What did Eliezer mean when he said, "The whole year was Yom Kippur"?

In Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night," the phrase "The whole year was Yom Kippur" refers to the profound spiritual and existential crisis experienced by the Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, a time of fasting, repentance, and introspection.

By saying "the whole year was Yom Kippur," Eliezer (the protagonist, based on Wiesel himself) reflects on the constant state of suffering, fear, and moral reckoning that the prisoners endured every day in the camps. It suggests that their lives were filled with perpetual anguish and a relentless search for meaning and forgiveness, akin to the themes of introspection and repentance central to Yom Kippur.