The Dehumanization Of The Jews

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.

The Holocaust which was one of many of the controversial events that have happened in the history of our world demonstrated a significant amount of cruelty and dehumanization. Because of such a controversial event, many have suffered through physical and unfortunately psychological upheaval and distress. With previous knowledge and novels’ read on the Holocaust, it came to be known that the event was triggered through obedience and conformity due to the not specifically the Germans’ beliefs of anti-Semitic and propaganda, but more of leader Adolf Hitler. The time of the Holocaust was used to dehumanize which enhanced the understanding of mental health and human psychology. During the Holocaust, many psychological principles affected individuals forever. The principles include groupthink and of course knowing the outcome of the event. Such principles sooner explain the reality of life because it stresses how individuals react due to their past experiences like the Holocaust and most importantly how traumatic events build them as who they are today.  Innocent Jews went through starvation, terrible working conditions, and the elimination of race through torture such as gas chambers. Furthermore, the history of this controversial event is now being used to be alert of the health and wellness of those who have gone through such events that sooner change their behavior and mentality for the better or even worse.

Accordingly, Hitler began eradicating all nationalities that he considered second-rate to Germans. Many believe that the depopulation technique was the “German viewpoint of the Nazi government, which wanted to create a "master race" of Aryan people. After January 1933, the Jews were placed in concentration camps which started the Holocaust” (Katz, 1994).

Dehumanization is the act of taking one’s human qualities away from them, this can be done using voice and also using actions. During the time of the Holocaust, the Nazi’s used their power to abuse and dehumanize the Jewish people. They would beat and kill them, they would yell at them and they stripped the Jews of their dignity and rights. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one recurring theme is the dehumanization of the Jews. Throughout Night by Elie Wiesel, one can see the theme of dehumanization through the way the Nazi’s treated the Jews, spoke to the Jews, and how the Jews treated one another.

Over the course of history, many people from many nations dehumanized the Jews. In the book Night, Jews were treated as if they were not humans. When Dr. Mengele sorts Wiesel and his father in Birkenau, Wiesel says that “[they] did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which to the crematoria” (Wiesel 32). When being questioned by Dr. Mengele, he only asks only for his age, health, and profession to seek whether Wiesel would be a good candidate as a slave or should be exterminated immediately upon arrival in the crematorium. The doctor does not stop to consider that Wiesel is a human being. Throughout Europe, many Europeans refused to help Jews, in fact, more Germans killed Jews than saved them (Gutman and Schatzker 227-228). Hitler was not alone in massacring millions of Jews. Once the Nazi regime rose to power, their first step was to wipe out all traces of the Jewish nation (Gutman and Schatzker 39-40). After the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was nevertheless strong and many Jews did not want to return home. For example, Jews from Poland were still dealing with pogroms, such as the progrom in Kiele in 1946, where at least 42 Jews were killed (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Jewish communities such as Lodge, Poland were destroyed. Homes that were not destroyed were stolen by neighbours and locals. Children that survived were often left orphaned and those who went into hiding did not remember their parents (The Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program). Because of the dehumanization Jews faced from leaders and fellow citizens,

The holocaust was the mass murder of 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during World War 2. Adolf Hitler hated the Jews and blamed them for Germany losing World War I. He considered Jewish people to be less than human. Hitler also believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. Once he became chancellor of Germany, Hitler took away all of the Jews rights as human beings. Hitler forced the Jews to live in ghettos. The Jews would be transferred to concentration camps, where they would do hard labor. The Jews died in the concentration camps by diseases, starvation, or the cold. Some camps had gas

Most people know that Hitler blamed the jews for germany losing ww1 and that he killed 6 million of them as well. He had his reasons for blaming them such as. The jews that worked in factories making guns during the war went on strike slowing the war effort, they were socialists who did not support the war effort and held riots, but the main reason was Bavarian Socialist Republic. They were mainly jews and got with the socialists to end the war. These situations caused the soldier (Hitler) to rise to power and start ww2 and the holocaust which takes us to the point of this essay. Elie Wiesel the author of the novel Night told about his experience and the changes in his faith in god and humanity because of the time he spent in the concentration

Many wars of the 20th Century were caused by leaders aiming to create a so-called Master Race. As a result many millions of soldiers and civilians were killed in conflict. Adolf Hitler, the German Fuehrer, decided that one group of people in particular needed to be eradicated: The Jew. He set up concentration camps and tried to round up all of Europe’s Jews to create “the final solution”. The Jews were either forced to work slave labor, or face extermination if they were too week or unwilling. One survivor of this Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, wrote a work of psychology, Man’s Search For Meaning, that described the horrific conditions of camp life. Frankl explains that

In 2006, Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night,” which focuses on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense helplessness that he feels when all the beliefs and rights, of an entire nation, are reduced to silence. Elie and the Jews are subjected daily to uninterrupted torture and dehumanization. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.

The Holocaust began around 1933 when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party. During that time, the first concentration camp, Dachau, was established to torture and kill Jewish people. Soon after, in 1935, Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews were decreed and depriving Jews of German citizenship. Germany then invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe. With the start of World War II came many more concentration camps, and millions of deaths. Six million European Jews lost their lives during this horrific time. Many survivors shared their stories after they were freed, so that the world would know of the horrors they experienced. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, told his story in his book, Night. Elie Wiesel was a teenager during the Holocaust, but lived on into his eighties and continued to speak out against what the Nazi’s did to his family.

One of Adolf Hitler’s promises was to eliminate the Jewish race. In order for this to happen, you must first see people as less than human. Once you have accomplished this task, the mass murder of millions of people becomes easy. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the multitude of times he was seen as less than human, and how this affected his life while in concentration camps. The dehumanization of the prisoners not only crushes them, it causes them to become desensitized and often see each other as less than human.

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.

The holocaust was the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of at least six million jews. 100 days after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Nazis began having book burnings to get rid of un-German writings proclaiming the death of Jewish intellectualism. This was one of the first acts that foreshadowed the destruction Hitler would have in Germany. Since Hitler and the Nazis felt that all Jewish peoples made Germany impure, their goal was to put an end to the existence of all Jews. Nazis required the elimination of Jews from German life. Their first nationwide action against

Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place as the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being human. This loss of humanity led to a weakened will in the Holocaust victims, and essentially led to death in many. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, theft of possessions, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, and much more. There is no greater loss than that of humanity, so one can never truly relate to the horrors of dehumanization the Jews faced. In the list below, I will compile various examples that correlate to this theme of dehumanization.

Anti-semitism in Germany led by Adolf Hitler would back up a plan called the final solution, to exterminate all of the Jews in Europe. Out of the 100 million Jews aimed for extermination, 6 million of them were killed. On his path to German greatness, Jews became victim to inconceivable actions. First the Nuremberg Laws were passed which stripped Jews of their german citizenship, eliminating their opportunity to flee to other countries. After Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Hitler forcefully deported Jewish people into fenced confinements called ghettos. More Jews died here than in any extermination camp due to the harsh conditions and labor. Most people living in ghettos had no access to running water or a sewage system and overcrowding