Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Parvathy Krishnan

Mrs. Schields

Honors English II, 1B

15 March 2023

Explain specific examples of events which dehumanized Elizer, his father, or his fellow Jews in his experiences while analyzing how each of these events changed Elie (mentally or physically).

The Effects of Dehumanization

In the face of atrocity, how can one restore their humanity? The Holocaust, occurring simultaneously with the Second World War, was the extermination and persecution of Jews in Europe by the Nazi regime. Night by Elie Wiesel portrays a firsthand account of the extremities at which the Nazis, and even supporting Germans, abused and mistreated the Jewish people. Eliezer, along with the other Jews, undoubtedly endured a tremendous amount of physical and emotional

Elie witnesses the breaking apart of families, including his own, as well as the brutality of the guards, witnessing individuals being beaten and shot. The Nazi guards used this initial impression of the camps to establish their superiority on the prisoners by treating them as though they were nothing. This dehumanization, along with the traumatizing sights seen by Elie, leaves him with a permanent scar, stating that “since then, sleep tend[s] to elude [him]” (Wiesel 32). Apart from Elie, the other Jews were weeping and praying in order to cope with the horrendous events that they had seen. After witnessing the diabolical treatment of Jews in the concentration camps, the Jews’ perspective on the world has drastically altered and it only gets worse as their time in the camps

The act of throwing bread was a seemingly kind act, though in reality, it was a deliberate attempt to dehumanize the prisoners. They were aware of the hunger and desperation those in the cattle car were facing and they took advantage of this by tossing them small amounts of food in order to watch them fight and scramble for it, the animalistic nature of the prisoners humoring the German citizens greatly. Elie even described those in the cattle car as “beasts of prey” (Wiesel 101), offering a grotesque image of savage animals and comparing it to the Jews, a specific example being the son who murdered his own father for a scrap of food. It serves as a reminder of the horrific choices that people made in order to survive and could even have been a reflection of Elie himself, who was already harboring angry thoughts at his own father. This scene provides as a powerful example of the dehumanizing approaches taken by the Germans during the Holocaust, reducing Jews to something of a circus animal. It also shows how dire situations can cause humans to act in a way that they usually