Dehumanization is a theme that was heavily explored throughout the progression of Night, and especially through Elies experiences at different concentration camps.. The first instance of horrible cruelty shown at the camps starts as early as his arrival at Birkenau, where Elie and his family first arrive after leaving Sighet. Within Elie’s first day at the camp, he already began to see the horrors of the concentration camps. As soon as he arrives, he is stripped away from his family and is forced into wooden barracks, where he is beaten by the kapos and forced to run in the blistering cold without any clothing. After this, they are all forced back into the barracks, where they are given some clothes which don’t fit most of them. At this point, …show more content…
At this point, he felt “from then on, I had no other name” (42). This quote shows how Elie’s entire existence has been erased and that now, he had no identity or history. He had no identity anymore other than the numbers on his left arm. After this, Elie’s sense of humanity will forever be changed, and will no longer feel human. After only a few weeks, Elie is moved again to a different camp called Buna, where he spends most of his time in the camps. At this camp, Elie is subjected to extreme working conditions within his Kommando, working countless hours inside of an electrical wharehouse and extreme physical violence at the hand of his Kapo, Idek, who often takes out his rage on his prisoners, beating Elie multiple times, hitting and beating him until he was covered in blood. He also whipped him until he was unconcious after Elie caught Idek with a girl and laughed at him,. He beat Elie’s father with an iron bar for no real reason while they worked. They were starved, hung, and refused medical attention if they were injured. These conditions are what lead to many prisoners losing themselevs and their will to
Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, we see many examples of how Jewish people were treated during their time in concentration camps. While reading this book we are met with many examples of the different hardships that Elie had gone through. Some of the hardships they endured were being beaten, tortured, starved, and in all dehumanized. Many examples are shown in the book written by Elie Wiesel. While reading Night we are met with many examples of the dehumanization that Elie was met with.
This quote shows how at the camp, everyone was viewed as an object rather than a human being. Elie states that he had no other name besides his number. Elie doesn’t express that he is necessarily affected by being assigned a number, but this simple thing that took place really shows how prisoners were not viewed as human. “A-7713?... After your meal, you’ll go to see the dentist.”
In the memoir Night by Ellie Wiesel, he describes the events of surviving the holocaust and going to Auschwitz. Elie was born in Hungary, Once Hitler's forces arrived, there he was sent to the ghetto. Soon they get sent on trains to Auschwitz where he is separated from his mother and sisters. He gets transferred from camp to camp until the end of the war when he is freed by the Red Army. Elie Wiesel and his prison mates have experienced terrible things throughout their experience with the Nazis in the concentration camps, eventually degrading them and dehumanizing them.
The Nazi guards in Night victimized the prisoners because the process of dehumanization desensitized them to the evils they inflicted. When Elie first left his Ghetto he was forced onto a cattle car with more
Lena Nielsen Mrs. Woida Honors English II 04 December 2023 Dehumanization in the Holocaust and the Massacre of Novgorod In Russia, the word ‘pogrom’ (погром) is defined by Oxford Languages as “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” It is translated directly as “devastation”. This word has made its way into the English language as well, referring to the devastation of the Holocaust. The novella Night details the firsthand experience of being a Hungarian Jewish young man in 1944 taken to concentration camps in the Holocaust, written by Elie Wiesel.
Avoid the habit of staying silent, especially when discussing brutal events that shouldn't be repeated, such as dehumanization, which is the act of separating someone of all the characteristics that make them uniquely human, such as uniqueness, soul, and identity. In the eyes of the Nazis, the majority of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps were in an equal position. Some prisoners did survive in the camps but they completely lost themselves while trying to return home. We refer to the Jews who were detained in camps as prisoners, but the Nazi regime treated them no better than animals. In his autobiography Night, Elie Wiesel writes about the dehumanization of "imperfect" people, particularly Jews, who had their identities taken away from them and were either put to death (a practice known as the "Final Solution" developed by Adolf Hitler) or felt lost after their survival, but who were also treated like animals before being put to death.
Elie's identity is reduced to a number, symbolizing the loss of his individuality and humanity, and emphasizing the cruel and impersonal treatment of the prisoners by the
Elie was beaten countless times by other people. No one was safe from the anger and hatred that fueled the Nazis. But what stood out to everyone in the camp was the tragic death of the young boy who was hanged. His death lasted longer and the horror the others had to witness as they walked away. Nothing could be done, this moment is where Elie no longer believes his religion.
Dehumanization. According to Dictionary.com, we define dehumanization as the act of regarding, representing, or treating a person or group as less than human. This concept is hard to comprehend, and the atrocities of the Holocaust have been forever immortalized in Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night. In this book, Wiesel conveys the tragedies endured by himself and the Jewish people, but also encourages readers to help others and be aware of the world around them.
As stated by Wiesel, “I became A-7713. From then on I had no other name” (Wiesel 41). This effectively made Elie feel as though he was worth so little that he did not deserve an actual name. The other prisoners of the concentration camp also faced this dehumanization and most likely affected them in a similar way.
Dehumanization is when a person is treated as a wild animal, worth nothing more only less. The Eastern European Jews, like Elie Wiesel and his father, for example, whose stories are intertwined in his memoir Night, endured horrendous and inhumane acts. The acts Elie, his Father and every other Jew endured happend over a time period of twelve years. For instance, when Elie first got to Auschwitz in 1944, the soldiers said “Men to the left, Women to the right”. Then in 1945, Elie and his father were transferred to Buchenwald where his father would die.
The Holocaust was the largest genocide to ever occur. An entire population was discriminated against, dehumanized, and then murdered by the millions for their religious faith, handicaps, sexuality or nationality with little to no interference from the rest of the world. Today we can only imagine what it was like to live through it. As a fifteen-year-old Jewish boy in 2018, these events are unimaginable, but for Eliezer Wiesel who was also a fifteen-year-old Jewish boy during World War II, it was his reality.
Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.” p.36 Elie admits that he has lost many fundamental parts of being human.
The book, “Night” was written by Elie Weisel, a survivor of the Holocaust. Weisel was put through so much at such a young age. The book he wrote explains his point of view of what had happened during the Holocaust. During Chapter 3 of the book is when Elie and his father begin to experience multiple representations of dehumanization of the Jewish prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. The way they feel dehumanized affects their identity and sense of self.
Never shall [he] forget those things, even were [he] condemned to live as long as God Himself” (Wiesel 75). This quote leads me to believe that the suffering endured in the camps lead Elie to become lost with who he was. Elie and the other members of the Jewish community try to keep their faith as much as they can even though it is being tested. As shown in Night enduring suffering forces people to become much different versions of themselves.