Examples Of Dehumanization In The Holocaust

Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than "things" which were a nuisance to them. The Jews in these concentration camps were greatly disrespected. They experienced several beatings, were undernourished, and overworked. Elie and the other Jews eventually lost faith in God, and witness unpleasant events never to be seen again.

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.

They were told, “be killed or work.” The Germans dehumanized Jews by calling them a number instead of their God given names. “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel pg 42) Edicts were made, one which being every Jewish person had to wear the yellow star to be marked and separated from other races. In the very beginning of the Holocaust, the Jews were told they could take one sack of personal belongings with them, but their sacks never even left the ghetto’s of where they lived. The Jews were forced to have their haircut, then their heads shaved. They had one pair of clothes or barely any clothing at all. For food, they had very tiny amounts of rations. Every victim was treated poorly with disrespect. “We received no food. We lived on snow; it took the place of the bread.” (Wiesel pg 100) For every individuals hair that is kept in the case at the memorial museum in Auschwitz, needs a voice. These human beings were killed in horrible dehumanizing ways. They were ordered to either the gas chambers or the crematorium; or they died because of their bad health. “We did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which led to the crematorium” (Wiesel pg 32) Innocent people were tricked into walking right into the gas chambers. They would strip down and stand in lines nakes, thinking they were waiting for a shower; but instead they were in line for their death.

The Nazis dehumanize their victims physically, mentally, and emotionally in the concentration camps. The Nazis provide very little or sometimes no food for Jews, which results in death because of starvation. This is used every day by the Nazis to dehumanize Jews mentally. The biggest challenge the Jews face is staying healthy with very little food. If any of the workers are not capable of performing tasks due to sickness or disease, they are most likely to get killed. The Nazis often refer to Jews as goods for nothing, and treat them like they are animals. Separating young children from their mother is emotionally dehumanizing the Jews. The Nazis dehumanize Jews physically by beating them up for nothing. When Eliezer crosses Idek’s path at work one day, he says, “I happened

The Nazis attempted to dehumanize the Jews in many ways it worked. The destroyed everything they had; even destroying their faith. The Nazis treated them like dogs, and referred to them as dogs. Nazis tried to take away their identity by giving them a yellow star to wear. Disinfecting them making them feel

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.

On the subject of this, the first experience of dehumanization Wiesel experienced was when he and his family were forced into wagons packed with other innocent jews and he says, “After two days of travel, thirst became intolerable, as did the heat” (Wiesel 23). For two days, eighty jews were packed together like sardines on train wagons with no food or water. This horrified me on how the Nazis treated them like prisoners guilty of crimes that justified their own actions against the Jews. The three stages of dehumanization, which is mental, physical, and emotional, were represented throughout the memoir. Mental dehumanization was the stage in which saddened me the most. An example was when Wiesel and all the jewish prisoners in Bruna had assembled on the Appelplatz on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, his thoughts were, “Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?” (Wiesel 67). Elie Wiesel was very religious before he

The Holocaust was one of the most devastating times for all of the world. It strained the world’s economy and resources; death tolls were tremendously high and injuries were severe. This was one of the worst events in our world’s history.

Dehumanization is the process in which a person is deprived of their human qualities. The Nazis often used this practice on the Jews and other victims of the Holocaust as these people were stripped of their humanity, and many examples of this can be found in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. “Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even with these crematories…”(Wiesel 15). This quote showcases the absence of humanity in concentration camps. The Nazis valued the lives of the Jews so little that they threw the Jews into fires and gas chambers without any regard that those were human lives. The prisoners were denied of their basic human right, life. They were no longer humans, but instead they were corpses. While some Jews’ lives were immediately taken by the Nazis at the entrance to the camps, the ones who stayed alive were who suffered

Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place as the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being human. The feeling of dehumanization was very common between the jews. They were constantly being treated as in they were animals. The author and narrator Elie Wiesel, personally experienced being treated like an animal and he also saw how his father and peers were treated less humanely. The dehumanization of jews began because of their belief, they did not believe in the same things that the Nazis did. The nazis thought they were impure souls because they were not like the them.

In many ways, Nazis had physically, mentally, and emotionally dehumanized their victims. The Jews were treated so badly by the Nazis that they felt as if they weren’t even humans; they felt like animals. For example, the Jewish prisoners were always being yelled at with harsh tones. Eliezer only remembers one time when a Polish

For starters, when Eliezer and the other prisoners got to Auschwitz they were forced to get a tattoo of numbers, the only name the Nazi’s will call him. Miserably the Jews filed past a table, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). This shows the dehumanization of Eliezer because now he is referred to as a number rather than a human being with a name. Another example of dehumanization occurs in the beginning when they were crammed into cattle cars. The German officer shouted, “There are eighty of you in the car, if anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs” (Wiesel 24). This shows that the Germans thought nothing of them. Instead the Germans compared the Jews to being like “dogs”, which showed that the Germans thought Jews were not worthy of being treated like a human. In conclusion, in World War II, the Jews were dehumanized because of their beliefs, they were treated as unworthy objects that are a burden to

Eli Wiesel, the author of Night, demonstrates dehumanization by illustrating how the Nazis tortured the Jews. The foreign Jews of Sighet were being deported out of their homes. Moshe the Beatle tells Elie of his time in Galicia with great emotion. Elie shares what the Nazis did to the Jews, “Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns” (Wiesel 6). When the Nazis used innocent infants as shooting targets it showed significant dehumanization because as infants they haven’t experienced any aspect of life. When the Nazis took the infants lives at such young ages the infants are denied the chance for experiences of life. Additionally, the class of

The Holocaust was a horrific tragedy which started in January of 1933 and ended in May of 1945, the Holocaust was the mass murder of millions of people. The word was derived from the Greek word that meant Sacrifice to the Gods (Steele 7), also called the Shoan which is the Hebrew word for catastrophe (Steele 7). So many countries took place in this 12-year genocide, including, “Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, which were also known as the Axis Powers” (Steele 34). But, although there were all those countries they were all part of one larger group called the Nazis, were the ones who were killing all the different denominations of people. (Bachrach 58). All of this led to the gigantic catastrophe called the Holocaust. The

Wiesel makes the claim that the terror of the Holocaust existed in how everyone dehumanized one another. Moshe the Beadle is dehumanized by the people of Sighet. When Moshe comes back to tell them what experienced, Moshe is dehumanized in the way is discredited and shunned. Moshe the Beadle represents dehumanization in the treatment Moshe receives. This process continues in the train when the men on the train beat up Madame Schächter. When Madame exclaims that there’s a fire, Madame is not validated or heard. Rather, Madame is told to "shut up" and then forcibly beaten into silence. Once again, dehumanization is evident in how victims of evil treat one another. Throughout the camps, examples of children abandoning parents, people betraying one another, and internal aloneness dominating human actions until survival is all that remains are examples of dehumanization. These examples show that the Holocaust happened because individuals dehumanized one another. In seeing human beings as less than human beings, individuals were able to treat one another with a lack of dignity and voice. Wiesel 's work reminds us that anytime voice is silenced, dehumanization is the result. This becomes its own end that must be stopped at all