Although Eliezer survived the bloodcurdling Holocaust, countless others succumbed to the Nazi’s inhumanity. The Nazi’s progressively reduced the Jewish people to being little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place, as the Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Germans dehumanized Eliezer, his father, and other fellow Jews for the duration of the memoir Night, which had a lasting effect on Eliezer’s identity, attitude and outlook. Wiesel displays the Nazi’s vicious actions to accentuate the way by which they dehumanize the Jewish population. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, among other horrific actions.
Even though Eliezer was able to persevere, he was dehumanized by the Nazi’s in an atrocious and cold-blooded fashion. When a human is emotionally and physically stripped of their pride, it weakens his or her will to live. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being an independant human. Elie Wiesel states “He took his time between lashes, only the first really hurt...twenty-four…twenty-five. It was over. I had not realized it but I had fainted.” (Wiesel 62). In the case of the Jews doing anything askew, they were to be punished in barbaric ways. This whipping by the Nazi’s had a drastic affect on Eliezer's identity, because before his punishment Eliezer had not yet altered his inquisitive mindset. Eliezer was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and as a result he was thrashed and trounced on by one of the German soldiers. This traumatized Eliezer and brought fear upon him, changing his attitude.
The Nazi’s not only dehumanized Eliezer, but they reduced his father from a human being into a “thing” that was merely a nuisance. The Nazi’s believed that they were on a higher level than the Jews, so they tried to take whatever dignity the Jews had remaining. Wiesel proves this when stating “he slapped my father with such a force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours” (Wiesel 39). The instant that the officer hit Eliezer’s father, Eliezer was in utter shock. His
After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.
Wiesel also uses imagery, of Eliezer loosing the ability to express emotion, to show the dehumanization of Eliezer and the other Jews who are led to undergo drastic emotional changes. Unfortunately, the Jews suffer tremendous difficulties in the concentration camps. The torture that the enslaved Jews experience has obvious physical effects, but it also has mental changes on them. The events that have taken place at the concentration camps has shaken Eliezer so much, that at the sight of his stricken father, he replies, “My father had just been struck, before my eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing.” (Pg. 37 old book) After the Kapo beats his father to the ground for asking permission to use the bathroom, Elieizer is surprised at himself because he is incapable of doing so much as lifting a finger or saying anything in his father's defense. Like the other Jews, he is dehumanized with his main concern becoming self-preservation. Thus, Eliezer looses his compassion for others, including his father. When his father dies due to dysentery, Eliezer states, “I did not weep and it pained me that I could not weep.
In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, Wiesel writes about the experiences of Eliezer, his family, and fellow Jews, he explained how the Nazis gradually changes the way the Jews lived little by little. Dehumanization is the process of stripping a person of every quality that makes him human and changing them to fit their needs. Dehumanizing started when Eliezer and other Jews in his community are evacuated from their homes in Sighet. They were transported in cattle cars which related the Jews to no more than livestock. After the harsh transportation the Jews arrived at Auschwitz a concentration camp where Eliezer spent many months of his life. They were whipped, ran, and starved till some of the Jews could not take it. In Elie Wiesel book he explains how he found the stamina to survive these cruel conditions.
Elie Wiesel struggles to fight through the concentration camp he must deal with many unfriendly encounters. “I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…” (pg. 54). Elie wrestles with the idea of how to respond and even if he should react he debates that if he does respond then he will get beat, but if he does not respond then he must watch his father be beat so he thinks to himself what would be more painful? By the end of the beating it is kind of ironic how Eliezer is more
Dehumanization is the act of taking one’s human qualities away from them, this can be done using voice and also using actions. During the time of the Holocaust, the Nazi’s used their power to abuse and dehumanize the Jewish people. They would beat and kill them, they would yell at them and they stripped the Jews of their dignity and rights. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one recurring theme is the dehumanization of the Jews. Throughout Night by Elie Wiesel, one can see the theme of dehumanization through the way the Nazi’s treated the Jews, spoke to the Jews, and how the Jews treated one another.
The concentration camps were beginning to remove all emotion from the people. They stopped feeling anything for others, and began only thinking of themselves. For example, when an iron bar beats Eliezers father, Eliezer feels no pity or compassion. He is madder at his father for not being
“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men” (PG.36). Elie is a jewish boy from Transylvania and is taken to Auschwitz where he is separated from his mother and sister. His father and Elie are moved the the concentration camp called “Buna” and spend most of their time there. They then had to be evacuated to Gleiwitz, where they ran about 42 miles to get there. They spent about 3 days there and then they were transported to Buchenwald by train. There they are rescued by Americans and a resistance part that attacked the camp. Sadly Elie’s father dies in Buchenwald due to a sickness and being sent to the crematory. Dehumanization of the Jewish people in “Night” ,by Elie Wiesel, happened in a variety of ways and helped Hitler achieve his ideas about Jewish people.
Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, Recounts his first-hand experiences of Nazi atrocities in his memoir, Night as Wiesel struggles to maintain faith. Inhumanity and cruelty are two key parts relating to dehumanization in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel. Inhumanity and cruelty dehumanization of Jews during the Holocaust. This cruelty is important to the theme in this book because this is what the Holocaust is about. This book focuses on the Jews of Sighet because that is where the author Elie is from, the book entails the horrendous story of one Jew and his father out of six million Jews. Cruelty is directly related to this book as a whole because it is basically what the Holocaust is about, Nazi’s and Germans mistreating Jewish people because
For instance, the Nazis treat the Jews like animals, no respect is given to them, they are constantly mocked and they are punished for no reason. In particular when Elie loses his name and becomes a digit he feels extremely dehumanized, " I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." (49). Once he lost his name he feels worthless and non-existent, he is nothing but a number to the Nazis. Furthermore, all of the Jews are tattooed with their new identity, from that point they became inferior to the Nazis, something so simple as a name forced the Jews into feeling less than human. Next, the Jews experience massive changes to their bodies due to starvation when Elie is released he is hospitalized " One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me." (115). Elie's self-esteem is so impacted that it changed him mentally, he feels as if the old Elie is dead and he is a whole new person. The struggle he faces in Auschwitz change him so much he no longer recognizes himself, when he looks at himself in the mirror he sees a corpse, not just physically but also dead inside. To sum up, Elie is traumatized by the horrendous things the Nazis make him go through, his self-esteem is so impacted that he transforms into a totally different
At midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. Elie and his father lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie is now against God, who remains silent. Elie and his father manage through all the pain and horrific sights and fight through it all. In the novel “Night” Elie Wiesel shows dehumanization in many occurrences throughout the book. Pg 13 “ The gestapo had threatened to shoot him if he talked.” Pg 36 “ He was weeping bitterly. I thought he was crying with joy at still being alive.” Pg. 53 “ Beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more
The Nazi army dehumanized the Jewish people by depriving them of love. Elie, along with most of the other people in the camps, aren’t really accepted socially by anyone. They weren’t accepted as a person, and no one even knew them by their names; furthermore, they were known by the number they had tattooed on their arms. On page 42, Elie says “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” By having their names taken away, the Jewish people had their social acceptance stripped from them. Also, their families were taken away from them, and they had to do whatever they could to stay with them. As Elie said on page 30, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone.” By separating the Jews from their families, they lost the love from them. By depriving the jews of social acceptance and their families, they hardly felt any
The mental aspect of dehumanization seemed to cut as sharply as any weapon used by the Nazis. Adolescent Eliezer seemed to have a strong spiritual connection before he endured life in the concentration. This seemed to be the case as he shared that at an early age, he found a master named moishe to teach him Kabbalah. The two would meet every evening and remain in the synagogue long after the faithful had gone (pgs.4-5). Conversely, after he and his family endured the camps, he began to make statements such as, “ Why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?( Wiesel 67). Eliezer being the faithful young man he is, never would consider words like those in his vocabulary. Along with the narrator’s religious pathing fading away in the midst of the camp. Eliezer and the rest of the Jewish civilians in the camp have to withstand the unkempt conditions of the bunks in which is the same place they sleep eat ,and release their bodily fluids. By this, I can look up to Eliezer, because knowing myself. I would not be able endure one second of being in the bunks, let alone years just as the narrator and his father had to
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize
At the young age of 15, Elie was forcibly moved into a ghetto and soon after taken to a concentration camp. Human minds do not fully develop until a person reaches about 25 years of age. (Sandra Aamodt, Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years, National Public Radio) Comprehending the Holocaust is impossible for anyone, which makes it that much more unimaginable and unbelievable to a child. It is quite simple for one to lose sight of himself when faced with a scene of pure death. It is fair to say that most people will do anything in return to live a while longer with loved ones. Therefore, morals are thrown out the window and traded
The Holocaust was a horrific time period when over six million Jewish people were systematically exterminated by the Nazi government. Throughout this period, the Jews were treated particularly inhumane because the Nazi viewed their ethnicities as a disease to humanity. Dehumanization is a featured theme in Elie Wiesel’s novel about the Holocaust since he demonstrated numerous examples of the severe conditions endured by the Jewish people. The nonfiction story Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on inhumanity and reveals human beings are capable of committing great atrocities and behaving cruelly, when such actions are condoned by society, peer pressure, and ethical beliefs. Elie Wiesel uses literary devices to produce a consistent theme of inhumanity.