Answer:
Elie's first impression of the camp at Buna is that it is very dead and empty. He sees prisoners and they tell him that it is not a bad of a camp as Auschwitz.
Explanation:
Elie says it looks as if an epidemic had hit.
As with any author's decision to use 1st person, her intention most likely -- in this story -- was to get her readers to go along for the ride into madness and cultivate a certain amount of sympathy for the narrator and her plight. The constant use of "I" puts readers in the narrator’s head and allows them to empathize with her.
