Examples Of Dehumanization In Night

Dehumanization in the Memoir Night The human race is classified as an animal, although under normal circumstances, humans do not operate in the way that an animal does. The people in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night are an exception. During the Holocaust the Nazis associated the Jewish race as inferior to wild beasts and treated them as such in widely spread concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe that gassed, burned, beat, or in cold blood, shot thousands of Jews every new day. Wiesel explains his experience with restraint one would not expect as he recounts what he has seen and how appallingly evil the Germans treat his kind. Sadistic Nazi treatment of the prisoners in Night tears the mentality of the Jews apart leaving animalistic instincts

The Hungarian police arrived and began by building up trust. After a few days, they clamped down on the Jews of Sighet by taking valuables, arresting leaders of the church, and closing down shops and synagogues kind of like how one would catch a cat that got loose. Tread lightly towards it to build trust, then burst out and snatch it in one swift motion. All the Jews were moved into ghettos and made to leave to camps. The police did not tell the Jews how atrocious the camps were because the Jews did not deserve to know. They were deemed inferior by Hitler and didn’t have the right to stay in their hometowns so why would they have the right of knowing where they were really traveling? The Jews were loaded into trains that offered a whole new aspect of inhumane

The first step is in Sighet when the Jews are made to wear the yellow Star of David. Following the initial selection at Birkenau, those chosen to work are stripped of their clothing and all of their hair. Losing their hair and clothing is not the problem however, it is more being stripped of dignity and distinctiveness. Every prisoner is put on the same level and is stamped with a number. First they were deprived of freedom of religion, then they lost their clothing and hair, and family, and even their names, but the German guards certainly had names for them. Pigs, beasts, dogs, and bastards they are named, and being labeled as these on many occasions, they begin to act like what they are called, lashing out at each other like savage beasts. Since each prisoner is on the same level, there is no reason for them or the German guards to pick and choose whom they took their wrath out