What is it like to feel like less than a human? This is what the Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust felt like. Dehumanization makes people feel like they are less than human. The Holocaust was one of the most cruel events of dehumanization in history. The Nazis were successful in fully dehumanizing Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. This brutal treatment often led to the loss of hope in these camps, part of the Nazis goal. In Night, Eliezer Wiesel’s memoir, he tells of the many instances where he experienced dehumanization during his time at several concentration camps. The Nazis eliminated people’s humanity in many ways, including starvation, nakedness, and taking away their names in exchange for a number. Starvation causes great suffering and deprives people of an essential part of life. This was one of the many ways the Nazis dehumanized Jews. The Jews in concentration camps were given only small portions of unsubstantial food. This made the prisoners weak and exhausted, while they were expected to still perform hard labor. “Bread, soup-these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Wiesel 38). In Night, Wiesel even recalls the soup …show more content…
They did this by making them strip naked as soon as they arrived at the camp. “‘Strip! Fast! Los! Keep only your belts and shoes in your hands…’ We had to throw our clothes at one end of the barracks” (Wiesel 26). Along with being naked in the cold, all the hair on their entire body was shaved. They had to run full speed in the cold wind. Eventually, they were then given prison clothes, most garments did not fit properly. Every prisoner wore the same clothing which surely made all Jews feel equal. Nudity made all prisoners feel identical, which helped promote the process of making the Jews feel
The prisoners are starved, shaved, beaten, and treated as “filthy dogs,” all while working forcedly throughout the day. Eliezer and Shlomo had to move heavy stones to wagons without having strength left. Family members were separated just because they didn’t fit the age range. Many just died because they could not last anymore, like Wiesel’s father. There was this thing called selection.
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…”
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
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.
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
Night Final Open Ended Question Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir about his life as he goes through the Holocaust. Eliezer goes through many situations that cause him, and other Jews, to be dehumanized by the Nazis. The three levels of dehumanization are physical, mental, and emotional. Eliezer was affected by all three. Never in his whole life did he imagine that this would happen to him or his family.
The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.
In this memoir, Elie Wiesel uses imagery in order to develop the presence of animal-like behavior on people when they are being dehumanized. At this point of the story, Elie and the other prisoners are in a wagon traveling to a different concentration camp, and they are trying to survive in inhuman conditions. To begin, Wiesel describes, “We were given bread… We threw ourselves on it… Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.”
This played a large role in the dehumanization role because by taking away the beliefs of the Jews, which is a big part of their identity, they were reduced to shells of the people they
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.
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.
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).
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.
They were stripped naked and had all their personal possessions removed. They were only given a prison dress and has a chain on their right foot. On the other hand, the guards wore identical khakis. They were instructed to do whatever they thought is right to maintain law and order in the prison. But they are not given a permission to abuse the prisoners physically.