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Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Kate Johnson Ms. Nikolai ELA English 10 Sophomore Academy 02-01-23 Dehumanization Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir that recounts witnesses to his experiences in multiple concentration camps during the Holocaust. Many people were kept in concentration camps for years during World War II, and while they faced many hardships and fought many battles, possibly the hardest challenge to overcome was that of dehumanization. Dehumanization is the act of regarding, representing, or treating a person or group as less than human, (dictionary.com). During his experiences, Elie witnessed many instances where he, his family, or other Jews in the camps were treated so inhumanely that they felt reduced to little more than ‘things’. The Nazis were harsh, cruel, …show more content…

During their journey, the Nazis forced them to run faster and farther than they thought possible and were motivated by fear of death if they were to not oblige. “The SS made us increase our pace. ‘Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs!’” (85). While attempting to run a near-impossible distance, they were called names and yelled at, and were treated and talked to as if they were so much less than humans. During their journey, many of the Jews were shot because they could not keep up, and while the sound of the Nazi guns rang through the air, they were reminded of how little their lives meant to their captors. Once they made it to the next camp, they were treated as if they were dead. They were thrown onto the ground, lying on top of people while more people were thrown on top of them. While they had no way of knowing if these people were alive or not, they were, at this point, accustomed to death. When Elie was crushed under the weight of others, he was unable to think of anyone but himself, not able to make himself care about the lives of others. “I dug my nails into unknown faces. I was biting my way through, searching for air. No one cried out,” (93). After all the time he had spent with the

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In addition, through this memoir, Wiesel also provided us a true definition of what dehumanisation when Elie got separated from his family. Wiesel portrays the emotion that Elie was having when he and his father was separated from his mother "Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother." Through the expression that Wiesel describe Elie we can see how cruelty and dehumanisation were the Germans to the Jewish people. They were making all the Jewish separated to many sections in the camp "Men to the left, women to the right." Wiesel also provided us the information that anything can happen in the camp to the Jewish people.

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The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel was written in 1955, 10 years after he went through the Holocaust. The holocaust was when Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jewish race by putting them in concentration camps. The Jews are dehumanized through chapter 1-3.Hitler described them by the Jewish problem. Hitler was the one started the Holocaust.

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The Holocaust was a horrible point in time where around 6 million Jews were tortured and killed in what was called concentration camps back in the early 1900s. The things that Jewish people went through were nothing like anything we've seen before, almost inhuman the things they were forced to do. The book Night by Elie Wiesel tells the horrific things that went on in the Holocaust that were dehumanizing. Wiesel shows how the Nazis dehumanized the Jewish people by putting in great detail as to what was going on like the carts they had to travel by and the way they are lined up to be thrown in a pit

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Within Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, there are many important quotes. Although that is true, there is one that sticks out the most. On page 115 of the book, Wiesel states, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel 115). This quote truly displays the theme of dehumanization portrayed by Wiesel.

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Dehumanization made people feel like they are worthless. When they came to the camp, they were dehumanized by giving less food and crammed them into barracks which had little space to sleep, they also stripped them and cut their hair. Nazi generals took their belongings and valuables from Jews. Jews and other targeted groups were tattooed numbers to get registered. On Eliezer’s first day of the camp, “Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky”(Wiesel 34).

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In 1933 the Nazi party of Germany came to power to rebuild the world. They envisioned a perfect race of blond hair, blue-eyed Germans ruling the world, ridding it of all who were different. They were especially brutal to the Jews of Europe, murdering over six million Jews between 1933 and 1945. But before the Nazis gave them the mercy of death they made them worn, tired, and less than human. Dehumanization is stripping people or a group of positive human qualities.

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The Holocaust was the murder of over 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany. Eliezer Wiesel’s memoir Night is a personal account of the brutality endured by Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. The author details the various tactics used by the Nazis to make the Jews feel far less human. This dehumanization process by the Nazis, in the form of stripping Jews of their identity, physical and mental torment, and animal-like treatment, transformed the depth of Eliezer’s faith. The first step taken by the Nazis to dehumanize Jews was to take away anything that shaped their identity or sense of self.

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The theme of dehumanization is scattered throughout the traumatic and horrific events that the Jews endured while prisoners in Auschwitz. The novel, Night, was written by Elie Wiesel in the mid 1950’s. Night describes the concentration camps where the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. Night was written in first person and recounted the horrid details and conditions as a prisoner in the concentrations camps. Wiesel began writing after a 10-year self-imposed vow of silence about the tragic Holocaust.

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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

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He showed the readers a personal view of the Nazi's treatment to the prisoners. The hell Elie went through in the camps is something that he will never forget. In contrast the dehumanization the jews received was very harsh it was something that changed their lives forever. They lost their possession, family,morality and their identity. Because of the strength Elie had through this horrible experience he has gained a stronger

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The primary contention in the debate on dehumanization is substantiated by the evidence from the book “Night”, as it talks about what Elie experienced at such a young age inside the concentration camp and all he felt and saw while being there. One significant aspect of dehumanization is how the Naiz mistreated Jews

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The pain and trauma Elie had to endure, just because he was born Jewish, the indifference and mistreatment of the guards completely broke Elie. In the beginning of the book, it focuses on Elie’s devotion to his religion. For him to completely disregard a huge part of himself because of his situation means the torture from the Nazis caused Elie to have to completely change himself. In one of the final parts of the book, Elie decides to focus a big part on his

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Grayson Mouratoff Kevin Mosby English Period 2 March 21, 2023 Dehumanization/Revenge In Dawn, author Elie Wiesel reveals that those involved in the terrorist organization turn dehumanized and desensitized by their need for revenge, warping them into killer robots who are capable of feeling no emotion. Elisha, who is new to the terrorist organization, is being taught the ropes of how to be a terrorist. He says, “Gad told us. ‘It’s cruel–inhuman, if you like. But we have no other choice.’

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The Nazis took away the rights of Jews because they believe they were less than human and imperfect. At first the tales of what the Nazis were doing to “imperfect” people seemed unreal. People refuse to believe “Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns. ”(Weisel 6) They will not believe a human being could do that.

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[He] was dragging [his] skeletal body which weighed so much” (81). Prisoners were forced to run death marches when a concentration camp was possibly going to be invaded, so they would have to run over forty miles with no resources and would have to trample over dead bodies. This proves how physically tooling and nearly impossible these runs were because there were large amounts of prisoners who dropped dead. Elie endured all of this pain to the point where his body was physically dying off. Elie barely obtained any food or water and he had to experience immense beatings and torture, resulting in his own body

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