Survivors of many different genocides find uncanny similarities within their experiences. Elie Wiesel writes about his experiences growing up as a Jewish boy during the Holocaust in his memoir titled Night, which can be compared to numerous other historical events that happened to other groups of people. Many of the incidents described by Wiesel correlate with the horrific actions the Christian Armenians experienced during their persecution in 1915. The two minorities were severely mistreated and victimized by their perpetrators in similar ways, which makes these two genocides comparable. In fact, there have been suspicions that Adolf Hitler himself based some of his strategies off of tactics used in the Armenian Genocide. During an address …show more content…
They mistreated and abused the captives. One of the many ways the Ottomans and Nazis used to torture their prisoners was the use of death marches, long-distance marches that were used as a means of killing off the weak. The Jews and the Armenians suffered in different conditions: the Jews had to endure the extreme cold of German winter, and the Armenians suffered extreme heat in the Syrian desert. Elie Wiesel wrote, "We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn't freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death… I was walking through a cemetery” (Wiesel 89). It was extremely difficult to survive these marches, between the physical torture and the loss of the will to live experienced by these prisoners, and as Wiesel said, it was like walking through a cemetery. Likewise, in the Armenian Genocide, death and other forms of abuse were commonplace. The Armenians, like the Jews, were not well fed, but things like robbery, rape, and torture were more frequent with the Armenians (Whitehorn). Physical torture was common during these genocides, but psychological abuse was in effect as well. The governments took everything from the captives: their lives, happiness, and belongings. The CUP, also known as the Young Turks, took all the money and properties in Turkish Armenian …show more content…
The tactics used by their perpetrators were purposeful and cruel, and that translates into their inhumane methods of killing. One of the ways each group was murdered was during sporadic ambushes, usually occurring in remote locations like woodlands. Elie Wiesel mentioned one of these ambushes in the beginning of his novel, saying, “The Jews were ordered to get off and onto waiting trucks… They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs” (Wiesel 6). He then went on to say that the Gestapo shot and killed the prisoners, who were forced to dig their own graves prior. Very similar events happened in the Armenian Genocide as well, when Armenians were transported to a forest where a similar, but more violent massacre took place. “...hundreds of chetes attacked from all sides, cutting and hacking off legs and arms and necks... Then the bodies were thrown half alive... into prepared ditches..."(Balakian 84). In both instances, the killings were brutal, but the latter being significantly more gory. Both attacks were premeditated, hence the transportation and the ditches, and the officials conducting these ambushes seem to have no sympathy towards the victims, as expressed in their killing methods. If that wasn’t cruel enough, both the Nazis and Ottomans scarcely and poorly fed their prisoners, a deliberate plan to
Events similar to crushing the former inmates shows how much each prisoner is emotionally dead. Near the end, the still-alive prisoners are at the lowest possible stage of their pride and feelings due to the pain that are inflicted upon them. By the end of the journey to Gleiwitz, affected by the horrendous actions inflicted by the Nazis, the captives kill their own comrades, and do not have feeling for their death or life, they are simply mentally
For those who are unsure, oppression is the mistreatment of a group for an extended interval of time. Since there are heaping amounts of oppression in both genocides, this topic will be broken up into two subtopics; the brutality and dictatorship in the prisons, and how oppression happened in other ways both preceding and during the genocides. As many know, the oppression in the prisons for the mass extinctions mentioned earlier were unbearable. In fact, according to Wiesel, the mistreatment in the prisons were so bad that having frozen bodies and holding rocks so cold that their hands could have gotten stuck was just the norm (Wiesel 78). In other words, conditions in the camps for the Jews were so bad that something like being so cold that hands got stuck on rocks was normal to them, when it seems to society that that would be one of the worst pains imaginable.
As people we try to have good morals but, when faced with a horrific event, such as the Holocaust our morals tend to change. The memoir Night is a true story based on Elie Wiesel, a boy who survived the Holocaust. Elie and his father, Shlomo, went through almost two years of torture in different concentration camps until his father eventually passed away. Elie had to endure so much pain at a young age. In these camps, the dark and angry side of humanity was truly exposed.
Night Essay In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel has to face one of the biggest challenges that he will ever have to come across with in his whole life. Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Romania, Elie pursued his Jewish religion studies before his family was forced to attend a Nazi “Work Camp” (death camp) during WWII. In May 1944, the Nazis gathered millions of Jewish citizens including 15-year-old Wiesel and his family to Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. The tragic events that occurred in the memoir Night are considered a genocide because the SS Nazi army soldiers started to deliberately kill all Jewish citizens and they only killed them because they were Jewish and they hated Jewish folks, the Nazis wanted to become superior nation.
It was May, after a hot shower when the prisoners experience dehumanization, when they were told to run, “Around midnight, we were told to run ‘Faster!’ Yelled our guards. “ ‘ The faster you run, the faster you'll go to sleep ‘ ”(41).This dehumanized them because the Germans made the Jews run in the cold night with no clothes on, even though it was cold the guards made the Jews work for the clothes they had wear and for the bunks they had to sleep
What would you consider extermination to a mass group of innocent people? This act is considered genocide; the Holocaust was an act of genocide of slaughter on a mass scale of a group of Jewish people. Over 6 million jews were killed (11 facts, 1) Opposing people believe the Holocaust should not be classified as a genocide, however, the Holocaust should be considered an example of genocide based on the UN’s definition, the stages of genocide, and the specific evidence provided in the memoir Night.
Night, an autobiography that was written by Elie Wiesel, is from his perspective as a prisoner. The book focuses on Wiesel and his father experiencing the torture that the Nazis put them through, and the unspeakable events that Wiesel witnessed. The author, Wiesel, was one of the handfuls of survivors to be able to tell his time about the appalling incidents that occurred during the Holocaust. That being the case, in the memoir Night, Wiesel uses somber descriptive diction, along with vivid syntax to portray the dehumanizing actions of the Nazis and to invoke empathy to the reader.
Thousands of Jewish prisoners were killed per day in concentration camps. The way the Nazis succeeded in killing this much Jews was by creating gas chambers and crematoriums. First, in the novel night, Elie Wiesel described how he witnessed dozens of “children being thrown into the flames.” Wiesel was told when he arrived to Auschwitz that “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney.
In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.
Inhumanity and Cruelty in Night Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator of Germany, conducted a genocide known as the Holocaust during World War II that was intended to exterminate the Jewish population. The Holocaust was responsible for the death of about 6 million Jews. Night is a nonfiction novel written by Eliezer Wiesel about his experience during the Holocaust. Many events in the novel convey a theme of “man’s inhumanity to man”. The prisoners of the concentration camps are constantly tortured and neglected by the German officers who run the camps.
As mentioned previously, both the Native Americans and the Jews during the two different genocides had suffered from various factors. One of the causes would be known as cruel treatment, such as the removal of the people’s hair. For instance, in Night, Elie Wiesel talks about how when he and his father arrived at the concentration camp, the people who worked in the camps, such as the Kapos, ordered them to take off their clothes and have their hair shaved. The author mentions, “Belt and shoes in hand, I let myself be dragged along to the barbers. Their clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies.
The Holocaust was entitled as the worst act of genocide in history. Emotionally the Nazi 's tortured the Jews for years in concentration camps deprived them of their named and identity. Although there are many themes represented in the holocaust art and literature, struggle to maintain faith is present in the passage from Elie Wiesel 's Night, Judith dazzios "A day in the life of the Warsaw ghetto "and Alexander Kimels "The action in the ghetto of rohatyn" "Silence in the Jews Ghetto" It was a very bad time from the start for the Jews. They were brutally punished by the Nazi 's for no apparent reason.
However, the Armenians were not treated as harshly and not all Armenians were relocated. Only largely populated cities of Armenians were subject to relocation in order to stop them from rebelling. Additionally, contrast can be seen in the documentation of both genocides. For instance, during the Holocaust Allied soldiers had video of the death camps and mass graves. Many photos were taken and even civilians were shown the horrors of the concentration camps after they were liberated.
The Nazi officers wanted the Jewish men to march like they were animals, and to not stop until they deemed fit. The Jewish were also marching in freezing weather, and had no food or drink while they were marching. They were expected to be like machines, and if they failed as machines, they were simply finished off by the SS. Elie described, “When the SS were tired, they were replaced. But no one replaced us.
Jews were moved to the camps to either work or be killed (Veil 113). The Nazis also wanted to keep the children, but only twins because the Nazi scientist wanted to experiment on them (Veil 115). The Nazis had a plan called the System of Death where they told all the Jews that they were going to take showers and clean off and the Nazis took them to a medium sized room where they all stripped down getting ready for showers. The Nazis would then put some Zyklon B pellets into the chamber where it reacted with the oxygen in the air and turned into chlorine gas and all the Jews were dead in minutes. They then would force some other Jews to carry the bodies to the crematorium where the bodies would be