Dehumanization In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

The author of the book Night , Elie Wiesel, explains his life, as well as his fellow Jews, as a young Jewish boy in concentration camps. The Jews who were sent to concentration camps were put under extremely harsh conditions and were treated like nothing but animals while under the control of the Germans. Wiesel illustrates a picture of these horrific events in his book NIght. He also describes the gruesome conditions the Jews were forced through while under the power of the Germans.
In the book Night, Wiesel portrays the dehumanization the jews went through while in the camps. On page twenty-four a German Officer tells the Jews, “There are eighty of you in the car, if anyone goes missing you’ll all be shot, like dogs.” This is an example

of how the Germans, as a race, had no respect for the Jews and wish to exterminate them completely. They thought nothing of them, and did not give them the necessities a human needs to live a healthy life. Another illustration of dehumanization of the Jews is when Wiesel claims “Our clothes had been left behind.” The Germans dehumanize the Jews by taking away their clothes, which took away their sense of security and privacy. The Germans took away everything so that the Jews are all equal, no one is better than anyone else.
The Germans are taking away their humanity so that the Jews would have nothing left.

They would become robots and do exactly what the Germans told them to. On page 42 Wiesel states, “The three ‘Veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on I had no other name.” Wiesel expresses dehumanization in this sentence because the Germans were taking away their identity as a human being and just making them another number. Another example of taking away their humanity is on page 101 when Elie illustrates a scene from the car he was on, “... he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt… the shadow threw itself over him. Stunned by the blows the old man was crying: “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me … you’re killing your father.” This after all they have been through with the Germans for more than a year. The Germans took away the Jews humanity by taking away their ability to care. When the boy beat his father to death, it became obvious that the Germans really had taken away all their humanity. After all that the Jews have been through they are finally stripped of any humanity they had.
Wiesel’s autobiography Night easily displays the dehumanization of the Jews. Wiesel clearly sees this process of the Germans taking away the Jews humanity. On the very last page of the book, Wiesel observes, “From the depths of a mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” By saying this he knows that he is someone different. The events that he suffered through has affected him and as much as he hates it, he has no humanity

left.