Inhumane Torture In Night By Elie Wiesel

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, we are given a firsthand experience of the Nazi’s inhumane treatment of the Jews during World War II. This window into the treatment of the Jews is important to me as I pursue a career as an Army officer. As an officer it will be my duty to protect this country from our enemies and ensure that no people group is ever massacred or abused like the Jews were during World War II. The Nazi’s thought of the Jews as subhuman and wanted to cleanse Germany of them.

In addition, through this memoir, Wiesel also provided us a true definition of what dehumanisation when Elie got separated from his family. Wiesel portrays the emotion that Elie was having when he and his father was separated from his mother "Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother." Through the expression that Wiesel describe Elie we can see how cruelty and dehumanisation were the Germans to the Jewish people. They were making all the Jewish separated to many sections in the camp "Men to the left, women to the right." Wiesel also provided us the information that anything can happen in the camp to the Jewish people.

Finally, interactions with others shape who people become by molding their personalities and feelings. Once again, Elie was shaped by his interactions with others, specifically the Nazi’s. Elie’s personality and feelings were also majorly affected by his interactions with the Nazi’s at the concentration camp he and his family were once trapped at. He underwent a major shift in personality: “Never shall I forget the Nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live,” (Wiesel 37). This quote demonstrates that Wiesel’s was shaped into a whole different version of himself, with an adapted personality and feeling due to brutal, human interactions.

Nazis dehumanize their victims in many horrific and unimaginable ways. In Elie Wiesel’s book Night the Nazis dehumanize the prisoners physically, mentally, and emotionally. The prisoners are physically dehumanized by going to forced death marches, receiving awful food, and getting beaten. The food the prisoners receive barely satisfies their hunger and it is not enough to give them the strength they require to work and survive.

During Eliezer's captivity, many parts of him died and new parts developed in their place. In confinement, Eliezer's innocence and positive outlook towards life was diminished. In their place grew apathy and indifference. His innocence was stripped away when he was subjected to cruel punishment for doing nothing wrong. He quickly learned that not everything in life was fair.

In Elie Wiesel’s Night he and many of the other prisoners felt victimized by the guards and their use of power over them. One example of abuse and dehumanization is Franek, the foreman. He noticed that Elie had a gold crown in his mouth, Franek wanted it. When told to give it to him, Elie said no, so Franek started harassing and abusing Elie’s father. Elie’s father was unable to march in step, which caused a problem for him because everywhere they went it was in step, “This presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely.

As he found himself around people and an ambient where everyone survives for himself, he became aware that he has many responsibilities to do compared to his before concentration camp life. Elie develops new ideas based on the responsibilities that each individual possesses as he confronts with corruption. As he encountered with his father’s hard sickness, Elie understood that he holds many burdens that should be completed, since he wasn’t a child anymore. Now it was his time to take care of him as he did once for Elie, illustrated as he says "I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy.

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 Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel says, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.” (Wiesel, 2006, pg. 34) Eliezer perseveres not simply in light of the way that he his related Jews murdered before his eyes, additionally he feels that his God was slaughtered. The concentration camp experience pounds his chastity and his trust in a reasonable and revering God. Another evidence is shown in Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, in which he says, "Human rights are being violated on every continent….

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel does a good job explaining just how hard it was to maintain faith in a place like Auschwitz. Elie also made it clear that it was crucial to remain hopeful if one was planning to survive for very long. Only the strong remained reasonably healthy, despite the harsh conditions they were put through in the concentration camps. It was explained as being a situation where it was every man for himself, and you couldn’t remain emotionally attached to your old life and people you care about. Only few survived, and the ones that did stood out from the rest.

The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.

To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.

After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed

This, however, is not true. This is shown throughout the story with loss of faith and self identity. Wiesel loses faith a lot in this book along with other jewish members of the camps. Faith and religion is one thing that makes Elie who he truly is, making him more than just a “number”. Elie shows his loss of faith in God and in humanity through the “moments that murdered [his] God and [his] soul and turned [his] dreams to ashes.

Elie was held captive in concentration camps from 1944-1945. During his time in the concentration camps, he became grateful for what he had, overcame countless obstacles, and more importantly kept fighting until he was free. [The Holocaust is very important to learn about because it can teach you some important life lessons.] You should always be grateful for what you have, no matter what the circumstances are. This lesson can be learned when Elie says, “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more”(109).