Dehumanization In Elie Wiesel's Night

Imagine, losing the part of you that makes you unique, or being treated like you were worth absolutely nothing. Think about losing all that you hold on to: your family, friends, everything that you had. Imagine, being treated like an animal, or barely receiving enough food to live. All of these situations and more is what the Jews went through during the Holocaust. During the period of 1944 - 1945, a man by the name of Elie Wiesel was one of the millions of Jews that were experiencing the wrath of Hitler’s destruction in the form of intense labor and starvation. The novel Night written by the same man, Elie Wiesel, highlights the constant struggle they faced every single day during the war. From the first acts of throwing the Jews into

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, imagery is employed to show the dehumanization of the Jewish people by the Nazis as the Jews develop the “survival of the fittest” mentality, and as Eliezer looses the ability to express emotions. Wiesel uses imagery of the Jews’ “survival of the fittest” mentality to show the dehumanization of the Jews who are forced to endure treacherous conditions in the concentration camps. The enslaved Jews experience the worst forms of inhumane treatment. Pushed beyond their ability to deal with the oppressing starvation, cold, disease, exhaustion, and cruelty, the Jews lose their sanity and morality. Thus, Wiesel refers to the Jews as, “wild beasts of prey with animal hatred

In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, Wiesel writes about the experiences of Eliezer, his family, and fellow Jews, he explained how the Nazis gradually changes the way the Jews lived little by little. Dehumanization is the process of stripping a person of every quality that makes him human and changing them to fit their needs. Dehumanizing started when Eliezer and other Jews in his community are evacuated from their homes in Sighet. They were transported in cattle cars which related the Jews to no more than livestock. After the harsh transportation the Jews arrived at Auschwitz a concentration camp where Eliezer spent many months of his life. They were whipped, ran, and starved till some of the Jews could not take it. In Elie Wiesel book he explains how he found the stamina to survive these cruel conditions.

In “night” we see how the Jewish people are being oppressed and dehumanized in so many ways. One example is “I became A-7713. From now on, I had no other name” (PG.42). This quote shows how they were stripped of their identities and replaced it with a simple number. As if they were just a number on a sheet of paper. We see in the book how the Nazis only see the Jewish people as numbers and had no knowledge of their actual lives or their identities. They are also given such little amounts of food,

In Night a memoir by Elie Wiesel, he uses imagery, simile, and connotation to demonstrate the effects of dehumanization and what affect it has on people.

The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the

At midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. Elie and his father lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie is now against God, who remains silent. Elie and his father manage through all the pain and horrific sights and fight through it all. In the novel “Night” Elie Wiesel shows dehumanization in many occurrences throughout the book. Pg 13 “ The gestapo had threatened to shoot him if he talked.” Pg 36 “ He was weeping bitterly. I thought he was crying with joy at still being alive.” Pg. 53 “ Beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.” Elie and his family just wanted to live a normal life. They didn’t have very much money, but were happy with the state they were in. One day, SS officers showed up and took Elie and his family away. Not knowing where they were going, they were obviously scared. Once they finally got there, they realized what they were in for, and that Moishe the Beadle was right. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the rest of the Jewish prisoners by depriving them of love, safety, and physiological needs.

Throughout Night, Elie illustrates the change of the Jewish people from a unified race to self-reliant beasts who only look out for themselves and must fight for their own well-being for survival. As Elie and his father are welcomed to Auschwitz by SS guards shouting “ Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Night 29), immediately separated from their family, and having no time to acknowledge that they will never see each other again, they begin to realize this isn’t any ordinary camp. During their first night at Auschwitz they are ordered to, “Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes”(Night 35). Their clothes representing their dignity and

In the memoir, Night , by Elie Wiesel is about Elie’s experience with the Holocaust. In the many work camps he traveled, he witnessed many cases of dehumanization. The word “Dehumanization” means a group of people assert the inferiority of another group. The humans that are inferior think that race of people shouldn’t deserve of moral consideration. When the Wiesel’s arrived at Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz; Wiesel experienced his first case of dehumanization when he gets separated from his mother and his daughter. When he arrived at Auschwitz he gets tattooed a number; this is where the SS officers striped his birth name away. At Buna, Wiesel witnessed many followings because his fellow jews have committed crime. Throughout

Although Eliezer survived the bloodcurdling Holocaust, countless others succumbed to the Nazi’s inhumanity. The Nazi’s progressively reduced the Jewish people to being little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place, as the Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Germans dehumanized Eliezer, his father, and other fellow Jews for the duration of the memoir Night, which had a lasting effect on Eliezer’s identity, attitude and outlook. Wiesel displays the Nazi’s vicious actions to accentuate the way by which they dehumanize the Jewish population. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, among other horrific actions.

The Holocaust was a horrific time period when over six million Jewish people were systematically exterminated by the Nazi government. Throughout this period, the Jews were treated particularly inhumane because the Nazi viewed their ethnicities as a disease to humanity. Dehumanization is a featured theme in Elie Wiesel’s novel about the Holocaust since he demonstrated numerous examples of the severe conditions endured by the Jewish people. The nonfiction story Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on inhumanity and reveals human beings are capable of committing great atrocities and behaving cruelly, when such actions are condoned by society, peer pressure, and ethical beliefs. Elie Wiesel uses literary devices to produce a consistent theme of inhumanity.

Dehumanization played a significant role throughout Elie Wiesel's "Night". In many historic references to the Holocaust the killing of the Jews were described as "methodical and systematical"(The Jewish Outreach Institute), though this is true, these heinous crimes were made even worse by the dehumanizing and appalling treatment and conditions that the Jews were put through. Here are some examples:

Dehumanization played a big role in the holocaust the Nazis reduced the Jews from living human beings to objects and numbers. “Night” by Elie Wiesel published in 1958. In the novel “Night” is about Elie and his time in a concentration camp and how he survived the holocaust. Being separated from his mother and sisters and only left with his father.Dehumanization the process in which the Nazis reduced the Jews from people to objects and numbers.

When Elie Wiesel, author of Night was just 15 years old, he and his family were taken by cattle car to a concentration camp in Auschwitz. From there, he endured ten months of torture and dehumanization in three different work camps before being liberated. In this lesson, we will learn more about the dehumanization experienced in Night.