Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie observes and experiences many instances of indifference throughout his memoir. In the first chapter, the people of Sighet oppose Moshe the Beadle’s stories of his escape from the Nazis. They say in response to Moshe, “He's just trying to make us pity him. What an imagination he has! Poor fellow. He's gone mad” (4-5). This lack of sympathy causes Moshe to lose faith in his town and in himself. On the ride to Auschwitz, a soldier dehumanizes the Jews. He explains, “If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs” (22). The soldier shows no respect for the people,

Metaphor demonstrates that dehumanization causes them to lose their emotions. Metaphor “these withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears” ( Wiesel pg. 63) Elie Wiesel uses this quotation to demonstrate that they completely forgot how to cry. The use of the phrase “bitter taste of tears” implies that Elie has not cried since his arrival at Auschwitz. He has showed no love to anyone including his father. All the emotions have been taking away including positive and negative. There is no emotion left.

The nazis dehumanized the Jews so it would be easier to hurt them by treating them as if they were nothing. The nazi soldiers didn’t even call the Jews by their names; they called them by numbers. “ I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 60). The Nazis didn’t call them by name because it would have given them human characteristics. The only people that would call him Elie were his family and friends. When ever he was needed, they were called by their number, “ One day, when we had just returned from the warehouse, I was summoned by the block secretary: A-7713?” (69) The nazis didn’t give any respect to any of the Jews.

His compassion towards his father, shown through this quote, helps demonstrate the compassion that Elie gave to others in the story. This is very important that Elie did this because of the difficult and hard time of the

In the passage above there were a couple of examples that Elie, and the other Jews were being dehumanized and just treated so poorly that it left a horrible image in Elie's head replaying over and

Have you ever experienced what it is like to see people being hanged and seeing children shot.Elie has experienced the holocaust and he has seen in front of his eyes a kid kill his own father in a train.Jews experienced what it was like to starve to death they were fed stale bread,potato peelings and thin soup.Jews could not receive any medical condition and would be shot if they did not follow orders or if the nazis felt like it.Jews were being forced to be separated from their parents due to the selection process.Jews like elie want people to remember the holocaust so they don't have to go through the torture and suffering like they did.

“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.

When Elie Wiesel and his father were taken to Auschwitz, they became scared about what was to come and felt rather powerless, feeling threatened by Nazis surrounding them. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. (34)” This quote clearly states that the Nazis took away his life from him. His hopes and dreams vanished, and he felt as if he was being stripped of his identity. Once Eliezer loses his power, he becomes upset and feels that

During the holocaust, Jews were separated from their family,beaten, treated like an animal, and an object. Germans stripped their faith, identity, individuality, and dignity. Elie Wiesel shows his experience of dehumanization in the concentration camps. In his novel, Night, he explained how he was treated harshly and dehumanized. Germans dehumanized the Jews to make them feel hopeless, faithless, and worth nothing.

As Jews worked and walked around the camps the soldiers would yell “Faster you filthy dogs” (page 85), The Jews were treated like animals during their worst moments. Jews were tricked by the Nazis as they went into the gas chambers thinking they would be taking a shower, the gas chambers killed so many innocent Jews. Day to night the jews would work not knowing if the next day they would continue to live. Elie lost his mother and with his mother went his faith, Elie felt like God was not doing any god for the Jews as they were all dying as well as getting beat. The day Elie saw a young boy get hung in front of his own eyes all he could say was “That night the soup tasted like of corpses” (page 65), the horrendous things Elie saw killed his soul and belief in the

The victims of the Holocaust, as told by Elie Wiesel in his novel, Night, suffered a loss of identity and struggled to maintain their humanity. It is the same phenomenon of dehumanization that is the source behind the painful experience of Abby Honald Those who victimize are able to do so because the process of dehumanization elevates their self concept and desensitizes them to the evils they inflict. For example, in the Stanford prison experiment there were 24 students chosen from the 75 that had applied. 12 randomly chosen to be “guards” while the remaining 12 were the “prisoners”.

Tales of real world dehumanization serve as reminders to treat others with respect and humanity. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the author recounts his own disturbing story as a holocaust survivor who endures many hardships during his time in the concentration camps during World War Two ran by the harsh at the time German Nazis. One theme that Wiesel integrates throughout the novel is the dehumanization of the Jewish people at the concentration camps. SS Officers, Oberkapos,and even Jews themselves behave in certain ways that dehumanize the prisoners around them and even themselves. The author makes use of the theme of dehumanization through a disregard for civilized human necessities, acts of violence and horror, and how the oppressors and oppressed talk to themselves and each other.

The SS officers broke the people down so that they felt completely alone. The prisoners, including Elie Wiesel, were constantly being told to care for themselves, and themselves only. They had been brainwashed up till the point where they eventually valued bread more than life. One instance like this was particularly heartbreaking. Elie and the Jews were being transported in a wagon and they all were starving. Whenever they found a piece of bread, all the men would fight over it, resulting in a great deal of death, to the Nazi’s satisfaction. An old man was somehow able to pocket bread in the midst of the brawl. “...he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt...His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. And was immediately extinguished. A shadow had lain down beside him. And this shadow threw itself over him. Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying: ‘Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me...You’re killing your father...I have bread...for you too’” (101). A son killed his own father for a small stale piece of half-eaten bread. This shows the level to which they had stooped. It was important to the SS officers that they succeeded because they wanted the Jews to not just be treated like animals, but to also act like animals. The Jews’ sense of self-preservation was driving them to the point where it was the only thing keeping them from giving up. Another

This terrible things put together made Elie feel,” From the depths of my mirror a corpse was contemplating me “(Weisel 115). This is because he was surviving on a daily ration of bread and coffee (on a good day). Elie also knew to survive all of this without a purpose would be a

These victims were dehumanized in a lot of ways. One way was when the Jews were being transported from the ghettos to a concentration camp. “The next morning, we walked toward the station, where a convoy of cattle cars was waiting. The Hungarian police made us climb into the cars, eighty person in each,” excerpt from Night (page 22). The Jews were being transported in a cattle car packed together with little food, water, and room and no place to relieve themselves shows that, to the Nazis, the Jews were at the same level as a livestock. “Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs...you filthy dogs!’ We were no longer marching, we were running. Like automatons...If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot would eliminate the filthy dog,” excerpt from Night (page 85). In this excerpt not only was the SS officer calling these Holocaust victims filthy dogs, Elie also called himself and his peers filthy dogs. Elie have gone through so many inhumane treatment and was being called a dog so much that he refers to himself and his peers as dogs. A person would have to go through so much inhumane treatment for them to not feel human anymore, and that what Elie felt. His right to not be inhumanly and degradingly treated has been been taken away from him. “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread,” page 115 of Night. This is another way that these victims were being dehumanize, their morality was taken away. The Nazis took away the morality of the Jewish people and other Holocaust victims by forcing them to live under extremely harsh conditions. One of the main difference between humankind and animal kind is morality, humans have morals that they act by but animals act on their survival instinct. Holocaust victims has lost their morality due to the harsh living conditions that the