Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

The novel Night by Elie Wiesel tells a devastating tale of a young man in concentration camp in World War II. Concentration camps were used in World War II to dehumanize and terrorize Jews. Dehumanization is the act of depriving humans of their rights and treating them as if they were worse than animals. Humans had been fighting for so long to get equality for everyone, but then Hitler rose to power and undid the work society had done. Many examples of how World War II used dehumanization were Hitler and his actions, leaving family members behind, and the labor camps in themselves.

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.

Dehumanization is the denial of human rights. Night by Elie Wiesel depicts the events that dehumanized the Jews during the holocaust. Hitler dehumanized the Jews by stripping them of their identities, treating them like animals and making them turn on one another.

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.

Early on in the memoir, Wiesel has a very strong faith for a young boy. He states, “I was twelve. I believed profoundly” (Wiesel 1). His faith is established early on in order to make a great contrast between his faith in the beginning versus the end of the memoir. Before he is deported, Wiesel wants to study the Cabbala and become a master in Jewish mysticism. He finds a master, Moshe the Beadle, to teach him. The teaching does not last long; however, before Moshe is deported and sent to be killed. Moshe’s stories are the first glimpse of the cruelty and dehumanization that is to come later on in the memoir. Wiesel states, “Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners” (4). The Gestapo show little to no emotion when killing these deportees, which shows how they view them as inhuman. The people of Sighet do not believe Moshe’s warning, and pass him off as just wanting attention. Their faith in humanity and their God allow them to have hope, and they do not believe that any of his stories are real nor could happen to them. However, their faith is proven wrong and

“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.

The memoir Night written by Elie Wiesel's, uncovers the monstrous acts inflicted upon the Jews, by the Nazi party. Throughout The years, Jews were acquainted or witnessed death and suffering through every perspective. Some were able to survive while others met a slow painful death. In the precise memoir Night, The Nazi soldiers were unfortunately successful in exterminating Jews in large number due to their prominent tactic of death humanization. Dehumanization is by far, the worst technique of executing a human being. I gaped and cringed when analyzing the complications young Eliezer and his father had to endure and sustain. The process of dehumanization is one that unravels a mind and breaks a human being down to a pulp physically,

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.

One of Adolf Hitler’s promises was to eliminate the Jewish race. In order for this to happen, you must first see people as less than human. Once you have accomplished this task, the mass murder of millions of people becomes easy. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the multitude of times he was seen as less than human, and how this affected his life while in concentration camps. The dehumanization of the prisoners not only crushes them, it causes them to become desensitized and often see each other as less than human.

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.

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.

One example of this is when Ellie was doing his death run. Now during the end of WW2, the Nazis chose to do death runs. Death Runs are long runs in whatever weather happening. If Jews stop even for the slightest second the Jews were shot on the spot. These death runs tested the mental and physical limits of the Jews. This relates to dehumanization because the Nazis treated the Jews horrible. A quote from the text to back this up is “ Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs.” (Wiesel,85). This show how the Nazis had no care for the Jews. Which overall really makes the Jews feel

In the book Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, writes about his memories of the Holocaust. The theme dehumanization is expressed throughout the book by Wiesel’s accounts of the concentration camp. Early in the book, just after his arrival at the concentration camp, Wiesel writes, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel, 42). Wiesel explains that as soon as they gave him that number he was no longer a person but a number. From that moment on in the concentration camp, Wiesel experienced many instances of dehumanization. While being transported from Auschwitz in cargo containers, they stopped at a train station. There were people surrounding the train watching the horrors of the spectacle, “Soon, pieces of bread were falling