In what ways did the dehumanization of Jewish people impact their lives? The pieces of writing, Night by Elie Wiesel, “Five Chimneys” by Olga Lengyel, and the diary of Moshe Flinker all represent a prominent theme. The dehumanization of Jewish people causes their hopes to be diminished and people wanted to just die inside the ghettos and concentration camps.
In the story Night, Elie Wiesel is a teenage boy trying to survive the Holocaust. Throughout Elie’s perspective of the Holocaust, there are many examples of the characters around Elie and Elie himself wanting to give up and just die. The impact of the horrors the Nazis put the Jewish people in order to dehumanize them was the reason that Jewish people felt this way. Many Jewish people viewed
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Whether it be the barbed wire or just wishing for death, the Jewish people could not survive these dehumanization methods any longer. Many Jewish people found that the best way out would be running into the barbed wire. The barbed wire is significant because it was also the only place where you could communicate with people who weren’t in your camp. Many people would speak with people on the other side. Although dying by running into the barbed wire is brutal, it was viewed as better than being dehumanized further by the Nazis. Lengyel writes, “We were sorry for them, for such deaths were really horrible; yet we envied them, too” (Lengyel). Again the barbed wire comes into play. Many Jewish people said it was a liberating force. It was almost similar in power to the Nazis in a way. Lengyel writes, “The barbed wire was the very symbol of our captivity. But it also had the power to liberate. Each morning, the workers found deformed bodies on the high tension wires’’ (Lengyel). The Jews had lost all hope during their time in the camp. Through the cruel dehumanization methods executed by the Nazis, they were able to crack the Jews' spirits and cause them to think death is the best