Acts of Humanity and The Dehumanization of Jews in the Book, Night Terry Pratchett once said that, “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” There is a lot of hate and prejudice against the Germans because of their actions as Nazis in World War 2, and some of that hate is justified. In Night, Nazis treated the Jews as objects; indifferent about their feelings, and forced the Jews into harsh labor and living conditions. Elie Wiesel and his father, Shlomo Wiesel, are Jews who lived in Sighet, they lived peacefully but, then were forced into working in concentration camps when Nazis tried to conquer Europe. Elie and his father experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime. They watched as countless of their friends and fellow Jews passed away or were killed by the Nazis through the use of crematories or gas chambers. Elie also witnessed the product of inhumanity: the turning of people into animals; people fighting over pieces of food for survival, and the transformation of Elie himself. Elie’s experiences in Night represent the dehumanization of humans through ownership and the loss of freedom, and result of acts of inhumanity against humans. …show more content…
When people are given numbers they lose their identity and are being objectified. “AA-7713. That’s me.”(Wiesel 48) Names have power, they depict who humans are. Names are associated with what a person is, without a name a person is just a number, countable objects. Trees, and money are counted and are given numbers, but humans have names that makes people who they are. Humans differ from animals because humans can feel and have emotions. A number objectifies a human, and being an object makes a human lose his/her freedom and identity. In addition to losing his freedom and identity, Elie witnessed the outcome of inhumane acts committed against
He could not believe that the God he followed tolerated such things. During times of sorrow, when everyone was praying and sanctifying His name, Elie no longer wanted to praise the Lord; he was at the point of giving up. The fact that the “Terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent”(33) caused Elie to lose hope and faith. When one chooses to keep silent about such inhumanity going on, they are just as destructive as the one causing the brutality.... ...
Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood lifestyle is very pronounced within the book, Night. This book, written by the main character, Elie Wiesel, tells the readers about the experiences of Mr. Wiesel during the Holocaust. The book starts off by describing Elie’s life in his hometown, Sighet, with his family and friends. As fascism takes over Hungary, Elie and his family are sent north, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie stays with his father and speaks of his life during this time. Later, after many stories of the horrors and dehumanizing acts of the camp, Elie and his father make the treacherous march towards Gliewitz. Then they are hauled to Buchenwald by way of cattle cars in extremely deplorable conditions, even by Holocaust standards. The book ends as Elie’s father is now dead and the American army has liberated them. As Elie is recovering in the hospital he gazes at himself in a mirror, he subtly notes he much he has changed. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie loses his innocence and demeanour because he was traumatized by what he saw in the camps, his loss of faith in a God who stood idly by while his people suffered, and becoming selfish as he is forced to become selfish in the death camps to survive.
The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
callous to the death of their peers, and going so far as to murder fellow
Elie and the prisoners were dehumanized by depriving them of physiological needs such as food, sleep, and shelter. The second thing the German Army dehumanized the Jews of was love, these included how they were taught to not show affection and love for anyone but themselves and even then they weren’t allowed to care about themselves. The last thing the Germans dehumanized the Jews of was esteem needs. They weren’t allowed to feel confident, given any sign of special treatment, and care about religion. The overall effect of the Germans dehumanization on the Jews was big.They were told basically that they weren’t human as they were assigned numbers instead of a name. How would you feel if you were just called a number for
In Night, it is discovered that atrocities and cruel treatment can make decent people into brutes. Elie himself also shows signs of becoming a brute for his survival, but escapes this fate, which is shown through his interactions with his father. Firstly, Elie’s moral side, overcoming the temptation to be a brute, is shown through his love for his father. However, despite these thoughts, he still decided to support his father, which helps him detour away from the path to being a brute.
Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote Night with the notion for society to advance its understanding of the Holocaust. The underlying theme of Night is faith. Elie Wiesel, for the majority of this work, concerns the faith and survival of his father, Chlomo Wiesel. The concept of survival intertwines with faith, as survival is brought upon Elie’s faith in his father. Both Elie and Chlomo are affected in the same manner as their Jewish society. The self-proclaimed superman race of the German Nazis suppress and ultimately decimate the Jewish society of its time. Elie and Chlomo, alongside their Jewish community, were regarded as subhumans in a world supposedly fit for the Nazi conception. The oppression of Elie and Chlomo begins in 1944, when the Germans constrain the Jews of Sighet into two ghettos. During the time of Nazi supremacy, Elie and Chlomo are forced to travel to various concentration camps, including Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
One might treat others like beast, but is the treated consider human? The novel Night is an autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. He explains the dehumanization process of his family, Elizer, and his fellow Jews throughout WWII. Throughout the novel the Jews changes from civilized humans to vicious beings that have behavior that resembles animal. The process of dehumanization begins after the arrestation of the Jew community leaders. The process continues through the bad treatment given by the Nazi to the Jews, in the concentration camps. Finally the Jews are dehumanized to the point where they begins to go against each other; so that they could have a higher chance of survival, at the end where the Jew were forced to move from camp to camp.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
During the Holocaust era, a third of all Jewish people alive at the time were murdered by the Germans. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the systematic killing of the Jewish people was happening all around him. Although Wiesel does not use the word “genocide,” his account of his experience shows that it was definitely genocide that he witnessed.
A lot of the men's identities changed because of the stuff they were put through in their time in Auschwitz. When Elie got freed by the Americans on April 10th he came out with a different identity. ¨At about six o'clock in the evening, the first American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald.¨ (page 77) This briefly states that they are being saved by the Americans and that they want have to worry no more because they are safe. Elie had went through so much in his time at Auschwitz and so had his fellow prisoners who had been their with him the whole time.
Through the many issues our society has experienced, inhumanity is one of them. In the past, people of the world have experienced all types of mayhem. There have been powerful incidents that have occurred since the Holocaust which show that to this day inhumanity is still present in modern time. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, there are a lot of examples of inhumanity. The main character Elie has to endure hard times. One example is when he was forced to go to a concentration camp, or when he was stripped from his home, or when he and his family were split in half. Even though some people do not agree, the book Night is still relevant in present day because inhumanity still exists.