More handpicked essays just for you.
The Introduction to the book night
What effects took place during the holocaust
The effects of the holocaust
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel he recounts the horrors that occurred during the holocaust. The holocaust happened between the years 1933 and 1945. During that time, the jews were subjected to terrible, inhumane treatment. Hitler wanted to remove all jews from the death camps. He also killed most of jews by the end of 1945.
The Dehumanization of Jews Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than things. In Night By, Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, his father, and the other Jews were dehumanized over time to they became nothing to the SS officers. In the first part of Night Moshe the Beadle was thrown onto the first load of cattle cars and sent off. ( Night pg. 6) “They stopped the cattle car that Moshe was on, and the officers made the Jews dig a big trench and then the shot and killed them.
In this work, Night by Elie Wiesel, the author expresses that restricting basic needs and one’s individuality, leads way to dehumanization, in which deconstructs a culture. As Elie’s struggle slowly comes to an end, he analyzes his experience living in concentration camps and the loss of his character, which is emphasized toward the end of the memoir. While beginning to adjust to the environment and the camp itself, Elie is approached by a hostile gentleman wanting to have his gold crown because of its value. This instance is shown when it says, “If you don't give me your crown, it will cost you much more!"(Wiesel 55). Due to the fact that the camps had given the prisoners, small rations of food, and stripped them of their valuable items, the crown's value had increased.
The bond between a father and a son is perhaps a thing of beauty. It is sometimes what bonds them together to survive horrible occasions, such as the Holocaust that Elie Wiesel and his father went through. Throughout the march to the Birkenau concentration camps, some sons and fathers took advantage of their father's’ old age and used it to steal or betray them. This displays how dehumanization plays a role in breaking apart a family bond that was instilled in their hearts on their first days of humanity.
Wiesel also writes develops the theme of dehumanization in order to convey that the Nazi’s had consumed the feeling of humanity of the Jews. There were many acts that dehumanized the Jews which included starvation, beatings, murders, separation of families, theft of their belongings, and other things. Throughout the book, dehumanization grows and slowly exhausts the Jews until they have all sense of being human. After hearing about the bombing of the Buna factory, Wiesel writes, “We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it would have claimed hundreds of inmates’ lives.
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.
Dehumanization can be described as “depriving a person of positive human qualities” (Oxford Language). Elie Weisel in Night shows how dehumanized people were during the Holocaust. From examining the words and the actions of the SS officers, it is clear that dehumanization was a big part of Elies life during the Holocaust. Elie Weizel encountered dehumanization from the SS officers. His time in the concentration camps led him to encounter dehumanization constantly through things he was called.
The memoir, Night, written by author and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, details his harrowing experiences during World War II. At this time, the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, took control of Germany and its surrounding areas, eventually establishing concentration camps to carry out Hitler’s Final Solution: the systematic murder of European Jews and any other minority deemed unfit for life in Nazi Germany. Elie Wiesel, originally taken to Auschwitz, managed to survive the horrors, and dedicated the rest of his life to sensitizing the world to the atrocities he, and so many others, experienced. Specifically in Night, Wiesel depicts the efforts the Nazis made to dehumanize the Jews, and how these efforts affected the victims. Dehumanizing events such the loss of his home in Sighet, the arrival in Auschwitz, and
They did this by assaulting them, execution, and murder with no remorse. In his novel, Elie describes a time when he was punished. His memory starts when he and
During the death march, the Nazis threatened to the remaining Jews that if one of them slowed down or stop, they will shoot them right there. After going through many selections and death of their fellow friends, the Jews forgot about their emotions toward friends or loved one. This is an example of dehumanization therefore Jews started attacking or leaving each other behind. To them it was all about survival. When the Rabbi was getting tired during the march, his son took that chance as a way to leave his father behind because he no longer wanted to carry the dead weight, in this case his father.
Elie is affected by the beating because it makes him feel like an animal and has lost all his emotions. In the book it also states, “While getting beaten, “[Elie] had watched it all happening without moving. [Elie] kept silent” (Wiesel 54). The Germans didn’t think anything of them and just thought of them as nothing but waste. They hung the elderly and innocent children if they did one thing wrong and did not think twice about it.
Dehumanization diminishes the humanity of others into mere objects of indifference. Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, depicts the horrors of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young, innocent Jewish boy. He recounts the horrors he’d witnessed, and the fragility of human decency in the face of suffering. Their dehumanized treatment began as Wiesel and the other captives were loaded onto cattle cars and deported out of Sighet. A cattle car is meant for animals, providing conditions that are too harsh for humans.
“We were incapable of thinking. Our senses numbed, everything faded into a fog. We no longer clung to anything.” (Wiesel 36) The Holocaust was a very harsh time to live in and stripped Jews of anything and everything they had.
On the subject of this, the first experience of dehumanization Wiesel experienced was when he and his family were forced into wagons packed with other innocent jews and he says, “After two days of travel, thirst became intolerable, as did the heat” (Wiesel 23). For two days, eighty jews were packed together like sardines on train wagons with no food or water. This horrified me on how the Nazis treated them like prisoners guilty of crimes that justified their own actions against the Jews. The three stages of dehumanization, which is mental, physical, and emotional, were represented throughout the memoir. Mental dehumanization was the stage in which saddened me the most.
This piece of evidence shows that Elie rebelled against the SS to be with his father, which takes tremendous courage. Furthermore, in the earlier chapters of Wiesel’s novel he was beaten by a Kapo named Idek because he was in a bad mood. A French woman showed courage by giving Elie a mini speech in perfect German, a language no one knew she spoke, in order to pass off as an Aryan. Years later they meet
