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Essays on the holocaust research paper
Essays on the holocaust research paper
Introduction to holocaust essay
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The Nazis during world War II were extremely cruel towards the Jews. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews. they wanted to make the Jews feel worthless, like slaves. The Nazis didn't want the Jews to feel any different than any other Jew. A few of the many ways the Nazis dehumanized the Jews were; the way they transported them like cattle in the box cars, the way the Nazis made them all the same, and the lifestyle the Nazis gave them in the camps. These actions performed by the Nazis had a lasting effect on Elie Wiesel for the rest of his life.
One instance of the Jews being dehumanized by the Nazis, was how the Nazis transported them to the camps. The Jews were stuffed inside the cattle cars like animals. this had a lasting effect on Eliezer and his fellow Jews. The tight space would make some of the Jews go insane. the Nazis gave them ample amount of food and water, this made the Jews weak so that they couldn't do anything.”Some of the men pressed against the bars. there was nothing there; only darkness.”(Pg. 34 Para. 2) This quote shows how tight spaced and miserable the cattle car transport was for Eliezer and his fellow Jews.
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Another way Eliezer and all of the Jews were dehumanized was how they were made all the same.
Every Jew inside the camp looked the same. When the Jews got inside the camp one of the first things the Nazis ordered them to do was strip down from all there clothes and belongings.”(Pg 44 Para. 1) For us this was the true equality: nakedness. Shivering with the cold.” This quote shows how the Nazis wanted the Jews to feel as worthless as dirt, like they were all the same with no differences between them. The Jews knew this too. They all felt equal, like they were all going into the same grave.The cruelty the Nazis showed towards the Jews was
riveting. The way the Eliezer and the other Jews were forced to live inside the camp was a very dehumanizing experience.”The Barracks we had made to go into was very long. In the roof were some blue-tinged skylights. the antechamber of hell must look like this.”(Pg 43 Para. 2) The Nazis made Elie and his Fellow Jews live in long barracks. The barracks were very cramped. many Jews slept on the floor. Elie and the other Jews would work long hours outside, and the only thing they got in return for there service was a bowl of soup at the end of the day. Some Jews would work at the furnaces disposing of the bodies and throwing them in the furnace. This would play a heavy toll on a person, dehumanizing them. Elie and the Jews were also poorly fed. all they would receive each day was bread and soup. The Life that the Jews had in the camp was extremely dehumanizing for them. Eliezer and the other Jews were deeply affected by what the Nazis had done to them. The experiences dehumanized them. Every Jew felt worthless and the same. This was part of the Nazis goal with these concentration camps. Some of these causes were the way the Jews were transported, the lives they were forced to endure in the camps, and the way they were all forced to be the same. Eliezer was greatly affected by these horrendous events.
To start, the jews were dehumanized by the fact that if they didn't work or got sick they would most likely end up in the crematorium, they be alive as they go into the crematorium so the SS didn't have to waste a bullet to kill them with. For example our character Eliezer lost his dad to the crematorium because his dad was dying of dysentery. “They must have taken him away before day break and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing.(Wiesel 112)” That is an example of the crematorium if you were sick, but what if you were unable to work or too small ...
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel there were countless acts that would be classified as inhuman. For example the hanging of an angelic pipel, or killing one’s father for a piece of bread. Although both acts are extremely inhuman, hanging a child is more inhuman than killing one’s father for a piece of bread. Yet, to kill someone’s father for a bread is more in keeping with human nature in the fact that it is done for survival.
Elie wiesel born sep 30 1928 in sighet , Transylvania. Elie wiesel overcame many things in his life . But one of the things are fear that he will die also there was starvation that took place and that is the most terriblest thing that can happen. Also there was death of the many jews and his mother and sisters. These adversities made Wiesel become the man he is today; he is truly a humanitarian.
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
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
and humanity. Wiesel shows how the Jews mistreated and were mistreated with word choice and situational irony. Elie, the main the character in the book, gives the reader a personal perspective of being a Jew during the Holocaust. Being a Jew was difficult since the Nazis not only mistreated them, but also gave them false hope which contributed to their dehumanization.
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.
According to the definition, inhumane is described as an individual without compassion for misery or sufferings. The novel Night by the author Elie Wiesel, illustrates some aspects of inhumanity throughout the book. It is evident in the novel that when full power is given to operate without restraint, the person in power becomes inhumane. There are many examples of inhumanity in this novel. For instance, "Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky." Through this quote Elie is explaining his first night at camp and what he saw will be in his head forever - unforgettable. In my opinion, the section in the novel when the Germans throw the babies into the chimney is very inhuman. An individual must feel no sympathy or feelings in order to take such a disturbing action. In addition to that "For more than half an hour stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed." This is also very inhumane example since the child's weight wasn’t enough to snap his neck when he was hung and so he is slowly dying painful death as all Jewish people walk by him, being forced to watch the cruelty.
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.
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.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, it talks about the holocaust and what it was like being in it. The Germans were trying to make the German race the supreme race. To do this they were going to kill off everyone that wasn’t a German. If you were Jewish or something other than German, you would have been sent to a concentration camp and segregated by men and women. If you weren’t strong enough you were sent to the crematory to be cremated. If you were strong enough you were sent to work at a labor camp. With all the warnings the Jewish people had numerous chances to run from the Germans, but most ignored the warnings.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Wiesel recounts a moment when he witnesses the most horrific actions done by men,”I pinched myself : Was I still alive ? Was I awake ? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent “ (Wiesel 32). Wiesel was thinking and questioning about his existence. While also caring for his father because that's all he has left. It's even more important because, what Wiesel experiences in camps has been near death and fight for survival. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Wiesel are, loss in religious faith and father and son bonding.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
In looking back upon his experience in Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote in 1988: ?It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism (Nazism) sanctifies its victims. On the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.? (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 40). The victims of National Socialism in Levi?s book are clearly the Jewish Haftlings. Survival in Auschwitz, a book written by Levi after he was liberated from the camp, clearly makes a case that the majority of the Jews in the lager were stripped of their human dignity. The Jewish prisoners not only went through a physical hell, but they were psychologically driven under as well. Levi writes, ??the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts? We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death?? (Levi, 41). One would be hard pressed to find passages in Survival in Auschwitz that portray victims of the camp as being martyrs. The treatment of the Jews in the book explicitly spells out the dehumanization to which they were subjected. It is important to look at how the Jews were degraded in the camp, and then examine whether or not they came to embody National Socialism after this.