Examples Of Dehumanization In The Book Night

Grant Oliver

Ms. Nava

Period

March 4, 2014

Night Literary Topics

Dehumanization was a big part of these camps. The Nazis would kick innocent Jewish families and send them to concentration or death camps. The main way they dehumanized these Jewish people is when they take all their possessions. In Night they go around taking all there gold and silver, make them leave their small bags of clothing on the train, and finally give them crappy clothing. All this reduces their emotions; they go from owing all these possessions to not having a cent to their name. If I was in that situation I would just be in shock with such a huge change in such a short amount of time. The next way they dehumanized the Jewish people were they stopped using names

For example in Night Eliezer’s number was A-7713. Not only were all their possessions taken, but also their names. Your name can be something that separates you from another person. Now they are being kept by their number, almost as if that’s all they are, a number. If I was in their place I would question my importance, why am I here, am I just a number waiting to be replaced? The third way they were dehumanized was that on their “death march” they were forced to run nonstop all day with no food or water. If you stopped or slowed down, you were killed with no regards for your life. The prisoners were treated like cattle. They were being yelled at to run, run faster and such. They were not treated as equal humans. If the officers were tired, they got replaced. Dehumanization affected all the victims of the Holocaust in some sort of way from

Firstly Eliezer’s father said in the beginning of the book that the yellow start they had to wear would bring the Jewish community closer than ever. When in fact it meant the exact opposite, the star separated them even more. Now everyone wearing that star, or one similar, were being treated differently and being sent to work or die in camps. The next ironic situation I found was when they were entering Auschwitz, the motto there was “Work is Liberty”. It gave the impression that if you were good and worked every day, eventually you would be set free or liberated. But in reality you would either work or be set free, and what I mean by set free is to be sent to the crematorium. It gave them false hopes that it was a work camp not a death camp. The final use of irony is during the evacuation of Auschwitz Eliezer had his injured foot. He thought that everyone staying behind for medical reasons would be killed. But in reality they were left alone. They were actually liberated within a few days. Its ironic because the path that he thought meant certain death actually meant certain liberty; while the path he thought meant life caused his father to die and himself be in a camp for another 3