Research Paper On Night By Elie Wiesel

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Those Who Ceased to be Men
“Never shall I forget that night,” (34); one of the most well-known quotes from Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, which details Elie’s lurid experience in concentration camps during World War II. His story shares how the German’s infringe on the homes of the Jewish people and ship them off to various camps, either to be cremated, or to die of starvation, exhaustion, and dehydration. The people in the memoir, and in other concentration camps, suffer greatly from dehumanization and desensitization. There came a point when the Jewish people did not even see themselves as men anymore, and as the story progressed they became numb to the deaths around them, they were also treated like and animals by the leaders in the camps. …show more content…

They take away their clothes and belongings, suddenly making them all equals. With this they lose their masculinity as well. After being transferred from Auschwitz II to Auschwitz I, Elie Wiesel acquires a new identity. He states, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (42). With his name being taken away, it is thus taking away his, and everyone’s, biggest identifier. Another instance of the dehumanization occurs at the end of Elie’s journey, after he has endured his father’s death and the horrors of Buchenwald. Elie has completely lost his will to live, and he describes himself in this way, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me” (115) After surviving Birkenau, Buna, and Buchenwald, he still does not see that he has life left in