On January 30, 1933, Hitler rose to power, during his time of power Jews had been dehumanized, reduced to little more than “things” by the Nazis. The many examples as to how they had been dehumanized are shown in the novel, Night by Elie Wiesel. For example, the Jews were stripped of their identity, they were abused, and they treated each other with a lack of dignity and voice.
To begin with, Jews were stripped of their identity when “every Jew had to wear the yellow star”(Wiesel 11). They were forced to wear the yellow badge in order to be identified as a jew. From then on new edicts were being issued, they no longer had the right to go to restaurants or cafes, travel by rail, attend the synagogue, or to be on the street after six o’clock in the evening. Little by little their rights began to be taken away, they no longer had privileges or freedom. Soon thereafter they were
To start off, Moshe the Beadle was dehumanized by the people of Sighet. He was discredited and ignored when he returned to Sighet and told the people what he had experienced, "They think I'm mad," he whispered, and tears, like drops of wax, flowed his eyes."(Wiesel 70). The people of Sighet refused to believe anything he said, they thought all he wanted was pity or that he was out of it. Later in the story, the same situation appears with Madame Schächter. She yells out that she sees fire, her words were not validated or heard, the jews decide to beat her until she was no longer yelling. Only until they arrived at the camp did they see the fire coming out from the crematorium. Throughout the story examples of how the Jews treated each other with a lack of dignity are shown. Throughout the camps, examples of children abandoning their parents and people betraying one another are examples of
He seemed to be just going through the motions during his time in the camps. “In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.” (Mauriac XXI) This quote shows how Wiesel felt like he was a stranger to the religion, community, and faith. Elie Wiesel couldn’t understand why God would hurt people, and most of all why he was spared.
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.
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
Night by Elie Wiesel displays the effect of how Nazis took away the Jews’ basic rights
Some things are better left unsaid, and others are not. In his case, however, it was best to share his story. If these false accusations about Jews are still believed, then they will never be treated with respect. We now know today that these statements are false, thanks to survivors like Elie Wiesel. Chapter One
Here he is no longer ignorant to the world around him, here he experienced one of the darkest times in man's history. Elie having been through so much already lost his faith in god. Being treated like cattle every day, seeing hundreds killed and burned in the “chimneys,” and even watching live babies thrown into pits of fire was enough for him to lose his faith, something he had once adored so much. A pivotal moment in the story is the hanging of a young boy. When inmates were suspected of breaking the rules or attempting to start an uprising they were tortured for information and then sentenced to hang at the gallows. During this scene, one of the accused is a thirteen-year-old boy who was described to have the face of an angel. Wiesel brings him up to reinforce that his faith is gone, the death of the boy is the death of God to him, “Behind me I heard a man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where hanging from the gallows…’ That night the soup tasted of corpses.” And after that, we see him slowly begin to change as a person. Throughout the whole journey, Elie was lucky enough to be able to stay with his father. Through the text, one of Elie's main focuses is ensuring that his father is taken care of and no matter what happened they were to remain united. After rumors that the Russians are approaching begin
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered.
During the time period between World War I and World War II, when Adolf Hitler was a dictator in Germany; he degraded Jews they were persecuted and put into concentration camps. Hitler attempted to eliminate all the Jewish people because according to Hitler Germans were the superior race. In the book Night Elie Wiesel, his father, and his fellow Jews experience inhumane treatment by Germans. Jews were seen as inhumane and Hitler thought that punishing them for being a complete different race other than human was the correct to do. Germans dehumanized Jews by, forcing them out of their homes, separating them from their loved ones, and taking their freedom.
At first, the Jews were not able to leave their house “for three days under, penalty of death” (Wiesel 10). After, the Jews were not able to “own gold, Jewelry, or any valuables” (Wiesel 10). A few days late, all Jews were forced to wear a yellow star. Because of that, the people were able to recognize who was a Jew or not one. After implementation of the yellow star, a new edict removed them the right to “frequent restaurants or cafes to travel by rail, to attend synagogue” (Wiesel 11). Slowly the Jew lost their right as a human being. Later on, all Jews were force to live in two ghettos that was created in Sighet (Wiesel 11). A few week after the creation of the ghettos, Elizer and his fellow Jews were forced to abandon their house and forced into extremely crowded wagons. Within a few months, the Jews slowly lost their rights, belongings and even their
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.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
In 1920 Germany’s economy began to fail. After WWI, Germany was being blamed for everything that went wrong in the war. The Treaty of Versailles stated that Germany’s army was restricted to 100,000 men, they were to pay 132 billion in damages from the war, and they could have no air force. Germany was in a depression. Hitler became the hero; he promised the German people financial stability and his promise came true. Germany was finally out of their depression and working great, thanks to Adolf Hitler. Hitler was loved by many, he had saved Germany, and he was greatly admired by Germans nationwide. However, many events lead up to him becoming a villain, and basically ruining the world in the 1930’s.
Adolf Hitler’s mind was in many ways “complicated.” He was known to have suffered many illnesses ranging from hypertension, headaches, problems with his vision, to abdominal spasms. All of these sicknesses and disabilities could have caused him to not think “clearly,” but the list of his issues goes on and it is believed by some that they are the root cause for the Holocaust and the inhumane actions of Hitler. Hitler growing up unrecognized and insignificant caused him to create a growing need for attention, recognition, and power and these needs only continued to increase with age, but with age came these physical problems and psychological problems such as sadism, anti-Semitism, and national socialism (Nazism). Hitler developed power, but used it for awful things that cannot be blamed on him hearing noises and other “illnesses” he had.