Examples Of 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.

While Elie was in the concentration camp he changed the way he acted. This new behavior led him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things. For example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and keeping them in poor conditions. Elie was usually not a person to display anger, but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. Elie was a religious boy before he went to Auschwitz, but while in the camp, he became angry at God. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until he experienced and witnessed such horrible suffering. He had been taught that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation,

Elie Wiesel uses metaphors, Rhetorical questions and personification to demonstrate that dehumanization ultimately causes negative, mental, physical changes in victims.

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.

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel writes about his experience inside the concentration camps of Germany during World War II. He realizes how his humanity changes after he is free. Elie ponders about if he can be re-humanized after he passes trials, when he looks at a mirror. Wiesel uses a gloomy tone to reveal how Elie succeeds in survival through dehumanization.

The Nazi army dehumanized the Jewish people by depriving them of love. Elie, along with most of the other people in the camps, aren’t really accepted socially by anyone. They weren’t accepted as a person, and no one even knew them by their names; furthermore, they were known by the number they had tattooed on their arms. On page 42, Elie says “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” By having their names taken away, the Jewish people had their social acceptance stripped from them. Also, their families were taken away from them, and they had to do whatever they could to stay with them. As Elie said on page 30, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone.” By separating the Jews from their families, they lost the love from them. By depriving the jews of social acceptance and their families, they hardly felt any

Before Elie had been deported to the terrors of the Auschwitz, he was a completely different person. Some of the traits that he exhibited were hopeful, shielded, and religious. As Wiesel said in “Night” “There was joy, yes joy. People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk, among the bundles, in the middle of the street under the blazing sun.” (16) The town was not concerned about what was going on. They didn't believe that anything else would get worse. Elie and the people of his town were unable to accept the fact that anyone would do such a horrible deed. Elie and his neighbors were ecstatic because they thought nothing could get worse than it was already; what Hitler would do to them in the future, did not even seen imaginable. The victims believed that God would

The concentration camps were places of suffering. Elie described his first night at the concentration camp. “ ...Never shall I forget the little faces of the children , whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 32). Elie was a child, pretending to be older in order to survive. Elie was not much older than the children that were too young to work and were murdered because they were of no use to the Nazis. Being as young as he was, the holocaust affected his life greatly. Children are more susceptible to events that happen to them. They tend to remember the more prominent events in their lives. The holocaust was a very prominent event in Elie’s life and because of it, he lost his faith. Since he was so young he

Because of the dehumanization that results from being imprisoned within a concentration camp, prisoners put their own survival needs over their family’s, transforming themselves into brutes in the face of atrocities and cruel treatment. However, unlike most concentration camp prisoners, Elie escapes the fate of demoralization, as he puts his father's well being above his own, even when his father hampers his own chances of survival. For example, Elie sacrifices his ration of soup, giving it to his dying father, stating, “I took one gulp. The rest was for him” (Wiesel 106). The selflessness Elie maintains, giving up a life sustaining resource to a man whose days are numbered, proves that Elie, despite all hardships, keeps his morals intact.

In the memoir Night, written by Elie Wiesel twelve year old Elie's life was turned upside down when his family was sent to a concentration camp by German forces. Remaining with his father, they traveled from camp to camp, enduring hard work and cruel captains. Elie, along with his father, must survive countless atrocities that are dehumanizing in every way, but must also witness the destruction of their religion.

Experiencing trauma causes a person to change their view in God. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, went through substantial confusion as to how God could abandon his people. His experiences in the concentration camp challenged his view in a good and just God. The journey, in his walk of faith, questioned a loving God.

“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” (Wiesel). In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel was taken from everything he knew, his home, his family, his friends, and his God. In the face of savage abuse and inhumane treatment, the Jews attempt to hold on to everything they can for as long as possible, but it is just not imaginable for them to survive under such horrid conditions.

He was a studious boy of strong faith who began to lose his religion when he was deported from his home. He looked back at his house and remembered how long he sought God there, but as he looked back, he felt nothing. “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (Wiesel 33). Like Moishe, one of the things that was a large part of Elie’s humanity was religion. When he and his father marched towards the crematorium, towards certain death, Elie’s father began to recite a Jewish prayer for the dead. Upon hearing this, Elie became angry and questioned God. Elie had relied on God all of his life, but when terrible things began to happen to him and his loved ones and He was silent, his faith was lost. Elie’s dehumanization began earlier as he was deported from his home and crammed with other Jews in a cattle car, but it really took place as he was tortured in

The Jews in the Holocaust watched their families and loved ones get slaughtered every day, leading the victims to become numb and indifferent to what was going on around them. Elie began to lose hope after seeing so much cruelty and thought, “Indifference deadened the spirit. Here or elsewhere- what difference did it make? To die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was so long and never ending” (93). Elie gave up hope in himself, which is just as lethal as an angry Nazi, for truly believing you are incapable of something is the most belittling and dehumanizing thought of all. Not only did the Jews become numb to the violence, but the belief that it was wrong to act out violently against the Jews never crossed the Nazis’ minds. After routinely murdering numerous Jews who were “un-human” in the minds of the Nazis and Germans, the perpetrators began to believe with every fiber in their beings that what they were doing was for the world’s benefit. One day in the camps,

To begin, Elie along with millions of Holocaust victims are dehumanized. The Nazi’s used various ways to make people feel like they were animals. The Nazi’s would degrade the Jews to a point that they lost the desire to live. They did this by destroying the