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Examples Of Dehumanization In Night

Decent Essays

Dehumanization in the novel Night, is shown through the actions observed by Elie Wiesel. One example is when he first arrives to Auschwitz and gets a number tattooed on himself, in which it robs the humanity and identification of him. Another example is when the selection process of prisoners is shown either between being healthy or not. So, if the person was deemed sick or unhealthy they would be sent to the gas chambers because the S.S. officers had no use for them anymore. Lastly, in a box car with hardly any rations to spare, Elie observes a man’s reaction as he throws in bread to the starving Jews, since rations were scarce they fought over it in order to survive. As Elie arrived to Auschwitz, men and woman were separated from each other and forced to get tattoos of numbers. After his first …show more content…

As the novel was coming to an end, Eli describes, “One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest,” (Wiesel 100). Because the men in the box cars were lacking rations, when they saw the chance of free food, they took that chance as a do or die response. That means each man was on the verge of dying from starvation and they saw the few crumbs from the bread as something that could save them from their death beds. However, the man was amused by the men beating each up for the ration because he’s never seen how much of animal man can turn into given the right circumstances. The Nazi’s felt that the Jewish men on the freight cars were already heading to their deaths along with their already deceased friends and family, so they didn’t give them any food due to that aspect. Dehumanization is shown because the ones who lived in fear actually turned into the ones conflicting

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