How To Dehumanize Animals In Night

You see it at the zoo, you see it at shelters, you see wild animals in a cage, which thoroughly describes how the Jewish community was treated at the time of the treacherous period known as the Holocaust, which started in 1939. The Holocaust was a period when the Nazi party and Hitler put millions of Jewish people in concentration camps, where they would then die or work until death. However, they were treated with dehumanizing qualities, similar to how a wild animal would be treated. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the Schutzstaffel or the SS officers, treated Elie, the main character, and the Jewish prisoners in a dehumanizing way by taking their belongings away, giving them commands like wild dogs, and calling and tattooing them with

As several Jews jumped off the wagon an SS officer said, “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 29). In this instance, they treat the Jews as if they were not human, but a herd of animals, giving countless commands to separate them from their loving family. Elie and his father were forced against their own will to seperate from their own family, even if they did not want to. This made it a very brutal and dehumanizing process. Moreover, when in the barrack they were commanded several times to, “Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes…” (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