Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

In May 1944, Elie Wiesel was fifteen years old when he and his family got transported to Auschwitz. In the concentration camps, many inmates were treated poorly and went under many “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to truly be dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” (Primo Levi, Holocaust Survivor) Primo Levi was a Holocaust survivor that believed the common man was more dangerous than actual monsters. The common man is unpredictable and will sometimes act without a second thought. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel his gold tooth, the food rations, and their ID’s symbolize the dehumanization and the desperation of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Nazis slaughtered more than 5 million jews. Throughout the horrific slaughtering they kept many in a work camp, which they slowly took many things vital to them away. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel it shows how each thing they took away was an attempt at dehumanizing the jews. Whether that be their freedoms or bare necessities. Each one of these dehumanizing acts contributed to the death of 5 million jews.

Dehumanization is to strip the rights and qualities of a person or people. In the Night, by Elie Wiesel uses tone, imagery and diction to explain how the Jews were punished and how cruel the Nazis were to them. They were stripped of their clothes, forced to work and overworked and stacked like cattle in a slaughter house.

Dehumanization is defined as “the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.” As Elie Wiesel describes throughout Night, the holocaust deprived him of all human qualities. After Wiesel’s experiences, he viewed his reflection as a corpse (pg 119); every human aspect of himself was taken away during his time at Auschwitz. At this camp, he and many others were treated as if they were tools for labor, not living beings. As twelve year-old Wiesel begins his journey to Auschwitz, he says that he, along with seventy nine other Jews, were forced into cattle cars.

Gaining absolute power begins with dehumanization of the people in order to gain control. Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is a retelling of Wiesel’s own agonizing experiences at a concentration camp. Wiesel shares his story of traumatizing events such as seeing people strangling others for food and leaving his dad to die. Wiesel’s was treating less and less like a human during his imprisonment. In Night, the bell at the concentration camp symbolizes the dehumanization of the prisoners by the Nazis.

“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me” (Wiesel 83). In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, racism against the Jewish leads to major dehumanization. Jews were treated as objects, rather than functioning humans. Some of the dehumanization techniques used in the Holocaust included treating the Jews like objects, the constant fear of being killed, and putting them through so much that they turn on each other.

The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel is the recounting of a teenage Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust, through a narrator named Eliezer. Throughout the text, the Nazis use many sinister methods to dehumanize their victims physically, mentally, and emotionally. One of these methods is controlling every aspect of their victims’ lives. In Night, upon entering a camp, none of the Nazis care to keep any Jewish families together, and they do not allow the prisoners to keep any items that have value, including the gold crowns on their teeth (Wiesel 51). Also, the Nazis use a bell to signal when the Jews must wake up, go to work, and go to sleep (Wiesel 73), and they choose the portion of food that each person gets, as well as when they get it (Wiesel 61). Another method of

From the insults we deliver to the acts we commit, dehumanization, the act of depriving people of human qualities, is not a new concept. History has shown the tragic acts of dehumanization and the inflictions it can have upon a race. The most significant example of dehumanization in modern history occurred during World War II through the Nazi regime. With the rise in Nazi eugenics popularity, the ideology involved with “life unworthy of life” led to the formation of the Holocaust. In concentration camps, Jewish life was reduced to almost nothing with malnourishment, degradation, and amorality encompassing their known existence.

Rough Draft The catastrophes taking place in Europe during the late 1940s remains embedded in the minds of average civilians as a result of the dehumanization regarding non-Aryan people. Elie Wiesel, a novelist who won the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote the memoir Night, which signifies the important yet distorted facts of this grueling theme. A series of flashbacks combined with flash forwards draw the horrific images in a way that seems hard to conceive. Throughout the concentration camps, animalistic torture never seems to end, leading to the Jewish people accepting and using dehumanization on a daily basis. The ways in which Nazi soldiers exterminated their innocent prisoners, explains how strongly these men supported the German

Hitler tried to use dehumanization to wipe Jews off the face of the planet. Millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis in brutal and savage ways, but some were lucky enough to make it through the selection. Although the Jews survived the selection, they were forced to live like animals. The Jews were given scarce amounts of foods and necessities, which made the Jew’s struggles even harder. The Jews had been treated as if they were animals for so long, that they started to act inconsiderately of others in some situations. Dehumanization was portrayed in multiple ways, throughout the story.

“Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs!” (Wiesel 85). An SS officer yells at the Jews while they are being forced to run over forty miles of land. The officers treated these people as if they were animals and as if they meant nothing. The Jews were tossed and beaten as if they were sacks of flour. Dehumanization can be best defined as the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, is forced to experience many forms of dehumanization throughout his book. Throughout Elie WIesel’s, Night, the SS officers dehumanization toward the Jews increases in severity and causes the Jews to lose their will to live as they travel to different locations.

In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie retells the horrifying and torturous treatment that he and other Jews suffered from at the hands of the Nazis. The Jews were treated as if they were no less than inanimate objects and worse than animals all because of their religion. The Nazis made sure that the Jews knew that had no rights and that meant nothing to them. The Jews experienced such inhumane events that no one could ever relate to, they lost everything from their dignity, to their property, and even their humanity.

Dehumanized its a very strong word but also a very strong thing. Being dehumanized is being controlled, and also being scared of the person who is controlling you.

In this scene from Night by Elie Wiesel, The Gleiwitz concentration camp prisoners are being moved to another camp in roofless cattle cars. No food or water was given on the journey so when bread was thrown into the wagon the men adapted animalistic behavior and fought for the bread resulting in the death of a father and son. Throughout the scene, Wiesel proves that starvation results in the further dehumanization of the oppressed.

Elie Wiesel uses metaphor and simile to demonstrate that dehumanization ultimately causes severe mental and physical changes in the victims.