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.

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 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.

Throughout the duration of the Holocaust, many Jews witnessed the worst of humanity. In concentration camps, over six million people were killed and tortured. Among the people imprisoned in these camps was Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor. In his memoir Night, the many acts of dehumanization and cruelty that Wiesel witnesses ultimately leads to his loss of faith in both his god and humanity.

“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.

Over the course of history, many people from many nations dehumanized the Jews. In the book Night, Jews were treated as if they were not humans. When Dr. Mengele sorts Wiesel and his father in Birkenau, Wiesel says that “[they] did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which to the crematoria” (Wiesel 32). When being questioned by Dr. Mengele, he only asks only for his age, health, and profession to seek whether Wiesel would be a good candidate as a slave or should be exterminated immediately upon arrival in the crematorium. The doctor does not stop to consider that Wiesel is a human being. Throughout Europe, many Europeans refused to help Jews, in fact, more Germans killed Jews than saved them (Gutman and Schatzker 227-228). Hitler was not alone in massacring millions of Jews. Once the Nazi regime rose to power, their first step was to wipe out all traces of the Jewish nation (Gutman and Schatzker 39-40). After the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was nevertheless strong and many Jews did not want to return home. For example, Jews from Poland were still dealing with pogroms, such as the progrom in Kiele in 1946, where at least 42 Jews were killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Jewish communities such as Lodge, Poland were destroyed. Homes that were not destroyed were stolen by neighbours and locals. Children that survived were often left orphaned and those who went into hiding did not remember their parents (The Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program). Because of the dehumanization Jews faced from leaders and fellow citizens,

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.

Elie Wiesel use metaphor,rhetorical question, and metaphor to demonstrates that dehumanization ultimately causes negative,mental, and physical changes in victims. Wiesel use of metaphor to demonstrate the loss of humanity. For example in chapter four page 63 Elie Wiesel states that “These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears”. To show that they did not cry. They did nothing to not die.

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.

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.