Night Dehumanization Essay

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Imagine if you were an object. That you were an item that could be possessed and you had absolutely no say in what happen to you. People could use you and throw you out whenever it was convenient for them to do so. Elie Wiesel is someone that can describe to you first hand exactly what this feels like. He is a survivor of one of the darkest times in human history, the Holocaust. He made the decision to turn the pain and suffering he endured into something meaningful by writing the book Night. In this essay I will explain the ways dehumanization occurs throughout the novel. One of the first times Elie experiences this terrible treatment was when hundreds of Jews were forced into cattle cars and shipped to concentration camps. Given very little …show more content…

Some had no chance, like mothers and young children, they were killed immediately. Elie’s mother and sister were taken from him without him even knowing that would be the last time he’d ever see them. In a single moment they were gone. If the Germans had any mercy in them at all they would’ve at least let them say their last goodbyes. They were not looked at like human beings but rather objects that were a nuisance to the Germans. To the Nazis, the Jews had no souls, no worth, no emotions. They might have been as important as a piece of dirt to the Germans. Those who didn’t starve or die from illnesses were killed in gas chamber by the thousands. Families became strangers. Friends became enemies. These people undergoed such traumatic and unrelenting cruelty that they’ll never be who they were before. “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror… From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” (115) Some examples of how the Germans dehumanized the Jews was by taking away all of their rights and belongings. Everything they loved had been ripped away from them with no mercy. They were not treated as if they had feeling or emotions. The Germans had complete control over the thousands of people in the camps. Decreasing their morals and beliefs to nothing more than the hope of receiving a small

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