The Effects Of Dehumanization In Night Before The War By Elie Wiesel

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

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.

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.

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized” (Fitzgerald) F. Scott Fitzgerald, a famous novel and short story author, wrote in his novel Tender is the Night. This statement can be related to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, as they had become so terrible and set on annihilating the Jews that they became ruthless, inhuman people. Consequently, the dehumanization of the Nazis caused the Jews to become dehumanized and treated as though they were animals. In the memoir Night, Eliezer Wiesel shows how German Nazis carried out the dehumanization of Jews in concentration camps, and how rehumanization was ultimately impossible.

"There may be times where we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest" said Elie Wiesel. Dehumanization played a large role in the holocaust. They labeled, did experiments, and tortured millions of people. The nazis made them less than human and it made all of what they did easier. Not only was dehumanization apart of the holocaust, it became apart of society today.

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed” - Paulo Freire We could all see that “things get treated better than humans in this book. Some events like being squished on a train for hour and having to be moved from car to car, being portrayed as a “number”, and starvation are some examples of dehumanization, this happened to have them. Elie Wiesel the author of this book was born on September 30, 1925 in Sighet. Elie and his family spoke yiddish at home. “Night” is a true story written by himself. The book is about a 15 year old, his family and many Jewish people of Sighet were sent to a concentration camp in Poland. Auschwitz was a place where more than 1,300,000 Jewish death occurred.

As a young, innocent boy, Elie loved deeply to study the Talmud. He was very intrigued of his Jewish religion and God. When he was in the death camp his perspective started to change. He began to wonder why God would let this happen and put him through this. Elie said "Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for." Elie began to become discouraged and question why these events were going on and God was just letting it happen. It would be hard to keep one's faith when facing such burdening and inhumane events. After Elie survived Auschwitz he was labeled as A-7713. Elie said"I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." Furthermore this specific act caused Elie to lose a sense of purpose and identity. He became a number, not a name. Though this may have been a simple act, the effect was far greater than one could imagine.

Elie purposes in writing “Night” is so people who were not around during the time or even were, know just exactly what the Jews went through. They were killed for being to old or young. The Jews were killed for being female. they were given small ration of food , soup and bread. The Jews were beaten to death. Some were forced to kill there own friends and family with the crematories. Elie also wrote this to show people that actually happen , that it was not made up. The Jews were dehumanized by beating treated like slaves and animals while in the camps. Universal Declaration of Human rights (1948), all humans beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedom. The United Nations has stated in clear and simple terms

By the end of WWll over 6 million Jews are dead due to an event called the Holocaust. A few Jews are able to escape from the Nazi Regime. One of those survivors is Elie Wiesel. In 1955 his book, Night was published. The novel details his horrific experience in the concentration camps. The topic Wiesel focuses on the most is the dehumanization of the Jews.

As soon as the Nazis take over the lives of Wiesel and the people surrounding him, the Nazis bereave the Jews of their possessions, starting the process of dehumanization. The infiltration of Nazi rule in the spring of 1944 causes the Jewish population of Sighet, including Wiesel, to succumb to being pushed into small ghettos, where they are packed like sardines trapped behind barbed wire fences. The exploitation of Jews in Sighet, including being forced into these ghettos, reduces these virtuous Jews to lesser citizens, over their non-Jewish counterparts. As Wiesel and his family are amongst the last ones leaving Sighet, they witness other Jews only being able to carry what merely fits into small packs that they can fit over their backs,

The autobiography “Night” written by Elie Weisel, exhibits the tragedies and horrors of the Holocaust. It clearly explains how Eliezer and his family, along with the rest of the Jewish inhabitants were dehumanized during the Holocaust and World War II. This process began when the Jewish community was forced to leave their homes in Sighet, move into ghettos, and then stuffed into concentration camps. In his autobiography, Wiesel described the changes that people under went causing them to dehumanize their own people.

During the 1930’s in Europe Jewish people were persecuted. As Hitler continued to rise to power, his hatred in the Jews penetrated through society.In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie discusses his experience of being a Jewish during that time period by narrating his transitions from being sent to live in the ghettos and being sent to multiple concentration camps. Through mapping these experiences he also shows the struggle of having faith in humanity and in God. In Night Elie uses different literary techniques: point of view, imagery and metaphor to display how witnessing inhumanity can cause someone to be dehumanized.

Elie was losing his faith because he was unsure about god. "My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man."(Wiesel 68). In this part of the book we see why Elie was questioning his faith. His identity was also questioned because he didn’t recognize himself. "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me."(Wiesel115). The readers see how bad they were starved, and how unreal it really was. Finally, Elie lost his name and this questioned his identity because he was no longer "Elie" by name. "Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments."(Wiesel 42). During this part of the book everyone lost their name. The way Elie was treated was made clear to the

Over the course of only twelve years, the Nazis managed to gradually convert a large portion of the Jewish nation from citizens to livestock in the eyes of almost an entire nation. Twelve years does not seem like a long time for such an atrocity to occur, especially in the middle of the 20th century, long past the barbaric days of the Jews being persecuted for their religion. Every move the Nazis made was cold, calculated, and significantly gradual. They knew that if they were to start sending people to concentration camps immediately that there would be riots, resistance, and the German people may not stand for something so uselessly horrific. Instead, they took their time, slowly and carefully stripping the Jewish people of their rights, and the people took little notice at the tide lapping at their feet until the waves had consumed them, and they had already drowned. Hitler seized power in 1933, and in 1945, up to 6 million Jews had perished at his command before the war finally ended. During that time the German people had come to see the Jewish people as little more than a virus, invading their country and destroying their lives from the inside. Elie Wiesel recounts 5 years of abuse at the hands of the Nazi party that he endured in his critically acclaimed novel Night. Over the course of the book he describes, from a first person perspective, the calculated and gradual dehumanization of the Jewish people.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, wrote Night to share his experiences of Nazi concentration camps. Wiesel and his family, along with thousands of Jews, were brutally beaten, starved, and overworked at concentration camps. This inhumane treatment changed the prisoners; many became weak and took their anger out by beating other prisoners. Experiencing dehumanization within the camps caused inmates to begin turning on each other as they fought for survival.