Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Next, the Germans stripped the Jews of their faith, which is another way they dehumanized them. An example of this is that Elie stopped believing in God. According to the novel, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled… And I, the former mystic, was thinking: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God” (Wiesel 67). The Germans were taking away the faith of the Jews by everything that they were doing in the concentration camps. They were burning children, shooting at babies, and killing Jews left and right. Since they were doing

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.

Wiesel and his fellow jews first experience dehumanization when the Hungarian police burst into their homes in Sighet. They were not allowed to keep any items that had meaning to them “A Jew no longer had the right to keep in his house gold, jewels, or any objects of value” (Wiesel 8). The process of stripping them of their identities continues as they get to the concentration camps. When Eliezer becomes a member of Block 17, the first thing to go was his name. SS officers lined up prisoners and Eliezer says “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (Wiesel 31). Eliezer refers to himself as a number now rather than his name. As the Jews are stripped of their identity, they are constantly viewed as nothing.

“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men” (PG.36). Elie is a jewish boy from Transylvania and is taken to Auschwitz where he is separated from his mother and sister. His father and Elie are moved the the concentration camp called “Buna” and spend most of their time there. They then had to be evacuated to Gleiwitz, where they ran about 42 miles to get there. They spent about 3 days there and then they were transported to Buchenwald by train. There they are rescued by Americans and a resistance part that attacked the camp. Sadly Elie’s father dies in Buchenwald due to a sickness and being sent to the crematory. Dehumanization of the Jewish people in “Night” ,by Elie Wiesel, happened in a variety of ways and helped Hitler achieve his ideas about Jewish people.

“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 novel Night by Elie Wiesel is about a protagonist’s personal experience during World War II as a Jew. Despite ominous signs, among many other Jews, Wiesel and his family failed to vacate, because they believed that the Fascists would not maltreat them. Consequently, the Jews were sent to concentration camps. Since the Jews were isolated and deprived of positive human qualities, the concentration camps connect to alienation and dehumanization. Moreover, it violates Human Rights. For example, the camps violated article 4 and article 5. Eliezer’s personal point of view displayed the mistreatment and physical and mental abuse Jews faced in throughout the duration of concentration camps.

In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment proved dehumanization naturally exists in human nature. The experiment gave prison guards an abundant amount of power over prisoners, and the guards abused their abilities to rule. Prisoners were beaten, stripped naked, and starved. Similarly, dehumanization occurred in the Holocaust in 1941. In the autobiography Night, by Elie Wiesel, Elie describes his horrific experiences during the Holocaust.

Throughout the chilling memoir Night by Elie Wiesel we see a multitude of horrifying scenes. Elie was, in this book, tortured by the crushing actions of Nazi Germany. The entire Jewish population of Germany was targeted by Nuremberg laws created by Adolf Hitler, and each law aimed to dehumanize the Jews in one way or another. Elie Wiesel and other Jews were first labelled with yellow stars, then numbered, and by the end of it, they could barely recognize themselves. Chapter 6 page 83 says “We had forgotten everything-death, fatigue, our natural needs…., condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.” This quote exhibits dehumanization mainly in two words; “... mere numbers,...” These people were no longer people, they

“I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his hole support.” (Wiesel,87), states Eliezer in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. Throughout his memoir, Elie Wiesel perceives how humans commit evil out of fear, however, Wiesel’s relationship with his father made him stronger, gave him purpose, and made him human in spite of the evil that surrounded them. During the Holocaust, millions of Jews suffered the atrocities that the Nazi put them through. For example, the Nazis forced them to live in inhumane conditions in ghettos, cattle cars, and concentration camps. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, NIGHT, examines the Nazi’s process of total annihilation of the non-Aryan race through cruel acts of dehumanization. Elie’s only chance at survival was to stay faithful to protect his father’s life and his hope in that he would remain alive.

“The prisoners were so thin they didn't have any buttocks to lie on; there wasn't flesh on their arms to rest their skulls on…” (Lovelady, holocaust-try.org) During the reign of Hitler, Jews were beaten and starved on a constant basis. Soon, most of the Jewish population was enslaved through nazi power and dehumanized. In Elie Wiesel’s book Night, he captures just how the Jews were dehumanized and why this helped Hitler achieve his main goal of exterminating the Jewish race.

Thus, through Elie's loss of identity, Wiesel implies that dehumanization was the most barbaric torture that the Jews had to encounter. In addition, there is more than a way of how the Nazis treated a young boy like Elie. In the context, "Here kid, how old are you? I'm not quite fifteen yet. No eighteen But I'm not, I said. Fifteen. Fool, listen to what I say. Then he questioned my father, who replied. Fifty. No, not fifty. Forty. Do you understand? Eighteen and forty." Elie and his father have to change their identity, their age to convince the Germans that they are both still strong to work for

Dehumanization and alienation can ruin someone physically, mentally, and spiritually. In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, both alienation and dehumanization is found persistently throughout the novel. Elie Wiesel tells a non-fictional story about his life and how he grew up with a memorable, yet, terrifying childhood. Harper Lee wrote a novel called To Kill a Mockingbird that emphasizes how white people dehumanized black people. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was originally made to ensure people that their human rights are inalienable, but in both novels, these human rights were taken from them with no hesitation.

Night is the memoir of what Elie Wiesel experienced in the Holocaust. A concept the recurs is his story is dehumanization, more specifically, the Nazi’s attempt to take away the humanity of Jews. They did this by taking their valuables, marking them, imposing regulations, containing them, torturing and starving them, and treating them like animals. At the beginning of the memoir, Wiesel’s life revolves around his religion. These method took away his faith, leaving what he later described as a void. At the end of the book, he looks at himself in a mirror and does not recognize himself. He describes himself as corpse-like. This is one of the things that helped Hitler achieve his ends. By making them look inhuman, as they walked from camp to

Eliezer was only 15 when it all began, when he basically lost everything that he was living for. He was held in captivity for his beliefs and tortured. Although he knew the world was cruel, he didn't know the fullness of it all until he lost his father. "No prayers were said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered. I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears" (Wiesel 112). Eliezer began to realize the gravity of his current difficulty, the torments of the Nazis and his loss of his faith. That moment of realization shows that he lost all of his innocence. In the loss of his father, he realized he lives in a cruel world, and not everything can go according. Eliezer was still 15 when he crossed the threshold of the death

In the beginning chapters of Night, it is shown that the Nazis have developed various strategies to strip the prisoners of their identities. When Eliezer and his family had arrived at Birkenau, the first action the Nazis in charge took was to separate the women from the men. By doing so, Eliezer and his father were taken away from his mother and sister. “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever” (Wiesel, 29). Eliezer’s family had been with him throughout his entire life and helped him grow into who he was at them time and separating them could have caused him losing a piece of himself. In addition, upon arrival the group saw large fires surrounding the camps they soon came