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Dehumanization In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

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People’s actions can bring great consequences. These consequences could be close to nothing, or something horrific. An example of this is the Holocaust. This event is talked about more in depth by Elie Wiesel who wrote the book “Night.” In the story, Elie Wiesel talks about the dehumanization he experienced during the Holocaust. Elie went through many horrible things during the Holocaust. This included dehumanization, physical abuse, and a major lack of human rights. Many people who were forced into labor camps during the Holocaust were completely dehumanized. This dehumanization happened as soon as they entered the camp as they were stripped of their clothes, shaved bald, and tattooed with an ID number. As stated by Wiesel, “I became A-7713. From then on I had no other name” (Wiesel 41). This effectively made Elie feel as though he was worth so little that he did not deserve an actual name. The other prisoners of the concentration camp also faced this dehumanization and most likely affected them in a similar way. …show more content…

Whenever people in the concentration camp did something not inline with what the SS officers or Nazis wanted, they were beaten brutally. As said by Wiesel, “My father had been struck in front of me, and I had not just even blinked, I had watched and kept silent” (Wiesel 36). Elie’s father was beaten directly in front of him, and he was unable to do anything about it. The fact that Elie did not take action when he saw this shows just how effective the dehumanization was on him and his fellow

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While many people believe that Elie was able to keep his humanity during the Holocaust, it is clear that what he went through in the concentration camps dehumanized him because of how he acted when his father was being beaten and later passed away. Proof that Elie was fully dehumanized in the Holocaust was

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The book Night by Elie Wiesel offers a harrowing account of the atrocities that were inflicted on Jews during the Holocaust. The Jews were subjected to inhumane treatment, such as being forcefully deported to concentration camps, starved, worked until exhaustion, and routinely beaten, among other forms of cruelty. The brutalization of Jews reached its peak with their systematic extermination in gas chambers and crematoria. These events offer insight into the dehumanization of Jews under Nazi rule. The book offers a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future Jews were subjected to inhumane treatment in concentration camps during the Holocaust.

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The author of Night, a novel documenting the horrible and inhumane events of the holocaust, Elie Wiesel expresses his experiences and observations in which he and his fellow Jews were dehumanized during Hitler's rule in the second world war. Wiesel's first experience of dehumanization, yet subtle to the community at the time was moving from their homes leaving belongings to a designated area called a ghetto, here they had to wait for their deportation, counted to make sure everyone was accounted for and separated from the rest of the world left in the dark to what was to come. The second was after being transferred to a concentration camp,where they were stripped of their human identity and reduced them to mere bodies that were forced to work

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The very moment Elie and his family entered the concentration camp the Nazi put them through slection. Where you were asked simple questions to decide if you go left or right. Those lucky enough to get to go left survived but if not were sent to death. After the slection process your head was shaved, forced to strip to nothing, and tattooed a number which would be your

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“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…” -Elie Wiesel ( https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/holocaust ) book that describes the Holocaust very well, through the eyes of the author Elie Wiesel, is Night. The Holocaust was an event in history that impacted millions of lives and souls. Through the book Night there were cases that demonstrated dehumanization towards the Jewish people, the selection, comparison to animals and other creatures, and starvation. At the arrival to the concentration camp, a selection was taken place and the Jewish people went a certain way based on gender, age, ability to do certain things, and health.

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“I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer thought of my father, or my mother.” (Weisel 113) Elie lost many values during his times in Nazi concentration camps, and soon became a person that even he didn’t recognize.

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The personal accounts of what Elie went through and the things that he saw, paints a vivid picture of the holocaust. He goes into great detail of the cruelty he, his family, and his fellow Jews faced. “Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Nearby, an SS man replaced his revolver in its holster” (p. 30). Families were separated.

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For Elie specifically, the loss of his home in Sighet, his first day in Auschwitz, and the punishing route to Buchenwald were all dehumanizing experiences that vastly changed his views on himself and the world around him. To begin, losing his home in Sighet, along with everything he knew, caused Elie to perceive his own identity differently. Next, the horrors the first day of Auschwitz ushered in had caused Elie to see the world in a different, more negative light. Finally, the route to Buchenwald essentially stripped Elie of any hope to survive that he might have had left, even after everything he’d been through. Altogether, it’s hard to discuss painful topics like the Holocaust; it seems it would be easier to ignore them or dismiss the events as a thing of the past.

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The Holocaust was one of the biggest tragedies and most significant dehumanizing events in human history. In “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the theme of dehumanization is quite prevalent. Dehumanization was a focal point in Elie’s struggle in the concentration camps. This theme is central in understanding how Hitler achieved his ends as it allowed him to justify the horrific treatment of the Jews. Through the events depicted in the book, it is clear that dehumanization happened in various ways, including the treatment of Jews as mere commodities or creatures, the violation and mistreatment of their bodies, and the methods of stripping away their humanity.

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“What happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent” (Wiesel 39). Many of the prisoners were subject to abuse both mentally and physically and were in turn affected both mentally and socially. Prisoners commonly became dehumanized and in the case of Elie and his father, became more distant socially.

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This ties back to dehumanization because humans give things they deem important or significant names. The act of taking away the Jew’s names means the Nazis do not view them as significant, further dehumanizing the Jewish prisoners. Similarly, early in Elie’s second day in Auschwitz Birkenau, at five o’clock in the morning, the prisoners were told to leave the barrack and to strip naked to receive their prison uniforms. During this Elie again, narrates, “Another barrack: the storeroom. Very long tables.

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One of the first things to happen to Elie and his family was psychological torture. He, his family, and the many other Jews with them knew that they would be forced to leave. However, in a sick game, the Nazi’s toyed with the Jews by making them stand and run; the Jews never truly knew when they would be forced to leave their entire lives behind. “We stood, We were counted. We sat down.

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A third example of dehumanization is the way in which the prisoners were forced to endure horrific physical and emotional abuse. This is evident in the way Elie describes the treatment he and his father received from the SS guards at the concentration camps. He writes, "The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. At times, they seemed to forget us.

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And through Elie’s story you can begin to see the treatment of those considered lesser, like how sick and old people would instantly be sent off to be killed instantly, and children and babies would not be spared this treatment as the Nazi party would regularly massacare and kill them as according to them they wouldnt be of much use. The story countines and It would countine to show the prejudice behavior the Jewish people would have to endure. But in the end of the story Elie is liberated from the camp but not without the trauma of what he had to endure and then the grief of his father, mother, and sister all passing

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