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Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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The book Night was written by Elie Wiesel and published on January 1, 1956. It is about Wiesel's holocaust experiences with his father in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Throughout this story Wiesel and his father go through dehumanizing experiences and lose their faith and humanity along the way. He shares his story and survival as a teenager being taken away from home and threw into the torturous camps which he had to fight for his life. Night is written as a personal narrative that allows us to see his view of the darkness, suffering, silence, and identity that he experienced. It also provides insight to how Wiesel loses his faith in God during these rough times. The Nazi’s treated the Jews as if they were not even …show more content…

There are many scenarios all through the book that shows this happening to the Jews. They are treated as animals rather than humans and forced to follow the Nazi rules. “To make someone feel or appear to be less than human makes it easier to subject that person to abuse and torture, as was the case with the Nazis and the Jews” (Campo). This starts when the prisoners are forced to strip their clothes and tatted with random numbers. These numbers are used as their new names. After months of torture and violence the prisoners are pushed to their mental limit. One case where Eliezer experiences dehumanization is whenever he witnesses another prisoner beat his father over bread and realizes that this is their life now. They fight over bread to keep themselves alive. An example of Eliezer's father being dehumanized is whenever they are taken from their homes and cannot do anything about …show more content…

As the story continued, he begins losing his faith in God. He cannot wrap his head around the horrible things they are going through in the camps. During this his humanity and hope are stripped of him too. Eliezer reaches his breaking point whenever a child is hanged in front of the crowd, and they are made to watch. The young child does not die instantly but instead struggles to breathe. Eliezer says, “Where is he? This is where-hanging here from these gallows...” (Wiesel 65). This is where he loses all hope because he does not believe God would hang a child. He mentions his loss of faith multiple times because of all the awful events he is put through. The other Jews does not experience everything that Eliezer has. His faith is put to the test over and over until he cannot handle it anymore. This all starts from the moment he sees the burning babies and begins questioning God however he finally loses it

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Eliezer has to learn how to adapt to not having as food as he used to, being beaten for no reason, and watching daily hangings. Eliezer specifically remembers one particular hanging of a young boy, a pipel, whose master has been gathered arms for the resistance. Eliezer said “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… ” Eliezer remembers how the child cried and remained alive for the next half an hour, before his body finally gives out and the child dies. Towards the end of the book, as the group that Eliezer and his father are in keeps running around Germany, and Eliezer has a choice to give up and die on the side of a road, but he continues to run because of his father. Eliezer says “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me.

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Throughout the story Elie or Eliezer, the main character in the book, talks about the horrible conditions and treatment he received

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Eliezer and his father got separated from his mother and younger sisters. For months in the concentration camps, Eliezer witnessed inhumane doings that scarred him for the rest of his life. He was forced to work at Buna, a factory, and run on a daily basis to keep himself alive. He became malnourished because of the unappetizing food that they served. He and other Jews were punished and beaten for no reason.

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Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself.

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Both Eliezer and his dad were sent to the workforce, where they tried to keep their health up so that they can continue working and not be killed. This task was very difficult because they were challenged with starvation, thirst and even abuse from the Germans. Eliezer’s father got ill and a few months before the British and Americans closed in on Germany his father died. Eliezer was now known as a concentration camp survivor one of the few but was never the same. He suffered with flashbacks and was still haunted by the violence, deaths, and cruelty he was exposed to during what is known now as the

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The dehumanization process used against Jews began even before they reached Auschwitz. Before the prisoners first arrived, they are on a train for multiple days with barely any food or water. Even after they arrive, they have to run and complete other tasks before they can be entitled to food. During Elie’s whole time at the concentration camps, he always has the same food, which is one ration of soup and bread.

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These people, these children never did anything wrong, but they never did anything extraordinary either. They just had no skills to offer so the Germans did not think that they needed to live life, a decent human life. It is just that the Jews were not seen as humans so ending their lives was an easy task. At one point the book even mentions children being dumped from train cars into the flames, almost like a bad supply of food or some product. These prisoners were killed in a ravage way in front of so many other people, and a human should never have to go through that which is one way dehumanization was

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Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 34). The detail he put into his experience brings the reader to a full understanding of just how dreadful Eliezer’s conditions are. After getting through a couple more selections Eliezer had caught the officer in the barn with a girl and started to burst out into laughter. The officer saw him and afterward beat Eliezer senselessly.

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It is ultimately his faith that causes his persecution by the Nazis. His faith is routinely tested throughout the book by witnessing atrocities that he cannot comprehend. After spending time at Auschwitz, Eliezer begins to question the existence of God. He says that no God would allow so much death and suffering to occur. He begins to believe that man is stronger than God because of the circumstances he sees his people enduring.

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He feels he has nothing to thank God for, and is angry because God appears to be silent in the face of the oppression. He says he will always remember his first night in Auschwitz, "those moments which murdered my God." He ceases to pray, even though others in the camp continue to talk of the mysterious ways of God, the sins of the Jewish people, and their eventual deliverance. Eliezer does not doubt God's existence, but he does doubt His absolute justice. When he sees the child hanging on the gallows, he believes that God Himself is dead.

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Eliezer never sinks to the level of beating his father, or outwardly mistreating himself, but his resentment toward to his father’s grows, even it is suggested; for instance, when Eliezer’s father prevents Eliezer from killing himself by falling asleep in the snow, try to keep him awake so that the SS officer cannot take him away and bury him. Whether or not this resentment comes to dominate Eliezer’s relationship with his father (indeed, a strong argument can be made for Eliezer’s altruism), it seems clearly that Eliezer himself feels great guilt to his father’s death. Proof that, we can also see in the concentration camp, there still has love, not just emotionless among people to people. As the woman who survived in the Holocaust tells us about her life when she enter to Auschwitz, there was a lady who treated her a lots, taught her and other girls how to survive and to remember their numbers; unfortunately, she died, no one knows her number when the SS officer asking, except her, the Jewish girl who was taught by the unlucky woman, read out loud the number and bought her body away to bury, so the SS officer cannot burn her or bring the body to the chimney. While it is true that Eliezer, after the Holocaust, thinks of himself as another person.

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Eliezer will turn to God when something unsatisfactory happens, however being at Auschwitz completely deprives him for being close to God with turning his thoughts very negative. Eliezer is put into an unfortunate situation where the Germans decide that he is to remove his gold crown without further

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Eliezer realizes the cruelty happening when the Jews of Sighet were taken into the concentration camps. He stops and truly understands what is happening: “Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes … children thrown into the flames … I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that world kept silent?

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In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, The author shares his story and describes the conditions he had endured in order to survive in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Among these conditions, the prisoners had to experience dehumanization by the Nazis. In the novel Elie and the others had to experience dehumanization through many different concentration camps they went to and the mental and physical tolls these camps had on them. Dehumanization is the process of treating others as if they are less human, essentially depriving them of their human qualities, personality, and dignity. There are many instances in the book where dehumanization is a key concept such as when the Jews had to endure prohibition and forceful assimilation in Sighet,

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(Wiesel 112). Eliezer is sad when his father dies, but is more relieved because he can take care of himself now. Another way Eliezer is dehumanized mentally is through his religion. Before he was sent to the concentration camps, Eliezer believed God always knew best. But as the memoir goes on, Eliezer loses his faith.

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