Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Another way the Germans dehumanized the Jews was by taking away all of their belongings. Some of these items they could live without, but they definitely did not realize how much they took them for granted. Lastly, the Jews were given numbers instead of their names. As the novel claimed, “The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). This act of taking away the Jews names and replacing them with numbers is an inhumane act which is dehumanizing towards them. People do not realize that something as simple as a name can have so much meaning until it is taken away. Therefore, the Germans stripped the Jews of everything that resembled a past life, which was dehumanizing.

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.

Dehumanization is the act of taking one’s human qualities away from them, this can be done using voice and also using actions. During the time of the Holocaust, the Nazi’s used their power to abuse and dehumanize the Jewish people. They would beat and kill them, they would yell at them and they stripped the Jews of their dignity and rights. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one recurring theme is the dehumanization of the Jews. Throughout Night by Elie Wiesel, one can see the theme of dehumanization through the way the Nazi’s treated the Jews, spoke to the Jews, and how the Jews treated one another.

Elie Wiesel uses metaphors, Rhetorical questions and personification to demonstrate that dehumanization ultimately causes negative, mental, physical changes in victims.

Greater than any war, plague, or catastrophe and it’s potential damage to human life is beyond calculation, the feeling of dehumanization is a feeling beyond description. Elie Wiesel a Jew Holocaust survivor from Sighet, Transylvania writes a memoir Night. In his memoir he writes about his own experiences in 1944 during the holocaust. Throughout this story Elie goes through lots of challenges that ultimately challenge his faith as a human. In resemblance, Jakob Blankitny a Jew from Maków Mazowiecki, Poland writes his take on his experiences in 1944 throughout the holocaust and how he and his family are treated by the Nazis and degraded as humans. In dire circumstances, these texts argue that dissolving one into a primitive with savage, animal characteristics are necessary for survival under inhumane conditions.

“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.

Twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spends much time on Jewish mysticism. His instructor, Moshe the Beadle, returns from a near-death experience and warns that Nazi aggressors will soon threaten the serenity of their lives. Even when the family and Elie were pushed to ghettos they remained calm and compliant. In spring, authorities begin shipping trainloads of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. In a cattle car, eighty villagers can hardly move and have to survive on minimal food and water.

How are Jews supposed to live normally when every human being around them, including other Jews, are fighting against them? Due to dehumanization, the survivors of the Holocaust are as lifeless as the victims psychologically. It is nearly impossible that after experiencing a traumatic event such as Holocaust to feel normal again, to feel like a human again. Throughout history and in the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it is evident that gentiles did not care about the Jewish nation. Moreover, not even the Jewish people stick together and cared for one another. Thus the Jews ceased to feel like human beings during and after the Holocaust.

At this point, the Jews are very comfortable and go so far as to recognize

Dehumanized. Tortured. Starved. Those three words are referred to how the concentration camps were like. The memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel tells the story of his memory of the concentration camps and how it all turned into a big nightmare. Sighet is a little town in Transylvania where Elie spent his childhood. As a young boy Elie was very religious. Shlomo, Elies father was as well very religious. Religion meant a lot to him, however through out the Holocaust Shlomo and Elie soon realize what really is important.

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.

Elie Wiesel once said that “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” The Nazi Party; however, impose themselves over people of Jewish race and faith through their use of dehumanization. Through the holocaust death camps, the SS belittle the Jewish people, and set them to the level of livestock animals. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Wiesel depicts of the unrivaled extent of dehumanization the holocaust prisoners are oppressed by, primarily displayed through the animalistic treatment of the prisoners throughout their time in the camp, the lack of humane nutrition provided to the prisoners, and the removal of the prisoners very identity by replacing their names with

Ideas behind Night “Anyone can cook”-Ratatouille, coincides with some of the ideas from the novel Night, written by Elie Weisel. Night was woven with the connecting ideas of: Dehumanization, Elie’s personal struggles with identity, and the authors purpose. Not one other point in history yet contains as much horror or hardship as the holocaust. As painful as some of these ideas are to communicate, ignorance would cost humanity more dehumanization.

During the 1930’s in Europe Jewish people were persecuted. As Hitler continued to rise to power, his hatred in the Jews penetrated through society.In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie discusses his experience of being a Jewish during that time period by narrating his transitions from being sent to live in the ghettos and being sent to multiple concentration camps. Through mapping these experiences he also shows the struggle of having faith in humanity and in God. In Night Elie uses different literary techniques: point of view, imagery and metaphor to display how witnessing inhumanity can cause someone to be dehumanized.

Despite all the signs, the Jews did not believe the warnings from the Germans in the book Night by author Elie Wiesel. Eliezer and family struggles through starvation, abuse, destruction of his faith in God, and dehumanization of humanity over the course of the book. What seems horrific to people now, became the normal for Jewish people. Society has not changed much over the decades. Everyone is trying to become their own kind of “normal” in multiple ways. For instance religion, and the way of life but in reality underneath we are all the same.