Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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.

Despite seeing many other hangings while in the camp, Wiesel notes that the death of the young boy was the only time any of the prisoners wept (Night, pg. 63). Throughout the book, it is seen that victims of the Holocaust were starved, overworked, beaten, and faced with death on a daily basis, yet many remained emotionless. In Wiesel's words, “These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears,” (Night, pg. 63) The prisoners had distanced themselves from emotions in order to survive the unfathomable conditions they lived in. Many became so unfeeling that they could watch thousands die daily without showing any signs of grief of sorrow. However, when the inmates witnessed the hanging of an innocent child, they were not able to deny their sadness any longer. They were left heartbroken and in tears. Although entire towns were murdered daily in the gas chambers, watching a child die at such close proximity was too much for the prisoners to handle, and their emotional distress could not be controlled. Their reaction marks a turning point in which they finally realized the severity of the horrors around them, as they could no longer mask their feelings. When Wiesel says “That night, the soup tasted of corpses,” he is demonstrating how the hanging caused him to feel the presence of death no matter where he was (Night, pg. 65). The daily ration

In his memoir “Night”, Elie Wiesel gives his account of events that took place during the holocaust. Historical records confirm that the holocaust was an undesirable experience for the victims who had to go through physical torture. In his memoir, Wiesel gives gruesome accounts of the different threats prisoners faced at the Nazi concentration camp. Clearly, the psychological threats seemed to wear the prisoners down more than the physical ones, nevertheless, the prisoners adopted physical unresponsiveness and emotional numbness to protect themselves from both threats, however, Wiesel carefully selected the two execution scenes to strengthen the pathos of his memoir, and to show that sometimes even emotional numbness fails to shield one from

Wiesel uses specific details to help readers understand the physiological transformation of the victims of the Holocaust. When Wiesel reaches the concentration camp, he cannot believe what he sees. He wonders “how it was possible that men, women, and children were being burned and the world kept silent” (32). Wiesel is stunned when he sees both, the old and the young, being burned. He can not believe that humans are capable of doing such things to other humans. He “pinches himself” to confirm if

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

In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel depicts the steady escalation of dehumanization to which the Nazis subjected the Jews during the Holocaust and how it helped the Nazis crush the Jews’ spirits and justify their persecution and eventual genocide. Before the arrival of German soldiers, Wiesel and the other Jews of Sighet live in relative harmony with their Christian neighbors. But once the Nazis arrive, they steadily remove the Jews’ human rights until their fellow citizens no longer view them as human anymore. Thus, there is little action taken by the non-Jewish residents of Sighet when the persecutions and deportations begin. Additionally, the gradual pace of the dehumanization managed to convince the Jews that nothing significant was happening and that this was just a temporary phase that would soon pass. This could not be further from the truth. Once the Nazis finally issue the order to deport the Jews of Sighet, Wiesel notices that his neighbors’ spirits have been completely crushed: “There they went, defeated, their bundles, their lives in tow, having left behind their homes, their childhood. They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me” (Wiesel 17). Wiesel describes his fellow Jews as downtrodden and defeated since they are now completely subject to the Nazi officers. The Nazis have stripped their rights, driven them from their homes, and treated them like animals. Being called and treated like animals, specifically

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

A Crime Against Humanity “One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live” (Wiesel 109). In Eliezer Wiesel's memoir Night, Wiesel goes through a life changing experience in which he loses his faith in humanity. Wiesel experiences all the stages of genocide throughout his teen years. Although Wiesel does not use the word “genocide”, his account of his experience shows that it was definitely genocide that he witnessed.

During this time, the people of Germany were trained to believe that there are other human beings that were of lesser quality than them. People like Adolf Hitler, wanted all the Jews eradicated. He was able to convince enough people that Jewish people are to blame for Germany’s loss of World War I. Hitler enlisted the help of men from Germany to help persecute all the Jewish people. The Jews got treated like their life was worthless and insignificant compared to the Christian Germans. The discrimination done to the Jewish people was more than just simple acts of violence. The Germans truly believed that the Jews deserved this punishment. The dehumanization done during the Holocaust affected the life of many people. One life in particular is Eliezer Wiesel. In his frightening novel Night, Eliezer Wiesel shows how the Nazis degraded millions of innocent people. He shares his experiences in a Jewish death camp called, Auschwitz. In this best selling novel he tells how he was demoralized into something that was less than human. He did not even recognize himself by the end of his journey. “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy… Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must-- at that moment-- become the center of the universe” (Nobel Peace Prize). Through his book and his participation in the Jewish community he wants to ensure that

"There may be times where we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest" said Elie Wiesel. Dehumanization played a large role in the holocaust. They labeled, did experiments, and tortured millions of people. The nazis made them less than human and it made all of what they did easier. Not only was dehumanization apart of the holocaust, it became apart of society today.

The Holocaust revealed the extreme evil in human nature on both a grand and small scale. Hitler, a strong supporter of antisemitism, had an agenda to create a dominant Aryan race and would stop at nothing to diminish the Jewish population. This meant forcing innocent Jewish people into death and labor camps, where conditions were brutal and treatment was atrociously inhumane. Overtime, this grand scale oppression sparked anger and violence within the victims. Instead of supporting one another in times of trouble, they began to commit senseless acts of violence towards one another in response to the cruelty they faced. Survival became their highest value, at any cost. Elie Wiesel witnesses this first hand on many accounts and spends his life striving to educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust. In his Holocaust memoir, Night, he uses the motifs: night, silence, and flames, to develop the idea that evil is part of human nature.

Wiesel interprets the things that he and his family, along with the rest of the Jews, had to endure under Hitler’s power. Hitler and his Nazi soldiers are accountable for the millions of Jews’ deaths due to the inhumanity that they illustrate. The Nazi soldiers did things such as beat, burn, and tortured the Jewish people just because they were Jewish. They forced them to travel like a herd of animals without food or water. They took away their hair, clothes, and family, without giving them a warning. Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jewish people. One example of how inhumane the Jews were treated is that they did not have names. When arriving to the concentration camps, they were given identification numbers. This took away the Jews pride. Another example of the terrible treatment Elie received is when he was beaten by a whip for a long period of time. “Twenty-four…twenty-five!” (Weisel 58). Elie was whipped twenty-five times and passed out because he had interfered in people’s affair according to a soldier. The Jews had to endure this mistreatment for several months and years and most of them did not survive due to the inhumanity of Hitler and his Nazi

There are many times one can see the Nazi’s brutalizing the Jews throughout the novel. From the moment the Nazi’s took the Jews as prisoners they were being mistreated. They were loaded into cattle cars, a vehicle made to transport animals, to the point where they were so full people could hardly breathe. They were sent to concentration camps where they were tortured and treated as slaves. As they entered the camps they were humiliated, SS officers yelled at them to “‘Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes”(Wiesel 35). They were sent to cold showers and bathed in a sulfur-scented soap to be identifiable by their scent. They received only one small ration of food a day, these people were starved. Not only were they cared for like a group of worthless animals but some were never even given a chance.

As soon as the Nazis take over the lives of Wiesel and the people surrounding him, the Nazis bereave the Jews of their possessions, starting the process of dehumanization. The infiltration of Nazi rule in the spring of 1944 causes the Jewish population of Sighet, including Wiesel, to succumb to being pushed into small ghettos, where they are packed like sardines trapped behind barbed wire fences. The exploitation of Jews in Sighet, including being forced into these ghettos, reduces these virtuous Jews to lesser citizens, over their non-Jewish counterparts. As Wiesel and his family are amongst the last ones leaving Sighet, they witness other Jews only being able to carry what merely fits into small packs that they can fit over their backs,

Wiesel states, “A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load-little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it - saw it with my own eyes...those children in the flames.” This shows dehumanization because they have to see their own people getting murdered in front of them. He also writes, “I watched other hangings. I never saw a single victim weep. These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears.” The Jewish people became so used to watching an act that nobody should have to watch that they became numb to it. This helped Hitler because it broke the Jewish people down, they knew they were quite possibly the next to die at any moment.