Examples Of Dehumanization In The Book Night

The memoir “Night” is about Eliezer (aka: Elie) Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust. He faces horrifying things that no human should ever have to endure. He survived and lived to tell his story. Dehumanization was a big part of the Holocaust because the prisoners experience was so terrible that it changed them, and others thought that corrupt acts would help them survive.

“You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned” - Eliezer. These are various ways that the victims of the Holocaust were dehumanized. The book Night by Elie Wiesel follows a young boy by the name of Eliezer, who has faced many hardships during the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust, Eliezer was a healthy young Jewish boy and he is now a skinny and scrawny corpse. Throughout the course of the story, Eliezer and many other Jews in the Holocaust were dehumanized by getting treated as animals, beaten, and starved.

At midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. Elie and his father lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie is now against God, who remains silent. Elie and his father manage through all the pain and horrific sights and fight through it all. In the novel “Night” Elie Wiesel shows dehumanization in many occurrences throughout the book. Pg 13 “ The gestapo had threatened to shoot him if he talked.” Pg 36 “ He was weeping bitterly. I thought he was crying with joy at still being alive.” Pg. 53 “ Beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more

Dehumanization played a significant role throughout Elie Wiesel's "Night". In many historic references to the Holocaust the killing of the Jews were described as "methodical and systematical"(The Jewish Outreach Institute), though this is true, these heinous crimes were made even worse by the dehumanizing and appalling treatment and conditions that the Jews were put through. Here are some examples:

In the novel Night, Jews were stripped down to where their inner self was visible, and they were publicly humiliated. “For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold.” (Wiesel 35). This quote shows how the Jews were physically strip of their clothing and set in the cold to freeze. This type of dishonor affected the Jews mentally, as the Navi’s drilled that they were worth nothing into their heads and that they were not valued for anything except for work. Public humiliation was very prevalent in Night, one example is “All the block inmates stood naked between the rows of bunks. This must be how one stands for the Last Judgement.” (Wiesel 71). The Jews were

In Elie Wiesel’s autobiography, “Night” there are many examples of dehumanization from start to finish. Dehumanization is stripping a person of every quality that makes them human. This includes their identity, individuality, and soul. The Night shows the process by which the Nazis reduced the Jews to little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. The book takes place in World War 2, in the Holocaust. Eliezer and his family are very much directly affected by actions taken by the Nazis as well as all the other Jews. Throughout the whole book, the Nazis use practices such as beatings, starvation, theft of possessions, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, and many more actions represented through the text of this book that are all examples of dehumanization. Eliezer, the narrator of the story, arrived at the concentration camp of Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. He arrived by the transportation of cattle cars. Within the various camps, Eliezer spent ten months of abuse and dehumanization. He lost so much due to the Germans.

They didn’t have any value to the Nazi’s and they were considered to be only good for work. While Eliezer and his family are forced to sit in a crowded wagon, a German officer tells them “There are eighty of you in this wagon. If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs…” (Wiesel 18). This restrains the Jews from thinking about trying to escape. It shows that the Germans had no respect for them and they thought they weren’t capable of being a good person. When they reach Auschwitz, an SS officer tells the group “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 22). The SS officer treats them as if they are a herd of animals and separates them from their loved ones. Many Jews isolated themselves because of how they were treated, leading them to turn on each

Although Eliezer survived the bloodcurdling Holocaust, countless others succumbed to the Nazi’s inhumanity. The Nazi’s progressively reduced the Jewish people to being little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place, as the Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Germans dehumanized Eliezer, his father, and other fellow Jews for the duration of the memoir Night, which had a lasting effect on Eliezer’s identity, attitude and outlook. Wiesel displays the Nazi’s vicious actions to accentuate the way by which they dehumanize the Jewish population. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, among other horrific actions.

In the story Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and the entire Jewish race face acts of dehumanization daily over the duration of their imprisonment at the various concentration camps. Some of said acts include keeping them in cattle cars on the train rides, confiscating all of their valuables, and making families separate from one another. All of these acts reducing the Jewish people's minds to almost animal like at times.

The Holocaust was a horrific time period when over six million Jewish people were systematically exterminated by the Nazi government. Throughout this period, the Jews were treated particularly inhumane because the Nazi viewed their ethnicities as a disease to humanity. Dehumanization is a featured theme in Elie Wiesel’s novel about the Holocaust since he demonstrated numerous examples of the severe conditions endured by the Jewish people. The nonfiction story Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on inhumanity and reveals human beings are capable of committing great atrocities and behaving cruelly, when such actions are condoned by society, peer pressure, and ethical beliefs. Elie Wiesel uses literary devices to produce a consistent theme of inhumanity.

Not only were Jewish prisoners treated like animals the Nazi’s also vocally told them how worthless they were. The Jews were told that they were going to be treated like animals by the Nazi’s. For example, while the eighty imprisoned Jews

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

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, Recounts his first-hand experiences of Nazi atrocities in his memoir, Night as Wiesel struggles to maintain faith. Inhumanity and cruelty are two key parts relating to dehumanization in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel. Inhumanity and cruelty dehumanization of Jews during the Holocaust. This cruelty is important to the theme in this book because this is what the Holocaust is about. This book focuses on the Jews of Sighet because that is where the author Elie is from, the book entails the horrendous story of one Jew and his father out of six million Jews. Cruelty is directly related to this book as a whole because it is basically what the Holocaust is about, Nazi’s and Germans mistreating Jewish people because

“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.

When Elie Wiesel, author of Night was just 15 years old, he and his family were taken by cattle car to a concentration camp in Auschwitz. From there, he endured ten months of torture and dehumanization in three different work camps before being liberated. In this lesson, we will learn more about the dehumanization experienced in Night.