Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

They Smell Even Worse, When They Burn Propaganda comes in a number of forms, some being more subtle while other forms are far more blunt. Frequently major political figures or movements will choose to perform this propaganda by portraying some foreign or otherwise opposing group in a negative light, even to the extent of portraying them as inferior and subhuman. Once this has been accomplished it becomes but a simple matter to have people commit cruel action against said opposing group. This process of dehumanization has been discussed ad nauseam within the political and literary world, with the subject matter encompassing a number of events from the Rwandan Genocide to the Vietnam War, and including the all too notorious Holocaust. However,

One of the greatest effects of the process of dehumanization lies in the loss of innocence it can cause within its victims. This can be seen quite clearly within the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, in which he recounts the countless injustices and cruelties inflicted upon him during his stay in Auschwitz at the time of the the holocaust. In one section he recalls an event in which he is called to the camp dentist in order to have his golden teeth removed in the old spirit of waste not want not. However he manages to evade this fate by claiming to be ill in some vague fashion. He then reveals that the dentist had been hanged a few days after for having been dealing in the prisoners’ teeth and upon learning of this, Wiesel recalls having thought, “I felt no pity for him. In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was safe”(Wiesel 52). The full impact of this scene requires a certain level of context. Before having entered Auschwitz Wiesel was but a young, simple,

Let the Vietnam War be taken as one such example. One of the chief practices administered during the training of soldiers who entered the Vietnam War was the establishment of the enemy, in the minds of the soldiers, as subhuman creatures, undeserving of respect or pity. One method by which they instilled this mindset within the soldiers was to have the them refer to the vietnamese by insensitive slang terms, such as gooks, dinks, slopes, or slants. The effectiveness of these teachings speaks for itself. It was determined within one set of documents that there had been, “320 incidents of torture, abuse or mass murder of Vietnamese civilians”(Robert C. Koehler), with perhaps any number of unrecorded cases. Furthermore, one must keep in mind the term “civilians”. While torture and abuse are in and of themselves truly unethical, it is made even more so by the fact that these actions were taken against civilians, who by rights had little to no actual influence upon the fighting itself, and could hardly have been found guilty of anything occuring there. This simply seeks to enforce how easily the process of dehumanization can cause people to perform heinous and cruel acts upon other, at times even innocent