preview

Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Decent Essays

In the memoir Night, the author Elie Wiesel explains the dehumanization of the fellow jews and his family. Wiesel describes how his friends, family, and other fellow Jews changed from the civilized humans to gradually animal like behavior but with more demoralized. Dehumanization process starts with Jewish communities which includes the Wiesels are all evacuated to ghettos or concentration camps. Family members would start to split up and gradually, Jews would fight against each other every time they move from one camp to another, struggling to survive the small cramped space and the weather, especially in the winter time. When Jews are evacuated from their communities and arrive in concentration camps in Buchenwald or Auschwitz, the first thing they are dehumanized is when their valuables are taken away and given to the Nazis soldiers who were collecting any valuables the jews had with them. In the book, a Hungarian police officer gushes in, “A Jew no longer had the right to keep in his house gold, jewels, or any objects of value” (Wiesel 8). If anyone didn’t take out and give all their valuables to the Nazis, the Jews were …show more content…

SS men were controlling the Jews saying, “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27). This shows that the SS men were treating the Jews as if they were a herd of animals giving commands to men, women, and children to get split up from their families and loved ones. After the separation, Elie is taken close by to the crematories where he saw, “A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load-little children. Babies!...those children in the flames” (Wiesel 30). Elie couldn’t believe his eyes and pinched himself. By looking at the children in flames, this dehumanized the Jews, because they could hear the screams, smell the burning bodies, and see their own fellows being burned to

Get Access