Night Research Paper

During the Holocaust, Jews were treated as if they were worth nothing and often physically abused. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie describes the first-hand experience he, his father, and millions of other Jews faced. The Jews were beaten and mentally abused, they were only fed enough food to survive. The treatment of the Jews was dehumanizing and brutal. The Jews faced physical abuse for little to no reason at all. The treatment was severe and dehumanizing. The Jews were hung, whipped, kicked, and shot. The few Jews who survived faced permanent PTSD. “The Hungarian police used their rifle butts, their clubs to strike old men and women, children and cripples indiscriminately.” (Wiesel, 16) The police in charge of the ghettos abused the people who couldn’t

This is a dehumanizing experience for the Jews. “My sister and I. we helped as best we could.”(Wiesel, 16) Elie and his sister felt as if they needed help. They worried about them and took responsibility. This was a defining moment for Elie because it expressed how he was in a dangerous environment and had no choice but to help. For Elie and all Jews, this is a dehumanizing moment where they can only survive by helping each other. The Nazis also forced dehumanization into the Jews’ mental state. The Nazis stripped them of what made them see themselves as humans. Instead of names, Jews were assigned a number as their identity. The Jews were viewed and treated like work cattle. Elie states, “They had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog.”(Wiesel, 85). The Nazis had no hesitation in wiping out the Jews. The Jews became slaves, which forced a mindset into them that they had no identity and did not matter. This degraded the Jews into viewing that their only purpose for living was to work under others because they were Jewish. “I became