Dehumanization In The Devil's Genocide

The message of remembrance is more aptly portrayed in Jane Yolen’s novel than in Donna Deitch’s film version of The Devil’s Arithmetic. The movie version fails to express the importance of remembrance because it doesn’t illustrate the Holocaust as accurately as the novel. If society remembers and educates themselves on the issue, then they avoid the risk of having to face another genocide. However, if society chooses to forget and ignore, then another genocide could easily take place right under their noses without them suspecting a thing. Society must always remember these tragedies.

The Holocaust was a dreadful and truly awful time period, people were dehumanized, and shamed into losing their faith while they experienced tragic and awful death and pain. One Jewish survivor documents his experiences with death in his memoir, ‘Night’, Elie Wiesel. The novel is filled with his tales of death, dehumanization, and faith throughout the concentration camp, Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, the Jews lost their innocence that they once had. In the novel, Night, Elie, his father, and his fellow Jews lost their innocence through dehumanization, loss of faith, and experience of death and violence.

Based on Night, during the Holocaust, the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. To deprive one of human qualities, personality, and/or spirit is to dehumanize one. In which, there were way more than a handful of examples to support this statement. Examples where men were deprived of food (human qualities), forced to go against their religion (personality), and wretchedly beat (spirit).

The Devil’s Arithmetic, based on author Jane Yolen’s novel, is a 1999 film that aims to educate viewers about the horror, importance, and impact of the Holocaust. The director, Donna Deitch, depicts the journey of a modern teenager, with an apathetic view of her Jewish heritage, who travels back in time during her family’s Seder feast to a concentration camp in 1941. The protagonist experiences the terror of the Holocaust first hand as she develops a new, appreciative meaning for her existence and family’s history. The film serves as a non-violent and efficient way to inform young viewers, who may be uneducated or disinterested, of the Holocaust. This is especially true when considering the film’s engaging plot, cinematic techniques that recreate the horror of the Holocaust, and the film’s primary purpose.

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. ”(Ellie Weisel). The Holocaust is often a topic authors use to educate readers about the horrors that happened in our world over 70 years ago. However no matter how many years go by it is not only important that the victims are never forgotten but also the moral message is passed on from generation to generation. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both depict the topic of the Holocaust but emphasize different evidence and information to create an overall message to the reader.

“A traumatic experience robs you of your identity” (Dr.Bill). Concentration camps during the agonizing Holocaust disallowed their prisoners to obtain a personal identity. The renowned memoir, Night, written by Holocaust survivor, Eliezer Wiesel, published in 1954 expands the apprehension of the life altering challenges and torment the Jewish society encountered from 1933 to 1945. Identity consists of an individual's distinctive characteristics, beliefs and mannerisms which was forbidden for the Jewish hostages of the Holocaust to attain. Elie’s identity was shaped and reshaped by the traumatic experiences the Jewish community persevered through.

This book shows how the Holocaust should be taught and not be forgotten, due to it being a prime example of human impureness. Humans learn off trial and error, how the Jewish population was affected, decrease in moral, and the unsettled tension are prime examples of such mistakes. The Jewish population was in jeopardy, therefore other races in the world are at risk of genocide as well and must take this event as a warning of what could happen. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, there was a room filled with shoes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. ”(Wiesel, 34) This was written at the end of the first day. It really shows how dehumanization can make someone feel. After all that the men, women, and children have gone through they never thought of revenge, and only thought of bread.

Of all the terrible events in history, the Holocaust may be the worst of them all. This tragedy was so terrible, I cannot think of the ones who instigated it as human beings. It was against many morals and standards that the world views today as common ethics. The most terrible part of this is, perhaps, how today’s new and younger generations are not sufficiently educated about this disaster. Although many younger generations do not know about the Holocaust, it’s importance should be emphasised in today’s society to learn from it, to realize that every human life is important, and to appreciate the blessings of the present day. I, like many others, did know about the events of the Holocaust for the longest time and when I did, I gained a feeling of disgust towards everything that occurred at that time. In the movie, The Devil’s Arithmetic, I gained a much larger sense of the hostile feeling that this tragedy brought on and it made me realize that this was something that is very important to know and learn about. For the

Prisoner clothes and numbers defined the Jews. Their names were a prisoner code. Moreover, on pg. 51, Wiesel states, “The three ‘veterans’, with needles in their hands, engraved a number on our left arms. I became A-7713. After that I had no other name.”

In the book, Night, Dehumanization majorly affects the Jews. Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than things. It makes the Jews want to give up. There are many examples of dehumanization, including beating, selection, and robbery.

In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.

These prisoner were of the enemy race. The Nazis imprisoned Jews while

It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

Mark Bakers novel the “Fiftieth Gate” conducts the collaboration of collective knowledge and personal accounts. This text effectively articulates and challenges the need for change in facts with the addition of personal accounts in order to educate the audience about the events of the holocaust. Baker’s deliberate utilisation of numerous perspectives within the text, different recollections and philosophies display the importance of both accounts and recollection in relation to the understanding of events. Reminiscently Baker’s specific inclusion of the italicised transcript “I use to play there on the hills with the sleighs.. That’s where they gathered the Jews..