What Is The Theme Of Night By Elie Wiesel Dehumanization

Another way the Germans dehumanized the Jews was by taking away all of their belongings. Some of these items they could live without, but they definitely did not realize how much they took them for granted. Lastly, the Jews were given numbers instead of their names. As the novel claimed, “The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). This act of taking away the Jews names and replacing them with numbers is an inhumane act which is dehumanizing towards them. People do not realize that something as simple as a name can have so much meaning until it is taken away. Therefore, the Germans stripped the Jews of everything that resembled a past life, which was dehumanizing.

The SS officers would put everyone through selection and only the grown and strong would survive. Truckloads of children “Babies! Yes...children thrown into the pit of flames”(Wiesel 32) and grown men hung for all to see, their bodies waving in the wind like a flag. For those who did survive selection, they lost their names and were tattooed with their new titles “‘A-7713?’ ‘That’s me.’”(Wiesel 51) The Jews were consistently treated like animals by the Nazi’s and if that was not enough, they were also told how worthless they were.

Greater than any war, plague, or catastrophe and it’s potential damage to human life is beyond calculation, the feeling of dehumanization is a feeling beyond description. Elie Wiesel a Jew Holocaust survivor from Sighet, Transylvania writes a memoir Night. In his memoir he writes about his own experiences in 1944 during the holocaust. Throughout this story Elie goes through lots of challenges that ultimately challenge his faith as a human. In resemblance, Jakob Blankitny a Jew from Maków Mazowiecki, Poland writes his take on his experiences in 1944 throughout the holocaust and how he and his family are treated by the Nazis and degraded as humans. In dire circumstances, these texts argue that dissolving one into a primitive with savage, animal characteristics are necessary for survival under inhumane conditions.

“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.

(109) The Jews by lose their faith in their god when the Germans hung a little boy, and he was dangling there struggling to die, and a Jew next to Elie said “where is god when this boy is suffering?” Elie said back to the man “God is here, he is hanging from the ropes” ( 90) As a result Elie loses faith in hs god. Inhumanity and cruelty were shown when the Jews were stripped of their identity, hair, jewelry, and shoes. The Germans stripped the Jews of everything because they did not want to have individuality among the Jews in the camps. The Germans gave the Jews numbers that were tattooed on the arms so they could be kept up with. It is almost like in prison how they have numbers so they do not get mixed up or lost track of. Once they had numbers the Jews were told to go to the barracks and they were given striped blue and white uniforms. This was also savage because it was the middle of winter. The Jews wore very little clothing causing some Jews to die from the cold and

How are Jews supposed to live normally when every human being around them, including other Jews, are fighting against them? Due to dehumanization, the survivors of the Holocaust are as lifeless as the victims psychologically. It is nearly impossible that after experiencing a traumatic event such as Holocaust to feel normal again, to feel like a human again. Throughout history and in the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it is evident that gentiles did not care about the Jewish nation. Moreover, not even the Jewish people stick together and cared for one another. Thus the Jews ceased to feel like human beings during and after the Holocaust.

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.

In the book night Ellie Wiesel the protagonist gets taken from concentration camp to concentration camp which takes a huge toll on his body leading to him becoming weaker and lowering his self worth. This itself would have been enough for the Germans to just put the Jews to work but instead they completely took the life out of the Jews and made them into an object or an animal instead of humans. In order for the Jews to survive and withstand the horrible conditions and pain they were in and faced they had to find things like the smoke of the crematoria and hangings normal. For example Ellie says, “I heard the pounding of my heart. The thousands of people who died daily in Auschwitz and Birkenau, in the crematoria, no longer troubled me.” (Pg. 62) This quote proves that Ellie has become ”prone” to the killing of the Jews and the Jews no longer acted as a group but instead individuals striving for survival. Ellie’s quote shows that the emotions had been taken out of the Jews, as they no longer felt the pain of the death of their fellow inmates. In the beginning of the story the Jews started by saying Kadish for each Jew who perished but at the end of the war the unity had been lost and they did not say Kadish anymore as it was strictly

At this point, the Jews are very comfortable and go so far as to recognize

Dehumanization worked for the Nazis in WW2. Dehumanization is the process of making feel helpless and unworthy. The Nazis ideology was to dehumanize all the Jews. The effects of dehumanization are to weaken the person that is being dehumanized by mental and physical mistreatment. The ways the Nazis physically mistreated the Jews were hitting, beating, and death runs. The ways the Nazis mentally mistreated the Jews were yelling and screaming at them. The Nazis also put Jews into cattle cars. Which to me shows how the Nazis see the Jews as lower level species and how that is one way of dehumanization. Another thing the Nazis did to dehumanize the Jews was to split up their families. The reason behind this was so they could feel hopeless and not have anyone to help them in need.

One thing that the Nazis did was once the Jewish people arrived at the camps they were given tattooed numbers and those numbers were there new names. Instead of being called by their names they were now identified by their numbers. “ In the afternoon we were made to line up.Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments.With the left sleeve rolled up, each person passed in front of a table. The three ‘veterans’ with needles in their hand engraved a number on our left arms.I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (39).The Jews were no longer by there names but by their names to show that they are weak and have no right to have a name. The Jews having number to replace their names was one of the ways the Jews were dehumanized.

Dehumanization is trying to make others feel less human. Extermination is systematic murders, or mass killings. When a foreign Jew from Sighet came back from expulsion he told all the Jewish people of Sighet that “infants were being tossed up in the air and used as targets for machine guns” (Wiesel 6). This shows that germans did not treat the Jewish population as real live, breathing humans. The SS officers would yell “...move, you lazy good-for-nothings” and “...you will be shot, like dogs” (Wiesel 19, 24).

Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir that recounts his horrific experience of life during the Holocaust. Wiesel is only fifteen when German soldiers invade his home town of Sighet, Transylvania. Before long, the Jews of Sighet are forced into cramped ghettos until they are all sent to concentration camps. For over a year, Wiesel suffers various forms of inhumane treatment as he moves between different concentration camps, eventually ending up in Buchenwald where he is freed along with the rest of the prisoners by the Americans in 1945. Throughout Wiesel’s telling of this story, similes and metaphors really emphasize the dehumanization that Jews and Wiesel himself faced at the hands of their German captors by creating a correlation between the Jewish prisoners and animals.

Another good example of dehumanization in the night is when the Jews are moved to another concentration camp. The following quote shows how the Jews act on the train, “Meir. Meir, my boy! Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father…you’re hurting me…you’re

A large part of the story Night outlines the intense dehumanization of the Jewish people. This is important to the story because it adds to the cruelty of the whole event by highlighting that there were many small sometimes subtle actions that added up to horrific results. Through small acts committed by the Nazi’s, the Jewish people themselves, and other people they encounter, the Jewish people begin to act increasingly animalistic and savage towards each other and the world. A prime example of this is the way the Jewish people are transported to Birkenau. They are transported in cattle cars, like they themselves are animals. It is ultimately the fear and the terrible transport conditions that lead to a group of Jewish men “beating” (26) a woman on the head several times because she would not stop screaming in fear. This is the first savage behaviour demonstrated by this group of people, and it only presents itself after they are treated as savages. The