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.
They subjected the Jews to an inhumane process of dehumanization. They were stripped of their possessions, their names, and their families. They gave every Jew a number. Elie informs us that “The three "vet-eran'' prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713.
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Elie had been a firm believer in God, but when he experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust, it filled him with anger and doubt. He questioned why God had yet to save them, Elie questions “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You com-pare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith,their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Mas-ter of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (Wiesel 66) Elie was doubting why he should worship God when all of the bad things that were happening to him and the Jews. Elie was very resilient but going through what he had gone through was extremely hard. Elie was in camps for the majority of his life. It might not have been his whole life but this was a big part of his story. Elie was hurt by God and was mad but when you love and know someone will always be there for you, you will always love them. Elie “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” (Wiesel 91) In the end, however, Elie found faith again, understanding that God had been faithful to him through both good and
Throughout the Holocaust, the Nazis oppressed and dehumanized the Jews. Dehumanization is the process of removing a person’s human characteristics to make them feel less human. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, highlights the terrible treatment the Jews and himself sustained during the Holocaust which caused them to lose their human characteristics. Dehumanization is a recurring theme in the memoir and readers will understand how it has progressed and affected the mental and physical health of Jews.
The Dehumanization of Jews Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than things. In Night By, Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, his father, and the other Jews were dehumanized over time to they became nothing to the SS officers. In the first part of Night Moshe the Beadle was thrown onto the first load of cattle cars and sent off. ( Night pg. 6) “They stopped the cattle car that Moshe was on, and the officers made the Jews dig a big trench and then the shot and killed them.
Throughout this Essay I am going to focus on Dehumanization. To specify throughout the book the Jews are slowly dehumanized and seen as less than human. I believe Elie Wiesel uses the technique of dehumanization to effectively convey his message of the horrors of the Holocaust and the human capacity for evil. In the beginning of the book Night, the Jews were having a week of Passover, in Elies community they sang, ate and drank.
Elie’s first reaction is to question is, “Why, but why would I bless [God]? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of Death?”(67). Elie witnesses horror on a level the world had not seen, let alone a 15 year old child.
Dehumanization is the act of stripping humanity from a person, or in the case of the Holocaust, a whole group of people. In the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, the author describes his experiences as a young Jew living in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the book, we witness Eliezer and the other Jews being treated as less than human, with the Nazis gradually stripping them of their identity and making them little more than objects to be manipulated and exploited. Here are three specific examples of events that dehumanized Eliezer or his fellow Jews: Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir that describes the author's experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel and his family are deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp,
This is demonstrated when Elie is at the mass, ¨What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and their misery? why do you go on troubling these poor peoples wounded mines their ailing bodies?¨(66).
Overcrowded and underfed, they finally reached Birkenau, their destination. Immediately the Jews are treated less than human as evident by Elie Wiesel’s father attempting to communicate with an overseer, “The gypsy looked him up and down slowly, from head to foot. As if he wanted to convince himself that this man addressing him was really a creature of flesh and bone, a living being with a body and a belly. Then as if he had suddenly woken up from a heavy doze, he dealt my father such a clout that he fell to the ground, crawling back to his place on all fours.” It appeared as though the Nazis viewed the Jewish people with extreme dislike or more accurately, a burning hatred.
Furthermore, Eliezer and all the prisoners in the camps have their names stripped from them and instead get numbers tattooed onto their arms which becomes their only identity from then on. As they are lining up, Eliezer remembers, “The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel 42).
Even before the start of WWII, Hitler and the Nazi’s had started the process of dehumanizing anyone they deemed as a threat the the Aryan race. Dehumanization is the “psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment,” (Maiese). The Holocaust is one the most recognizable examples of mass dehumanization and genocide. However, anti-semitism was around long before Hitler decided to use his power to discriminate against Jews.
It makes them do things they would not normally do in order to survive, regardless of whom they are harming. The Jewish prisoners depicted every kind of violence and callousness as a result of their loss of humanity because of their struggle for survival. These victims were dehumanised by the Nazis, in addition to being starved, mentally and physically abused, and made into slaves. They were forced to submit to cruel treatments that caused them to behave in a selfish and greedy way even towards their family. For instance, because of the scarcity of food, the prisoners were given a few rations of bread and soup, which wasn't enough to satisfy their hunger.
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.
Elie Wiesel's novel Night shows how psychological change might result from dehumanization. While Elie Wiesel was one to speak out against the atrocities of the Holocaust, many others, including Edna Friedberg's father in the article, “Elie Wiesel and the Agony of Bearing Witness” chose to remain silent for time. Even though Elie spoke out about it he was still impacted psychologically. Elie Wisel was physically impacted because he started to think being dehumanized was normal. He was being treated like animals and believed to just “get used to the situation” ( Wisel 20).Most people typically think that it's unacceptable and that something needs to be done.
my eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone, in a world without god” (67-68). Suddenly, Elie the previously dedicated worshipper began questioning, and even realizing the ridicule of praying and iterating his faith to God. God was the one who damned them into the death camps in the first place. God is the one who kept them there, devoid of any hope in liberation.
When Jews first arrived in concentration camps, they were sent through many treacherous stations. The worst of all was the moment when Eliezer became non-existent. “The three veteran prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then
As for me, I had ceased to pray... I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). It is apparent here that the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people’s faith was delayed on some level. Elie refuses to pray to the God that apparently abandoned him. This is personified when he says he doubts that God has absolute justice.