The Silenced Painful Lives On the assumption that you and everyone who lived around you were put in the situation to leave everything that you had in your life and have it thrown out to be treated like an animal, would you fight back to get everything you had before? Would you help the other people around you too? In the story Night by Eli Wiesel, we get the opportunity to see the perspective of the life of a 15-year-old during the Holocaust. Throughout the book Night, we see how Eli and numerous Jewish people pass through acts of dehumanization. Dehumanization is the act of depriving someone or a group of people and treating them as less human. As many people were not able to handle the pain and make it out alive there were still some survivors …show more content…
They were forced to run by orders of the German soldiers. Then they were sent to shower rapidly with disinfection which seems very non-human-like to do. “A barrel of foul-smelling liquid stood by the door. Disinfection. Everybody soaked in it.” (Wiesel 36). This quote demonstrates that the Germans treated them as if they were some virus to take care of. The Jewish prisoners could not have regular showers only to be washed with some disinfection. Through this quote, readers can see the acts of dehumanization of being washed with something a person would not wash …show more content…
The cattle carts would pass through German towns. Whenever they made a stop German Laborers would go to work and would stop to look at them as if it was some kind of zoo. For enjoyment, they’d throw rations of bread at them, “A crowd of workmen and curious passersby had formed all along the train. They had undoubtedly never seen a train with this kind of cargo. Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wagons from all sides. And spectators observed these emancipated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread.” (Weisel 101). This quote demonstrates that they were taken from their right to eat. A fundamental human right they couldn’t even have. They’d kill each other only for a piece of bread to
(pg. 113) For them, food was equivalent to freedom. They fought aggressively like animals for a crumb of bread. It was unfair that prisoners were given a bit of soup or a slice of bread and shot at for being outside on sight .
Another aspect of poor hygiene was the sleeping conditions that Jews had. The beds that they were forced to sleep on were just wooden planks with hay on them. Unfortunately, the hay was infested with lice, causing it to spread to the remaining Jews with hair. Aside from poor sleeping conditions, Jews had limited places to use the bathroom and typically just shared a bucket, which was an issue when diarrhea had spread throughout concentration camps. In relation to hygiene, the Jews were not only denied showers along with clean clothes but were also “disinfected” with a foul-smelling liquid or oil as if they were parasites that needed to be exterminated.
(Wiesel 35), said an SS officer. Thus, commanding that the Jews had to strip their own clothes. This is dehumanizing in many ways, because the SS officers are commanding the prisoners to strip, which is very personal and should not be forced upon a human. Furthermore, this affected Wiesel and his father in many ways, as it took away their own freedom and made them scared. In conclusion, using commands to boss around Jews like a pack of wild dogs was just one of the many ways SS officers dehumanized the Jewish
During those times, especially for the Jews since the Germans wouldn’t help them, there wasn’t medicine that could really cure whatever they had…instead, the elderly in the house would always say that home remedies like herbs for example would help cure most sicknesses. There wasn’t air conditioning either so when you were hot, you had no choice but to stay like that. Plus there wasn’t doctors like here is now so you couldn’t just make an appointment and go the next day… you had to tell your body to fight the germs itself which made things bad for people. This quote comes to show that a lot of people had it rough at that time because it could have been from a mental illness, an injury or something they ate or drank but they would never really know since there wasn’t many things they could do to find out
The meal they get in the morning is stale bread and black coffee. Throughout the entire day the only other meal they receive is stale bread and soup which looks almost transparent and has few to no nutritions. ISIS is an modern day example of dehumanization. The terrorist group ISIS physically dehumanize their victims
The Nazi’s saw it as the victims didn’t deserve to eat good like they did. They felt if they starved or fed them very little, that it would be a proper punishment for the victims. The bread the Nazi’s fed the Victims werent full loaves or even a half. They fed them about the size of a small dinner roll. The Nazi’s believed the victims who got bread were unworthy of it.
Dehumanization of Jews in Concentration Camps During the Holocaust of World War II, millions of Jews in concentration camps became the targets of dehumanizing techniques accomplished by Nazis. However, this wasn’t the first occurance of dehumanization done by the Nazis prior to concentration camps; dehumanization of Jews had been building up for quite a while, but continued into concentration camps . Taking away a Jew’s entire identity, treating them similarly to animals, creating an environment where it became a fight for the fittest, all were methods of dehumanization initiated by Nazis. The amount of Jewish people killed in concentration camps can be attributed to these techniques, as denying that Jews were less than human made it easier
When Elie first arrived in Buna, his tent leader “had bread brought out for [the children]” (48). While this may seem like a nice gesture, it was to bribe the kids with food, something they desperately needed, in order for his tent leader to have sex with the kids. The last example is when the POWs were being transported by cart, the officers thought it would be funny to “take a piece of bread out of [their] bag[s] and [throw] it into a wagon” (100). The appearance of bread after starvation drove many to go psycho, “trampling, tearing at and mauling each other” (101). These examples illustrate how bread is used as bribery to cause further
But taking away one of man’s most important needs: food and water, is not going to make one last too long. Poor nutrition is one of the main causes for death around the world and this was demonstrated in various situations in the memoir. Not just the protagonists but all the characters in the story were given very little food, thus decreasing their energy and making them very weak. In the beginning of the story, people thought they could handle this injustice but as the story goes on, the situation becomes too heavy for Jews to handle and they start to kill their own kind as they are desperate even to get a little crumb of bread. “Some workers amuse themselves by throwing pieces of bread into the open wagons and watching the starved men kill each other for a crumb” (Wiesel 59).
Each time the Jews fought desperately over the bread, while the worker just sat back and watched (Wiesel 100). The workers who did this were mocking the Jews by showing them that they can eat whenever they wanted while the Jews starved. Similarly, many people died when the Armenians were gathered up and forced to march long distances from their
... I was going to kill myself..." (Wiesel 33) he stated this consciously knowing how horribly he was being treated. In Night the Jews were treated nowhere near to humans; the abuse and trouble they went through was undeniable.
Vincent Johnson Period 3 February 16, 2023 Rough Draft - Elie Wiesel’s Night: Dehumanization Explanatory Essay The process of Dehumanization is one of the most cruel things ever. You have men,women and children as some type of tool bending to the will of one supreme ruler and throughout this you will just be the cattle that are there for their entertainment. Elie Wiesel at 12 years old had to go through his horrible experience with fellow Jews at the holocaust. They were slaughtered like animals for the simple things, forced to do unimaginable labor work and even had to watch as their loved ones around them fell before them. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel shows the dangers of inaction by exposing how the Nazis dehumanized the Jews through
Animals fight each other in the wild for their food, they’ll even kill. The value of life doesn’t matter to them the way it should for a human. The cruelty breeds cruelty philosophy the Nazis instilled made them cruel, made them not value the life of one another. Almost like an animal, they didn’t care for one another after being hungry for, so long. Wiesel talks of an instance where a German worker threw bread into a wagon, and the three men began to fight each other for it.
To the prisoners, this was their tragic and unfortunate reality. Death would seem to loom at the door every second of the day for them. What would seem like a rather normal day for the prisoners, could always be their last, yet they would never know until it was too late for them. Auschwitz wasn’t only a place of looming death, it was a torturous science lab, where humans were its test subjects. The excruciating and unethical experiments often involved testing medical procedures on prisoners.
Punishments such as being wiped or starved were part of the harsh conditions they had to face. Nazi treated these real people as if they weren't even alive. Wiping them ad beating them as if their lives didn't even matter. “So he beat me, what can I tell you? Only thank God, Anja didn't get also such a beating, she wouldn't live” (Spiegelman 57).