Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

According to Dictionary.com the definition of dehumanization is to deprive of human qualities or attributes. In the late 1930's and early 1940's Nazi Germany was thriving by dehumanizing people who had different ideas or beliefs, such as: gypsies, homosexuals, war criminals, and the Jewish population. In the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel the author explains the harsh conditions people had to go through whilst living in the concentration camps run by Nazi Germany. A few examples of this is when the people in these camps were no longer actual humans, they just became workers with numbers for names, as well as when they became vicious beasts and attacked each other in order to get food, and how the sight of family members, friends, neighbors and communities' dead bodies did not phase a single soul.

The populations inside the camps were not seen as human or acceptable within society which lead them to believing they meant nothing themselves.

A quote that explains this point is, "We were incapable of thinking. Our senses numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything," (Wiesel 36). They no longer viewed themselves as men are capable humans, they had just become the hunted. On page 42 Wiesel stated, "I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." This single quote explains the point that the victims of the Holocaust were not "human." It is known that they would have roll call multiple times a day and once they became long-term residents in the camp system their numbers were their names and that is how they were identified. This takes away humanity because the name of a person is their identity, without a name it is like cattle. Comparing to cattle doesn’t even explain what animals the camp residents

became.
Another example of dehumanization by Nazis is how the Jews and others became complete savages. One example of this is on page 101 where Wiesel wrote, “I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob. He was holding one hand to his heart. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt. With lightning speed he pulled it out and put it to his mouth. His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. And was immediately extinguished. A shadow had lain down beside him. And this 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… I have bread…for you too… for you too…’ He collapsed. But his fist was still clutching a small crust. He wanted to raise it to his mouth. But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it. He didn't get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him. Others joined in. When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son.” Even families turned on each other and killed for food. The hunger drove the sanity out of the victims. Seeing surplus amounts of bodies led to the men being okay with killing.
Being surrounded by death every waking , and sleeping, moment of the lives of people is very traumatic but after a while they become used to it. During the Holocaust death was more common than life and the living dealt with seeing deceased every day, not batting an eye. This shows the inhumane portion of the prisoners because they were not phased by seeing death and in society death and dying is horrifying; only animals are okay with living with the dead. A quote explaining how far the men inside the camps strayed from reality is, "But deep inside I knew to sleep meant to die, which was setting in all around me , silently, gently. It would seize upon a sleeping person, steal into him and devour him bit by bit. Next to me, someone was trying to awaken his neighbor ,his brother, perhaps, or his comrade. In vain. Defeated, he lay down too, next to the corpse, and also fell asleep," (Wiesel 90).
Nazi Germany is probably the most infamous in dehumanization of innocent people and during the Holocaust almost everything done to the people in camps was belittling and embarrassing. All the way from be separated from families to running naked deciding who is "fit" to work. The Nazis had taken away their names and made them numbers. The Nazis starved them until the hunger drove them to insanity. The Nazis made Death too real and too acceptable.