Less than 100 years ago, six million innocent lives were wiped off the face of the planet, and most of the world had no idea. In the book Night, author Elie Wiesel shares his narration of the brutal dehumanization of himself and many other Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. In an intricate plan dubbed “the Final Solution” by Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler, people of the Jewish faith all across Europe were driven from their homes by the Nazi regime and consolidated within concentration camps. While there, they worked under some of the worst conditions ever endured by human beings until they died by any one of the countless dangers within the camps. Elie is one of these inhabitants of such camps, and he shares both his physical and mental …show more content…
In chapter seven of Night, the constant mission for Elie and his peers to find even the smallest morsel of nourishment took a violent turn, “In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves at each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes” (Wiesel 101). This quote displays the absolute animalization of Holocaust captives, much to the leisure of SS officers. Since food is the paramount factor of human survival, when the need for fundamental sustenance is not being met, consuming food becomes the only focus for human beings, which sparks obsessional thinking and highly impulsive behavior when food is especially scarce. Such habits progressed so dramatically that Jews were desperately fighting their own people to the death for a mere morsel of bread. Accordingly, this behavior causes humans to focus on who they really are, which is a horrific effect of dehumanization. Moreover, an article written by SIRS Renaissance titled “Self-Actualization (Psychology)” details a psychological concept known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a concept that states that humans must fulfill their most basic needs in order to develop and fulfill more advanced needs. “Often conceptualized as a pyramid, basic needs such as hunger and thirst must be satisfied in order for an individual to pursue the next level of needs, which includes personal safety, security from attack, and privacy. Once these needs are met, Maslow argued, people seek to meet other needs…” The excerpt asserts the importance of rudimentary physical needs to the human experience. If a person does not meet his or her daily requirements for food, it is nearly impossible to thrive in any other aspect of life. As the needs of an individual become increasingly scarce in an environment, civilized
] Memoir In the story “Night” written by Elie Wiesel, he tells his experience from when he was in the Holocaust in 1933-1945. Elie Weisel was only fifteen when he went through unthinkable pain. Elie explains the torture and suffering he went through while he was in the Holocaust. He was separated from his family and went through things no one should have to go through. Jews were dehumanized and treated like animals.
Throughout the Holocaust, the Nazis oppressed and dehumanized the Jews. Dehumanization is the process of removing a person’s human characteristics to make them feel less human. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, highlights the terrible treatment the Jews and himself sustained during the Holocaust which caused them to lose their human characteristics. Dehumanization is a recurring theme in the memoir and readers will understand how it has progressed and affected the mental and physical health of Jews.
Dehumanization is a psychological phenomenon that characterizes individuals with wholly negative connotations sequentially, encouraging violence and haterade toward them. Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir that embraces the consequences of dehumanization; it paints the reader with the reality of someone who experienced being a direct target of whole-hearted antagonism. In this essay, I intend to shed light on the horrendous tactics the Nazis used to control Elie, his father, and everyone involved. In addition, I will dismantle how Elie Wiesel's personality shifts before and after the events of the Holocaust. Upon first arriving, German troops wasted no time barking their perilous commands to the residences of Siget, Transylvania.
The terrifying encounters and portrayal of genocide, witnessed and experienced, during the holocaust were traumatizing and life changing. The Jewish prisoners, in the memoir, “Night” written by Eliezer Wiesel, were treated more like filthy animals than the human beings they were. The concentration camps were just a birthplace for a series of hellish physical and mental torture, as well as constant dehumanization. Eliezer Wiesel and his father experienced agonizing and disturbing dehumanization including, starvation, numerous beatings, unforgettable sights, and overall phychological torture. When Elie and his father first arrived in Auschwitzs, the SS soldiers took their belongings, clothes, and shaved their heads, “Their clippers
His deteriorated mental condition is a result of the dehumanization and blood curdling atrocities he witnesses under Nazi custody. Throughout the holocaust, the Nazis use the strategy of dehumanization to break the Jewish spirit and rob people of their humanity. In this way, Elie Wiesel’s novel serves as a way to remember the struggles the Jewish community went through as the Nazis try to turn them into something less than human. By being able to understand the true consequences of dehumanization during the holocaust, it is possible to appreciate the importance of treating people like how they should be treated, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. Wiesel’s testimony in his book Night serves as a reminder of the lasting effects of dehumanization, and that people in modern society are now responsible to prevent
Dehumanization is the act of stripping humanity from a person, or in the case of the Holocaust, a whole group of people. In the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, the author describes his experiences as a young Jew living in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the book, we witness Eliezer and the other Jews being treated as less than human, with the Nazis gradually stripping them of their identity and making them little more than objects to be manipulated and exploited. Here are three specific examples of events that dehumanized Eliezer or his fellow Jews: Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir that describes the author's experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel and his family are deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp,
Elie Wiesel's novel Night shows how psychological change might result from dehumanization. While Elie Wiesel was one to speak out against the atrocities of the Holocaust, many others, including Edna Friedberg's father in the article, “Elie Wiesel and the Agony of Bearing Witness” chose to remain silent for time. Even though Elie spoke out about it he was still impacted psychologically. Elie Wisel was physically impacted because he started to think being dehumanized was normal. He was being treated like animals and believed to just “get used to the situation” ( Wisel 20).Most people typically think that it's unacceptable and that something needs to be done.
The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.
Luke spoerel Ms. Gribbin 7 / February / 2023 English 8 Nothing Left No food, no water, and barely any life, were the conditions that Elie Wiesel a 15 year old holocaust survivor had to endure for 11 months. Imagine you are crammed into small cattle carts and transported to a camp, where you are forced to do hard labor, given no food, and the chance of survival is close to none. All because of your religion. In the book, Night, by Elie Wiesel dehumanization is shown when you are selected either to live or to die based on how you looked, Having to fight and kill others just for a piece of bread and being forced to run until they physically could not.
We had eaten nothing for six days, except a bit of grass or some potato peelings found near the kitchen” (Wiesel 63). When one is hungry they would eat anything, they can find to relieve themselves from the hunger feeling, but food is something
In Walden, he writes, “By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food” (Pg. 13). He believed that anything beyond bare necessities weighed man down and held him back. As he aimed to live off of his own provisions, basically alone in nature, he envisioned a positive, beneficial
“Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.” (Mullin, 2009). The author tries to explain how terrified hunger is. I remember that recently in January 2010, I was focused on helping people injured by Haiti’s earthquake. I spent more than a day without eating.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well”(Virginia Woolfe). People in modern times often think of food as an everyday chore in terms of taking the time out of their busy lives to prepare the meal and eat. Even the homeless in modern times are thought of as not struggling as much due to there being able to obtain food through local food banks around the city and the welfare system. However, in the 18th and 19th century food was not seen as a basic necessity to the people and often due to imperialism and industrialization their ‘basic need’ was not met. The ideas of political and moral economy represented by Thomas Malthus and EP Thompson propose two different economic systems in which the goal is to decrease
When thinking of world hunger, the first thing coming up to my mind is the economy. But it has got more than that in itself. Making a decision on switching factories of this world to whole organic productive ones is a big step which doesn’t only require money, but also a lot of psychologically backing. No one should have to choose. Eating healthy should not be a privilege only exclusive to the upscale.
Ladies, who identify with up to 80 percent of the world's agriculturists, are hit doubly hard: first by the loss of sustenance; second by the loss of pay through which they can buy nourishment from option supplies. " She is communicating that there are such a considerable number of reasons why starvation is happening everywhere all through the world. Starvation is all over and we have to put a conclusion to it when we can. It has sufficiently taken lives as it is in every way. On the off chance that we all got together, then this fantasy of no yearning could genuinely be a reality!