Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel struggles to fight through the concentration camp he must deal with many unfriendly encounters. “I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…” (pg. 54). Elie wrestles with the idea of how to respond and even if he should react he debates that if he does respond then he will get beat, but if he does not respond then he must watch his father be beat so he thinks to himself what would be more painful? By the end of the beating it is kind of ironic how Eliezer is more

Dehumanization is the torture that the Jews receive and the pity they do not. It is found everywhere in the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, but also in the whole thinking process and execution of the Holocaust. The population of Jews is abruptly being reduced because of some unnecessary hatred towards them. Elie is surrounded by death, hunger, and suffering, and all he comes to know is pain. To demean a whole race and create another period of slavery leaves an aftertaste of abhorrence and loathing that Jewish people still feel today, but it also leaves a trail of shame for all to endure. Dehumanization leads many people too their downfall, loss of faith, and realizing theirs and others true human nature.

Dehumanization is understood as the process of humans being deprived of what makes them human, but the Nazis took it a step further to encourage mistreatment between the prisoners . The Holocaust is a ghastly event in the history of the world, that killed around 6 million Jewish people, but the horrors don’t stop there. The way the prisoners were treated in the concentration camps left lasting effects on the survivors. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he recounts the horrific actions of the Nazi party against the Jewish people . The lasting effects of dehumanization do not take long to show, and the effects are only worsened through the numerous reminders from the Nazis that they aren’t worth anything.

Dehumanization is a concept that basically means that you’ve become so traumatized that your personality completely changes and you are a different person from before, because of the events that you have gone through, The holocaust was a war during World War II, when hitler opened up concentration camps and forced Jews to go, only to be murdered soon after. The reason we are talking about dehumanization, is because the Elie Wiesel went through this during the Holocaust, he lost his father, mother, and close friends to this event. It put him through a mindset that change his look on life and changed his thought on his own religion. Believing that his God may not be there all along.

​ Unimaginable. Unbearable. Unsaintly. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel depicts the treacherous story of Elie and his father's daily obstacles in the 1940's. But this isn't any type of story, it is of the reoccurring nightmares in the various concentration camps that were constructed in the time period well known as the Holocaust. In the beginning of the story, the act of dehumanization caused Elie to lose many things like his belief in God, compassion and remorse towards others and comfort.

As a whole, acts of inhumanity seem to be a common theme throughout the different internment camps that Elie Wiesel and his father Shlomo were detained in during World War II. Within his memoir “Night”, Elie even wrote about acts of inhumanity that occurred prior to their arrival at Birkenau (the first concentration camp they were imprisoned in). For example, on page twenty- five when the Jews are in the cattle cars on the way to their tragic fate and Madame Schachter was madly shouting, Elie wrote, “Our terror could no longer be contained. Our nerves were reaching a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound and gagged her.”

Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, is a very vivid description of his time during the Holocaust. He paints a colorful picture of how his family and families like his were broken apart and murdered by Nazis. He recalls how he was placed in numerous concentration camps with no idea what his fate would be, which in turn changed him. In my opinion, Night is a chronological account of how Wiesel was slowly dehumanized and how he witnessed the dehumanization of the people around him.

During the Holocaust, approximately six million non-Aryans, especially Jews, perished under the rule of the Nazis. Prisoners were frequently beaten, starved, and treated as if they were animals. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he recollects the traumatizing experiences he and his fellow prisoners

Subsequently, after Elie spent a couple weeks in Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp made by the Germans to liberate the Jewish People, new characteristic that Elie didn’t realize he had come out. In the book “Night”, on page 57 Wiesel wrote “I stepped forward. "A crate!" he ordered. They brought a crate. "Lie down on it! On your belly" I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip.”. While he was at work, the Kommandos came and called roll call, made a short speech, called Elie to come forward, then they beat him. In this scene, we can see that Elie starts to become more afraid of the SS officers and anxious to get the beating over with. Also, in the book “Night”, on page 65 Wiesel adds

Up to six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust due to Hitler’s anti-semitic views. Out of the ashes of these tragic events, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born. These rights were created to ensure that something as devastating as Hitlerś Holocaust would never happen again. Eliezer Wiesel, author of the memoir Night was a Jew and experienced the horrors of this time period resulting in him losing his whole entire family. Night is dedicated to Eliezer Wiesel recounting his experiences of being a Jew during the Holocaust. Due to the dehumanization of Jews during the Holocaust, many rights were violated such as: freedom of religion, the right to equality, and no one should be subjected to inhuman treatment.

Night by Elie Wiesel is a book in which has changed my perspective on the Holocaust. In previous years, I have never pondered the true events that took place. This book changed my point of view. Elie Wiesel composed a piece of literature that has reached people across the world. He used the three themes of dehumanization, complacency, and anonymity to portray his story and his struggles during his childhood. The way that he simply states the magnitude of all that happened is truly touching. He saw people beaten, hung, burned alive, and we saw the true effect of what can happen whenever you are surrounded by hatred. People over the years have taken Elie’s piece of work and based their own off of it. In the song, “Peel This Away”, Freddie Feldman and Gaskit address the true, horrendous crimes of these people. “The Unforgiven” by Metallica is another example of taking Elie’s life and putting another spin on it. Lastly, Jimi Hendrix addresses the hard truth of the Holocaust with his song “The Wind Cries Mary.” These artists took something from this book in a way that we all should.

The author of Night, a novel documenting the horrible and gruesome events of the holocaust, Elie Wiesel expresses his experiences and observations in which he and his fellow Jews were dehumanized while living in concentration camps (a hell on earth). All Jews, as a race were brutalized by the Nazis during this time; reducing them to no less than objects, positions which meant nothing to them, belongings that were a nuisance. Nazis would gather every Jew that they could find and bring them to these infernos, separating the men and women. Families, not knowing it would never see each other again. Individuals within the categories were divided even more, based on their health, strength, and age. They would be judged by a Nazi officer, which would then decide their fate, if they would have the opportunity to live or if they would be sentenced strait to execution. In these camps, babies became target practice, being tossed in the air like an object with no significant value and shot at with no remorse. The more mature could be sentenced to execution, tossed into pits of fire while fully conscious burning them alive. In addition, the ones who passed inspection received treatment as if they were slaves and dogs, making them follow any command, any disobeying of these demands would consequence them to be shot without hesitation. These dehumanizing crimes were the punishments forced on the Jewish race by the Nazi influence, turning Jewish nationality into a nuisance against what they

In order to understand how prisoners go along with other prisoners, it is important to first understand the conditions they faced everyday. This poor treatment begins, for Wiesel, when German officers raid his hometown of Sighet. He writes about being deported to the camps, “Crammed into cattle trains by Hungarian police, they wept bitterly…. It left nothing behind but its thick, dirty smoke” (3). This is one of the first examples of the how Jews are treated like animals and not given what they need to survive. Once they arrive at camp, the coarse conditions continue, and families are split. Wiesel describes what he heard, “ Men to the left! Women to the right!” (27) For many people, separating from their family causes them to immediately lose their will to live. On the contrary, some people fight even harder to survive for their family. One example of this is Elie Wiesel. If it were not for his father he would have a much less desire to survive. At this first selection, guards are walking through prisoners, yelling

Elie Wiesel was a man that always had a way with using language to paint a picture. Whether he were writing to stay sane or to write so people remember what happened to him. He was apart of one of the most horrific events in history, the Holocaust. Throughout the book Elie witnessed traumatizing hangings and babies being scorched, as well as families being torn apart, all while he was still fifteen. Throughout the biography Night, Elie and other Jews were treated as if they were inhumane, Elie questions God, and they were all in fear of these camps and the people there, which eventually led to the dehumanization of Elie along with other Jews.

6 million dead and millions more affected; left to pick up what pieces of their lives remained, and try to come to peace with the events that occurred. These statistics are that of one of the most horrific events in the twentieth century, the Holocaust; where 6 million Jews were captured, tortured, and slaughtered like animals. 3 million remained, left to rebuild what had been destroyed. In, 1948, the world united to create the UDHR; a list of human rights for every living person on the Earth. One man, Elie Wiesel, recounts of how suddenly the Jews were stripped of these rights in his autobiography Night. In the novel Night, it is clear how the Jews’ human rights were severely violated, leading to extreme repercussions.