Mietek, who realizes that he is from another unit. After an interrogation, the Renegade is executed and Saul is allowed to go back to the unit. Saul, who can’t swim, manages to bring the Renegade back to the riverbank and both are then taken to the SS-commandant of the unit. The rabbi jumps into the river to retrieve the shovel or drown himself. When the Renegade refuses yet again Saul throws the man’s shovel into the water.
Saul then threatens to alert the Oberkapo of the unit, Mietek, that the Renegade is a rabbi by reciting the Kaddish. Saul finds the Renegade, who refuses to help him. Saul then sneaks onto a truck for another Sonderkommando unit, heading to a nearby riverbank, where the ashes from the crematoria are dumped into the river.
The guards search the shack, only to find nothing. Saul hears the guards and hides the camera outside in a drain. When Saul and Katz arrive at the shack, Saul pretends to fix the front door’s lock, while Katz takes out a camera from inside the shack and starts to take pictures of the cremation. Saul in return offers his assistance in their plan and is instructed to go with a prisoner (Katz) to repair a shack he is given a piece of jewellery for use as a bribe in case he’s caught. Saul asks for another rabbi and Abraham tells him of “the Renegade,” a Greek Rabbi who has lost his faith. Biederman first wants to photograph the camp’s atrocities using a camera collected from the clothing of an earlier gassed caravan, and smuggle the pictures outside to attract attention and help. Saul overhears Sonderkommando Abraham, talk about an uprising against the SS-guards with Oberkapo Biederman (Urs Rechn). He goes to Rabbi Frankel in the crematorium, who dismisses Saul’s concern and suggests that Saul perform the burial himself. Saul goes in search of a Rabbi to perform the funeral ritual. Miklós declines, but says he can have five minutes alone with the boy tonight, before the cremation. He asks Miklós to not cut up the boy, so he can give him a proper Jewish burial. Saul steps forth and insists on carrying the body himself to the prison doctor, Miklós, a fellow Hungarian prisoner and a forced assistant to Josef Mengele. Among the dead after a gassing is a boy who is still barely alive, and Saul witnesses a Nazi physician suffocate the boy and call for an autopsy. He works stoically, seemingly having been numbed by the daily horrors. His job is to salvage valuables from the clothing of the dead, drag bodies from the gas chambers and scrub the chambers before the next group arrives to be gassed. In October 1944, Saul Ausländer works as a Sonderkommando Jewish–Hungarian prisoner in Auschwitz.