Conquered By Prejudice
"Systematic desensitization" is a method of conditioning the human mind to be less fearful. This means that the more someone is exposed to something, the less likely they are to be affected by what once scared them. Systematic desensitization has negative effects when one becomes so numb to his or her surroundings that the person stops thinking about what is truly frightening. When a person is no longer compassionate and has un-human reactions to violence, he or she is desensitized beyond repair. Most people were deadened to brutality in Elie Wiesel’s book Night. This novel demonstrates that prejudice dehumanizes both the perpetrators and victims.
The perpetrators, or Nazis, and the victims in Night were dehumanized when
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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, …show more content…
The Jews, whose only identifications were the tattoos on their arms, felt like unwanted vermin who were unworthy of the air Germans breathed. It was easier for Nazis to view the Jews and prisoners in the concentration camps as less human because, aside from the numbers inked in their arms, the prisoners no longer possessed differentiating human characteristics. Elie knew what he had to do when he observed, “Dr. Mengele was holding a list: our numbers… I had but one thought: not to have my number taken down and not to show my left arm” (72). Elie knew his number needed to be hidden or else it could become his worst enemy. The Nazis were not the only ones to think of the Jews as number-labeled bodies. Jewish prisoners let go of their passions from their previous lives and took on the identities of mere digits. Elie observed a boy who still had a passion for playing an instrument in the concentration camp, “ I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek’s soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings- his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future” (90). Finding someone who still had hobbies from before the Holocaust was rare, and Elie knew this when he took special notice of Juliek’s form of self-expression. Both
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.
Indifference is the lack of concern or acknowledgment of an event or a person. During the Holocaust, indifference was expressed by the world toward the injustice treatment of the Jewish community. Many people, including the Germans, failed to help the Jews. Much of the Jewish population was exterminated as a result of this indifference. The Jews were also responsible for their downfall because they didn’t choose to act as a community.
For years, prejudice has been the fuel for almost all the wars in documented history. Prejudice is a person having seemingly unfair opinions for no apparent reason. In the excerpt from Night, Elie Wiesel explains how the foreign Jews were exiled from Sighet due to prejudice. When Moishe returns, he enlightens the Jews of Sighet on how horrible prejudice can affect people, including him. The poem
Throughout Night, Elie illustrates the change of the Jewish people from a unified race to self-reliant beasts who only look out for themselves and must fight for their own well-being for survival. As Elie and his father are welcomed to Auschwitz by SS guards shouting “ Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Night 29), immediately separated from their family, and having no time to acknowledge that they will never see each other again, they begin to realize this isn’t any ordinary camp. During their first night at Auschwitz they are ordered to, “Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes”(Night 35). Their clothes representing their dignity and
He was finally free, no joy filled his heart but abandonment was drowning it. How dangerous is indifference to humankind as it pertains to suffering and the need for conscience understanding when people are faced with unjust behaviors? Elie Wiesel is an award winning author and novelist who has endured and survived hardships. One of the darkest times in history, a massacre of over six million Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler himself. After the Holocaust he went on and wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir “Night,” in which he spoke out against persecution and injustice across the world. In the compassionate yet pleading speech, ¨Perils of Indifference,¨ Elie Wiesel analyzes the injustices that himself and others endured during the twentieth century, as well as the hellish acts of the Holocaust through effective rhetorical choices.
The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the
The Holocaust was not only a way for the Nazis to purge the Jews, it was also a movement for a new way of thinking, that as long as the person in front of you holds a military-grade firearm there is nothing you can do to change your fate. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recounts his journey through life in nazi concentration camps. Elie struggles with his faith and morality as he and his father witness the horrors of the Holocaust. Night reveals that it’s in human nature to hope for survival through religion and faith, however it can also fail in the most trying of circumstances when you have to relent to authoritarianism.
In Elie Wiesel's novel, Night, and his speech, The Perils of Indifference, the horrors of what Wiesel endured during the Holocaust and how the Nazi’s indifference towards him and the rest of the Jewish community are showcased. The dangers of indifference are commonly overlooked and oversimplified in today's world. Being indifferent means something different to everyone, but to Elie Wiesel, being indifferent is a sin larger than hatred. Elie Wiesel survived one of the biggest man-made tragedies known in the world, the Holocaust. To be indifferent is dangerous because it can harm the people you are indifferent towards, it causes you to lack empathy towards anyone and anything, and being indifferent causes you to appear and act like a disgraceful
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”, said Elie Wiesel the author of night. Elie Wiesel is a holocaust survivor, he went through 5 different concentration camps. He was dehumanized, malnourished, and abused. He lost all his possessions, his family, and his humanity. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the jewish prisoners by depriving them of family, food, and self esteem.
Three days later, optimism still present, the Jews still refused to believe that God would let dreadful things occur to them even when “German army vehicles made their appearance on their streets” (9). The towns “impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring” (9) at that time, on the contrary of the bloodcurdling conceptions they later gained when the reality of the terrors of Germans had cropped up. Months later, Elie and the other Jews’ faiths become warped when they come back down to earth and the Germans true intentions strike as they enter their long expedition in the death camps.
When Elie arrived at the first concentration camp, he was a child, but when left he was no longer human. Elie’s character changed through his encounter of the Holocaust. Elie idolized his religion, Judaism, one relevant identification for him. Elie spent hours praying and learning about Judaism, but it was the reason he and his family were tormented for. Elie was so intrigued by Judaism, that he wanted someone a “master” to guide in his studies of Kabbalah, an ancient spiritual wisdom that teaches how to improve the lives (Wiesel 8). Furthermore, he loses hope in God and in life. Elie only had a few items when he arrived in the camp, one being his family, but that would soon be taken from him. When Elie and his family arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, he was kept by his father. He always gazed after his father, caring for him until his death.
Morality in Horrible Situations Morality changed drastically in Night, people were trafficking children, killing each other for money that they would never be able to use in the camps, people would throw their family into the crematories, and some Jews even worked with the Germans who were killing them. Although these things were making the Jews lose all hope and most morale character was ignored prisoners still had a miniscule bit of morality. In Night, multiple examples emphasize that morality was reduced exponentially, but it was never completely extinguished, as shown with the hangings, the rabbi’s son, and the murder for the bread. In Night, there were two hangings although Elie states that there were many others.
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
During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.
The Jews had been starved while being detained in forced labor camp. Those who weren’t fit to work were killed and cremated. The most eye-opening description of the Jewish peoples’ state in the concentration camp came at the very end of the book. After being freed, Wiesel looked in a mirror for the first since his arrival at the camp. Wiesel described his reflection as a “corpse” and stated “the look in his eyes… has never left me.” (Wiesel 115). Not only had the Nazis carried out a brutal campaign on the Jews’ physical being, but they had also infiltrated deep into their psyche. Upon arrival at camps, all Jews’ were forced to hand over all of their clothes and wearing matching uniforms. After that, the prisoners’ were sent to the barber. Wiesel described the process, stating, “[The barbers’] clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies.” (Wiesel 35). After this process, every Jew was tattooed with a number. This process lead to the ego-death of every prisoner. They were no longer people: they were numbers. Nothing differentiated one Jew from another, besides the numbers tattooed on them. This horrendous act could only be classified as psychological torture, carried out by monsters who had lost control of their own