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.
Over the course of Eliezer’s holocaust experience in the novel Night, the Jews are gradually reduced to little more that “things” which were a nuisance to Nazis. This process was called dehumanization. Three examples of events that occurred which contributed to the dehumanization of Eliezer, his father, and his fellow Jews are: people were divided both mentally and physically, those who could not work or who showed weakness were killed, and public executions were held.
One of Wiesel 's strengths in Night is to show the full face of dehumanization. It is something that the Nazis perpetrated against the people they imprisoned. The tattooing of numbers on the prisoners, something that Eleizer notes, is of extreme importance. A- 7713 is by definition an example of dehumanization because it robs the humanity of the individual. The abuses that the Nazis perpetrate on their prisoners is another example of dehumanization. The public beatings, the hanging of prisoners and making others walk past them, as well as the selection process are all examples of dehumanization. When Eliezer has to run at full speed to avoid being noticed during one of the selection processes, it is a reminder as to how large a role dehumanization
During WWII, the Nazi´s used a certain tactic to abuse the Jews. It was called dehumanization. Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. In Elie Wiesel's Night, he shows dehumanization through loss of identity,loss of humanity, and desensitization.
The Jews were forced to watch people get hanged. That is very unhuman.(the two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…) (61-62). This proves that this is dehumanizing because
In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel tells his story of his survival throughout the horrible event of the Holocaust, where inhumane treatment of Jews shattered their faith in humanity and hope. The Jews were stripped of their nature and were treated like meaningless humans, their purpose and existence meaning nothing to the Nazis as they were seen as nothing but a nuisance. Ridden of their names, soon known as numbers, and having to have seen the atrocities these Jews were exposed to was unreasonable and horrid treatment. Because of this extreme dehumanization that occurred during this time, it serves today as a way to remember those whose lives were taken and to impact society on how such behavior against harmless people can devastate
Dehumanization: to deprive of human qualities or attributes; divest of individuality. (Dictionary.com) In the book “Night”, Elie Wiesel, a 15 year old boy, describes the cruel, and dehumanizing treatment by the Nazi’s during the Holocaust. Europe, January of 1933, is the point in time where it all changed. Jews became the helpless victims of the German Nazi political party, and were innocent to the idea of what was coming for them. During this time, Nazi soldiers, and leaders, deprived Jews of all human characteristics by taking away their basic human rights, withdrawing them from their identity, and forcing them to march til death.
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
“Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide”. The memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel, published in 1960. It is about how Elie survived and what he suffered during the Holocaust. Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazi gradually reduced the Jews to little more than “things”.
“How does one mourn for six million people who died? How many candles does one light? How many prayers does one recite? Do we know how to remember the victims, their solitude, their helplessness? They left us without a trace, and now we are their trace” -Elie Wiesel. Wiesel succeeds in demonstrating that the Holocaust and the period of time which surrounded it “would be judged one day.” He composes his experiences into a heart rending memoir: from Night; believing that he needed to be the “bear witness.”
underlying theme. Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is an autobiographical novel that goes into depth about the horrors of the Auschwitz and Buchenwalk concentration camps. The characters in the novel go through horrific events and lose their religious faith. Jurassic Park is
Dehumanization in “Night” is represented in the discrimination and deniance of simplest human necessities. Hitler developed his hatred for the Jewish religion after WWI, believing that they were the source of Germany’s economic decline. Jews also seemed an easy target to blame due to history’s track record of antisemitic views dating back to Ancient Egypt. Hitler created concentration camps, factories of death, to eradicate Jews because Hitler thought they were inferior. This discrimination took place in countless places through the book; one, for example, when the Jewish ghettos were being liquidated everyone was forced to remain within their lines; they were denied water all day while standing in the blasting heat of the sun. Elie observed,
The exclusively human quality of narcissism programs us to believe that we are superior above all creatures; however, it is completely unwarranted as our transcendence exists only in our brain. We are no different than the savage beasts that lurk in the wild. Driven by raw instinct, our role in nature is the same as any other animal’s: fighting for the survival of our species. Even if it means murder. Even if it means renouncing our humanity. To ensure survival, we must only be driven your primal instincts. Despite it all, there exist domains where the laws of nature blur and even cease to exist— one being our society. Mankind has created such a societal structure that the natural world is no longer sovereign. Here, the laws of evolution
“From the depths of a mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left.” This piece of text is a quote from the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. In this piece of literature the reader gets taken along the journey of what Eliezer Wiesel faced during World War II. The reader gets to see the joy beforehand and the living hell the Jews face inside the concentration camps. Eliezer Wiesel faces many atrocious battles throughout his time in Buchenwald. All these times lead up to an important birth.
Dehumanization in Nazi internment camps was not an uncommon issue, because the whole point of the camps was to eradicate the Jews to stop their beliefs. In the novel Night, there are several examples of this. One main example is when the Nazis went door to door in Jewish communities asking for all of their earthly possessions, so they could relocate them to the camps. The point of the novel was to tell the story of Eliezer and his families experience within the camp. Very early in the story Eliezer loses contact with his mother and sister, only having his father left throughout the rest of the story. The minute they got to the camp they were being dehumanized by having to remove and give up their clothes, take a shower with many other men, and put on the clothes that the camp provided for you which were nothing more than rags.