Concentration Camp Dehumanization Essay

The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. Did one volunteer to become one? Did you beat other prisoners? If so you would have to beat your family and friends just to save yourself from the labor and

Dehumanization during the Holocaust According to a 2022 article published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Nazi racism resulted in the persecution and mass murder of six million Jews and millions of other people.” Before World War II, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany where he sparked Nazism and started the Holocaust. The Holocaust was an attempt to rid the world of Jews, since Hitler was convinced they were an inferior and parasitic race. Not only were Jews killed by the Nazis, but they were also dehumanized. This dehumanization was done through things such as separating families, taking away belongings, inflicting poor hygiene and starvation, treatment like animals, and gas chambers.

There were many “selections'”, where they would take the weak to kill them, held during the time they were there. In the camp the jews would be beaten and humiliated and they would do this for fun and just for a laugh. Eliezer went through many odd things like a man making him pry out his gold tooth with a rusty spoon. They were forced to watch other prisoners being hung in the courtyard. They had to watch a young boy get hung because he was associated with some rebels in the buna.

The Nazis treated the Jewish inmates like they were farm animals,

Also the SS men made all the prisoners look the same so they could all feel like there was no place for them. Also the SS men’s form of dehumanization was abuse and the SS men were hurting the prisoners in many violent ways including, whipping , hitting, blows to the head, barley feeding them, forcing them to get tattoos of numbers on their arms that they have to live with forever, and much more. The prisoners had to live with these scars and memories for the rest of their lives and always have a memory of what it was like in the holocaust always in the back of their mind. It's a very awful experience that they went through while in the concentration

During the holocaust, The Nazis used a form of treatment towards the Jews to make them feel less and less human it was called dehumanization. This means to deprive someone of their human like qualities and merely make them feel like a “thing” that gets in peoples way. They used this method to make it seem like the Nazis were doing them a favor, they were killing the jews to “purify” germany in their eyes. To begin, some inmates at the concentration camps (mostly the newer ones) were usually told that if they were fifteen, “No. you're eighteen” (Wiesel 133).

They are guarded by armed men and barbed wire fences. In the camps prisoners are burned in chimneys, beaten by inmates and guards, and worked harshly. The constant pain, death, and exhaustion felt

The living conditions were bad. In the beginning of them getting there, they had no beds or furniture they slept on straw. These camps were also extremely packed full of people. The text states, Prisoners slept on straw-stuffed mattresses laid on the floor. (Source 3, History-life in the camp) Liberation after the Nazis fell.

Yes, the amount and severity of brutality varied depending upon the concentration camp in which the prisoners were placed. However, each concentration camp stripped each individual of their humanity. Elie Wiesel illustrates this impact by comparing the dehumanization to the lives of robots that could live forever and never tire. After a horrific run from Buna, Elie Wiesel describes their lives by writing, “We had forgotten everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs” (Wiesel 87). The prisoners of the concentration camps were tortured beyond the limits of being human and the effect on the surviving prisoners will last

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.

A large amount of stall-like barracks were installed in sub camps such as Birkenau. They consisted of cramped wooden bunks with only a single row of skylights allowing light to penetrate the dark space. Being stuffed like sardines into a can became a nightly ritual for most prisoners, nevertheless, sleep was the only thing keeping the martyr of exhaustion at

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.

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

To do this, the SS authorities were forced to beautify the camps in advance to the red cross offiicals visit. Additionally, they staged events such as festivals and games to demostrate the desirable living conditions. Similarly, in 1945, the SS officials made a film about the camp as a use of propaganda. In this film, it showed the Jews being happy, living a good life, and having fun. They forced the inmates to work as writers, actors, editors, etc.

Auschwitz was the largest death camp in all of Nazi Germany, and it had to be built somewhere. For Auschwitz to be built everyone living in the area was moved from their homes, which were later bulldozed to create space. It was built on what used to be a military base, outside of a to8 November 2016 “Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.” stated Billy Graham. It was the most feared place to be sent.