...In Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night, Elie witnesses the dehumanization of the Jewish people by the Nazis as he experiences the loss of his humanity by the Nazi party.Elie first experiences dehumanization when he is forced into living in the local Ghetto in his hometown of Sighet Transylvania. As he is deported from the Sighet Ghetto, the Hungarian Police pack the Jews into the cattle cars where they experience brutal conditions and many die. After their long and grueling trip to the concentration camp they are subject to more dehumanization in the form of slave labor and mass killings of their friends and relatives. Thus being a few of the may reasons why dehumanization is a terrible act that cannot be allowed Dehumanazation was a terrible...
Words: 635 - Pages: 3
...good luck trying to find it. Sayonara, au revoir, adios, bye. Elie Wiesel’s Night deals with his loss of faith in his God. Wiesel’s problem can be root all the way back to 1942, the beginning of Elie’s awakening, his first insight into the real world, his first insight into the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a horrid event, of ruthless killing, of senseless slaughter, destroying families, and a whirlwind of destruction. Under strain, ones happiness and ones faith is slowly whittled under the knife of opposition and pressure. Elie has lost so much through out his life, losing his family, his friends, but most importantly his faith. The first example of Elie loosing his faith is when he arrived at Auschwitz, Elie and his father are directed to go to the left; a prisoner then informs them that they are on their way to the crematory, Elie’s father recites the Kaddish or prayer for the dead, revolt rises up inside of Elie and he questions God, “Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for? (Wiesel 31)”. Elie is hopeless, his situation rendering him of his beliefs unable to believe that a holy being could cause such grief. He was stricken with terror that even after his prayers, his deep devotion to the great “lord” that God has thrust him into this “hell”. Another example of prisoners in the concentration camp loosing their faith in Night is when the Pipel, a young child, was hung in front of the...
Words: 779 - Pages: 4
...Everyone is guilty of dehumanizing others in some way, shape or form. In wars, dehumanization is inevitable, in fact it is central to the idea of war itself. The German Nazi government in power during World War II thought of Jews in this way, leading to the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust in various concentration camps. Elie Wiesel’s experience as a Holocaust survivor is documented in his memoir, Night. The theme of dehumanization of war in Night shifts from the way the Nazis treat prisoners like Elie to the they treat each other and themselves. The beginning of the story highlights the way the Nazi dehumanized their prisoners. Elie had arrived with his family at Auschwitz, then he was separated from his mother and younger...
Words: 836 - Pages: 4
...109). Countless victims of the Holocaust gradually lost the desire to live due to the cruel acts of Hitler’s regime. Even after WWII, victims still would cling to the fear of enduring the abuse of the Nazis. Several victims wish these memories would vanish from their subconscious, but instead Elie Wiesel took the liberty of writing Night, which is a memoir that valiantly recounts his experience as a Holocaust survivor. His autobiographical account of the concentration camps grimly illustrates the agony felt by the victims and exposes to the public how the actions of the Nazi regime would mentally, physically, and emotionally affect the...
Words: 1080 - Pages: 5
...No Longer Human “Night” Dehumanization, a word that haunts millions during the time of the 1930s. Throughout the Novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization plays a major role. Wiesel portrays much of his story through similes and other forms of literary devices. Dehumanization is the process of stripping a person of every quality that makes him/her human, including his/her identity, individuality, and soul. Throughout the book dehumanization occurs in different situations, some examples are “If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.” (24) “He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.” (38) “He went by me like a shadow, passing me without stopping, without a glance.” (107) These similes are what...
Words: 420 - Pages: 2
...In 1986, Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism and campaigns against worldwide genocide and violence. In his acceptance speech, Wiesel said “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe”. Wiesel found himself a target of the Nazi “Final Solution” while still only a teenager. Confined first to ghettos, Wiesel along with his whole family were then deported to the death camps at Auschwitz in 1944. The tough labor, the gruesome beatings along with the terrible conditions of Auschwitz...
Words: 863 - Pages: 4
...The Power of the Human Spirit A person’s reaction to an event can change the course of their entire life. Adolph Hitler was a German man who believed his race should rule over all other races. Blue eyes and blonde hair is what kept a person safe in the 1940’s. Hitler used the power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) and the strength of the paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS) to establish himself as dictator of Germany. He was a very charismatic man, which was beneficial to his goal to have people support his desire to rid Germany of all “undesirable” people. Under his direction and with the aid of his followers, Hitler was successful in “exterminating” millions of non-Germans and non-Christians in a dark segment...
Words: 1744 - Pages: 7
...The Psychology of Evil: Night "Nobody is ever just a refugee. Nobody is ever just a single thing. We dehumanize people when we reduce them to a single thing and this dehumanization is insidious and unconscious," said Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, and former refugee. As Adichie said, dehumanizing, being treated like animals, is a horrendous thing and it has happened in the past and continues to happen today. History is full of situations where victimizers abused their power resulting in deindividualized and dehumanized victims. Such as Elie Wiesel was not just prisoner A-7713, he was a human being as were others put into concentration camps and many who have been oppressed and dehumanized. In Philip Zimbardo’s experiment the guards dehumanized and deindividualized the prisoners (Zimbardo). In Night the prisoners were dehumanized when Dr. Mengele made them...
Words: 1993 - Pages: 8
...transported to a Nazi occupied death camp in Poland around spring of 1944. This was during the final stage of the Holocaust (1933-1945). Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party. His plan was to exterminate all other races besides his. Hitler blamed the Jews for the lost war and the Great Depression from years prior. Being Jewish, Wiesel faced many challenges from surviving a work day, to finding a meal for him or his slowly deceasing father. Wiesel saw a lot of horror in his times in the death camp to shape him today. One personal insight I gained from reading the...
Words: 1029 - Pages: 5
...Dehumanization: Essential for the attempt to execute a population The Holocaust was one of the most devastating events leading up to World War II, was the Holocaust, which millions of people were tortured and murdered by the Nazis. Hitler was an anti-Semitic political leader of the Nazi regime, who believed that the Jewish “race” contaminated the Aryan population, and therefore needed to be eliminated. The Nuremberg Laws were laws that excluded Jews and non-Aryans from German citizenship as well as their natural rights. In addition, “Jewishness” was defined in racial terms. One strategy that allowed the Nazis to carry out the Holocaust was their disregard for non-Germans, treating them as less than human. Dehumanization is considered...
Words: 2143 - Pages: 9
