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Dehumanization in the Holocaust
The holocaust thematic essay
The holocaust thematic essay
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The Holocaust was a horrible time for everyone involved, but for the Jews it was the worst. The Jews no longer had names they became numbers. Also they would fight and the S.S. would watch and enjoy. They lost all personal items, then forced to look and dress the same. This was an extremely painful and agonizing process to dehumanize the Jews. Which made it easier to take control of the Jews and get rid of them.
Concentration camps gave numbers to help keep track of their prisoners. It made the Jews feel unimportant which was the first step to dehumanizing them. When Elie got his number it was easy to see how it made him feel unwanted as he said in this quote from the book Night, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.Pg. 42”
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Then they were taken to the barber to have their heads shaved. This made them look the same and help with the equality so they are all treated equally as bad. It made them all feel equal to look the same even if it was not a good equal. Every possession they had left had being taken and throw in a pile. “Our clothes were to be thrown on the floor at the back of the barrack. There was a pile there already. New suits, old ones, torn over coats, rags. For us it meant true equality: nakedness. Pg. 35” This was the moment the people lost faith and gave up which is important to dehumanize because they do not care what is happening to them. They do not try to change what is going on around them and they no longer care for one another.
The Holocaust was a big event in our history and it is extremely important to learn what happened to prevent it from occurring again. The Jews were striped from society for no reason except they had different beliefs then the Nazis.They lost their basic rights and were treated like animals. Dehumanization was the easiest way to get rid of the Jews. That was made possible by the camps robbing them of their names, clothes, and personal
In the book Night the character Eliezer faces many challenges and sees many things. But the most prominent feature of all the death camps that Eliezer is in was Dehumanization.Dehumanization is what the S.S. used to keep the jews in line in the concentration camps while they were in a animal like state where it’s every man for himself.Therefore this proves that dehumanization is a process that was used by the SS to keep the Jews in check by using the crematorium,beatings,and executions to make the Jews less human.
On their way to the concentration camp, a German officer said, “’There are eighty of you in the car… If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot like “dogs” ”’ (Wiesel 24). This shows that the Germans compared the Jews to dogs or animals, and that the German have no respect towards the Jews. Arrived at the concentration camp, the Jews were separated from their friends and family. The first thing of the wagon, a SS officer said, “’Men to the left! Women to the right!”’ (Wiesel 29). After the separation, Eliezer saw the crematories. There he saw “’a truck [that] drew close and unloaded its hold: small children, babies … thrown into the flames.” (Wiesel 32). This dehumanize the Jews, because they were able to smell and see other Jews burn in the flames. Later on the Jew were forced to leave their cloth behind and have been promise that they will received other cloth after a shower. However, they were force to work for the new cloth; they were forced to run naked, at midnight, in the cold. Being force to work for the cloth, by running in the cold of midnight is dehumanizing. At the camp, the Jews were not treated like human. They were force to do thing that was unhuman and that dehumanized
Due to the cruel punishment Elie endures from the Nazi Army and other prisoners that he comes
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.
They were treated like animals instead of humans. Dehumanization of the camps is added to the novel to allow the reader to get a more in-depth and realistic look into the tragic times for many Jews.
Work makes you free" (Wiesel 40). The Jews were only given two options; to works as slaves or to be killed. " Work or crematorium—the choice is yours" (Wiesel 39). In this camp, the Jews were no longer called by their names. According to the novel, Eliezer stated, " I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name"( Wiesel 42). The stripping of their names is considered as dehumanization because the Germans were taking away their identities. Not only were the Jews treated so poorly to have them feel worthless, they also felt like they didn’t belong to this world by not having a name, peace, or
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.
Dehumanization Through Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations.
The Holocaust was the time period when Adolf Hitler was in control of the territory of Germany and wanted the extinction of the Jews. The Holocaust was a very vigorous on the Jews because they were treated the worst and had the worst living conditions. The Holocaust derived the Jews of their wealth, and little bit of humanity that they held dear to themselves. Adolf Hitler established laws to make it basically illegal to be a Jew in Germany. Since Adolf Hitler was in power he commanded that all Jews properties and valuables be taken. For example, in the book “Maus” it states, “He had to sell his business to a German and run out from the country without even the money.”(
callous to the death of their peers, and going so far as to murder fellow
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 and gave them all numbers. 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 them losing all their possessions, their name, or being treated unfairly/ like animals.
“He’s the man who’s lived through hell without every hating. Who’s been exposed to the most depraved aspects of human nature but still manages to find love, to believe in God, to experience joy.” This was a quote said by Oprah Winfrey during her interview with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. No person who has not experienced the Holocaust and all its horrors could ever relate to Elie Wiesel. He endured massive amounts of torture, physically, mentally, and emotionally just because he was a Jew. One simple aspect of Wiesel’s life he neither chose or could changed shaped his life. It is important to take a look at Wiesel’s life to see the pain that he went through and try to understand the experiences that happened in his life. Elie Wiesel is a well respected, influential figure with an astonishing life story. Although Elie Wiesel had undergone some of the harshest experiences possible, he was still a man able to enjoy life after the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was a mass genocide a killing of a mass number of people froma a certain race or group. Since Hitler wanted to kill the undesirables he made camp to put them in and then they would be killed or they would suffer in one way or another. Once a person was killed in the camps they would cremate them so they wouldn't have dead bodies laying around everywhere. People in the camps were killed by Nazi soliders shooting them, being burned to death, starving, or being killed by sickness. A lot of people would die from dieases like scabies. Most people would contract scabies or lice because the camps were very dirty and they were so cramped so sickness spread quickly. Another way of the undesirables being killed were gas chambers. The Nazi's would tell them they were going to take them to shower but in reality they were taking them to the gas chambers tho kill them. People would suffer in the gas chambers because the gas would slowly kill them.
To begin with the holocaust had a great impact in history even though it was a time of disaster, murder, and discrimination. It was a time in which Adolf Hitler,German politician and Nazi party leader, wanted all Jews suffering or dead. Adolf Hitler turned everyone against the Jews because he believed that they were to wealthy and too powerful so he wanted to eliminate all of them. The Jews went through a lot of suffering and pain. The German soldiers which took commands from their leader, Adolf Hitler, put some Jews to work and killed others. Many Jews didn't get to work they were killed instantly. All women were separated from the man and woman were mostly killed instantly only some got the opportunity to work. The some ways that the jews were killed is that they were put into gas chambers by tons or shot by soldiers. Jews were also dying by starvation dehydration soldiers would not give them enough food or water. They would only want those with blue eyes and blonde hair they discriminated all the others. Soldiers would not only kill the Jews but torture them for anything they did. The Jews would be transported from camp to camp walking even in the worst weather conditions which also many died from it.
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic and trying times for the Jewish people. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and other minorities that the Nazis considered undesirable were detained in concentration camps, death camps, or labor camps. There, they were forced to work and live in the harshest of conditions, starved, and brutally murdered. Horrific things went on in Auschwitz and Majdenek during the Holocaust that wiped out approximately 1,378,000 people combined. “There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” –Fidel Castro