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. In the first days of the Holocaust, “Hungarian police burst into every Jewish home in town: a Jew was henceforth forbidden to own gold, jewelry, or any valuables” …show more content…
For example, instead of calling the Jews by their names, they labeled them with a “yellow star” (Wiesel 11) or gave them a number such as “A-7713” (Wiesel 42). It is hard to imagine being referred to as a symbol or a number when one has gone their whole life with a name uniquely theirs. Even when everything in life changes and individuals try to find themselves, a birth name remains a constant part of one’s identity. Before the interference of the Nazis in Elie’s life, he was faithful. However, he begins to wonder why “The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent” (Wiesel 33) when His chosen people were in danger. This loss of faith in God also contributes to Elie’s individuality, starting from the ground up upon his arrival at camp because religion made up a large aspect of his life. The Nazis believed that they could now easily manipulate the Jews because they were a blank canvas. The Jews would soon feel like they were living in someone else’s body and a starved, soulless one at that. Jews faced incomprehensible torture inside and out. Wiesel tells of a dentist stationed at Buna who wanted to remove his gold