Examples Of Dehumanization

The Germans decided not just to kill all the Jews but dehumanizing them instead, what impact did this have on the inmates of the concentration camps? The humanity of people is fragile and can be stripped away leading to a demeaned human nature.

How much longer could the Jews of Sighet withstand fighting for their lives, facing unbearable hunger, and striving to push forward as insignificant people? In the memoir Night, dehumanization was when the barbarous Nazis mistreated the Jewish citizens. The Nazis made the Jews feel as if they were not human. The Nazis had a profusion of starving, humiliation, brainwashing, severe labor, and painful murders of innocent Jewish citizens. There was no feeling stronger than the loss of humanity the horrific events that the Jewish population faced.

The Nazis abused prisoners both mentally and physically, stripping them of their dignity

The Nazis did not bother to feed them more than they would a dying animal. The Jews were stripped of their individuality in every way possible. Starting with the numbers. “I became A-7713. From then on I had no name” (Wiesel 42).

Treatment was terrible for the people in concentration camps. They would get beaten and not treated fairly. They went through a lot of abuse while in the camps. They were barely allowed to eat and were sometimes starved. In the text it states, “The Kapos were beating us again, but I no longer felt the pain”(Wiesel,31).

This passage analyzes just how shameful it was for the jews to enter the camp, they were immediately exposed in front of everybody they knew and strangers far and wide. They had been stripped of their dignity and dehumanized in the process of their long journey. Wiesel recalls in his book Night, “The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel, 42). The text aboves emphasizes how the jews at the camp had been seen as prisoners and nothing more, and in most instances they were treated like animals. Given a branded number, herded hundreds of miles across Europe, and fed very little. The people of jewish culture had been stripped of their remaining recognition, their names. As the book continues on, treatment of the prisoners gets worse and worse, to the point where they are barely fed and given water. Wiesel continues on in his book Night, “Hunger was tormenting us; we had not eaten for nearly six days except for a few stalks of grass and some potato peels found on the grounds of the kitchen” (Wiesel, 115). By taking away food and water from the prisoners of the camp, the jews became skinnier and skinnier, everyday they became more unhealthy as they

Throughout the entire novel the theme of dehumanization is particularly evident in both the prisoner workers and the transport prisoners. The Nazi guards are said to have “beefy” (pg. 41) faces, while an S.S. officer is described as having a “rat-like smile” as she “sniffed around” (pg. 41) the ramp. Prisoners are referred to as “standing around like sheep” (pg. 48). Starving Greek prisoners are compared to “huge human insects” (pg. 35). Even the transport trucks are called “mad dogs” (pg. 41). Everyone is treated and processed like livestock. “Trucks drive around, loading up lumber, cement, people” (pg. 34), is yet another example of how a human life was lowered to that of a mere object. A corpse is simply a “mound of meat” (pg. 45), and dead babies are carried out of the transport “like chickens, several in each hand” (pg. 39). The poisonous compound Cyclone B used to kill the prisoners was “an effective killer of lice in clothing and of men in gas chambers” (pg. 29).

As Wiesel recalls, the Hungarian police shouted “ Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!” (Wiesel 19). As said multiple times throughout the book, these phrases portray that the German guards felt of the prisoners not of people, but of mere property. Prolonged exposure to the cruel treatment affected everyone, including Elie. This is prevalent as the autobiography progresses towards the end, as the prisoners feared their own lives more than others. As Elie retells an incident where His father asked a Gypsy inmate politely to use the bathroom, he says that “My father had just been struck, before my eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing,” (Wiesel 39). Elie’s surprised at himself because he is incapable of doing anything to help his father after the beating. Like the other prisoners, he’s dehumanized with his main concern becoming his own survival. Thus, Elie loses his compassion for others, including his father. Furthermore, Elie also recalls the moment he’s tattooed by stating that they “tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name,” (Wiesel 42). This is indubitably a definition of dehumanization because the tattooed name robs the previous status of the humanity of an

This is one of the first situations in the book that exemplifies going through a hard time. In this case the concentration camps, can change who you are as a person even after you have already developed your own

The dehumanization was a deliberate strategy used to break the spirits of those in the camps and make them more open to cruelty. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes”(Wiesel 34) The quote shows how the dehumanization set up by the guards reached a point where they not only physically tortured the prisoners but also destroyed them spiritually and emotionally. By getting rid of all hope and belief, the guards achieved complete dehumanization. Another instance that shows dehumanization and its devastating consequences.

Primo Levi, in his novel Survival in Auschwitz (2008), illustrates the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of the concentration camp by the Schutzstaffel, through dehumanization. Levi describes “the denial of humanness” constantly forced upon the prisoners through similes, metaphors, and imagery of animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization (“Dehumanization”). He makes his readers aware of the cruel reality in the concentration camp in order to help them examine the psychological effects dehumanization has not only on those dehumanized, but also on those who dehumanize. He establishes an earnest and reflective tone with his audience yearning to grasp the reality of genocide.

They didn’t have any value to the Nazi’s and they were considered to be only good for work. While Eliezer and his family are forced to sit in a crowded wagon, a German officer tells them “There are eighty of you in this wagon. If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs…” (Wiesel 18). This restrains the Jews from thinking about trying to escape. It shows that the Germans had no respect for them and they thought they weren’t capable of being a good person. When they reach Auschwitz, an SS officer tells the group “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 22). The SS officer treats them as if they are a herd of animals and separates them from their loved ones. Many Jews isolated themselves because of how they were treated, leading them to turn on each

The concentration camps from World War II are part of a painful and tragic incident that we have learned about in school for many years. And while we are taught the facts, we may not fully understand the emotional impact it had upon the humans involved. Upon reading Night by Elie Wiesel, readers are given vivid descriptions of the gruesome and tragic behaviors that the Jews were forced to endure inside he treacherous concentration camps. Among all of the cruelties that the Jews were exposed to, a very significant form of the callous behaviors was the demoralization of the prisoners. Each inmate was given a tattoo of a number, and that tattoo became their new identity within the camp. Every prisoner was presented with tattered uniforms that became

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

The Jews had been starved while being detained in forced labor camp. Those who weren’t fit to work were killed and cremated. The most eye-opening description of the Jewish peoples’ state in the concentration camp came at the very end of the book. After being freed, Wiesel looked in a mirror for the first since his arrival at the camp. Wiesel described his reflection as a “corpse” and stated “the look in his eyes… has never left me.” (Wiesel 115). Not only had the Nazis carried out a brutal campaign on the Jews’ physical being, but they had also infiltrated deep into their psyche. Upon arrival at camps, all Jews’ were forced to hand over all of their clothes and wearing matching uniforms. After that, the prisoners’ were sent to the barber. Wiesel described the process, stating, “[The barbers’] clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies.” (Wiesel 35). After this process, every Jew was tattooed with a number. This process lead to the ego-death of every prisoner. They were no longer people: they were numbers. Nothing differentiated one Jew from another, besides the numbers tattooed on them. This horrendous act could only be classified as psychological torture, carried out by monsters who had lost control of their own