Getting to the End

The prisoners are on the train being transported to a new camp. They are going through German towns, and are starving. The German workers begin to observe the train go by, and one man throws a piece of bread at them. As the piece of bread lands in the train cart, Wiesel describes the prisoners as “beasts of the prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes” (Wiesel 101). The metaphor stated compares the prisoners to savages because of their cruel behavior. The author also describes the competition between the prisoners for the piece of bread which symbolizes hope for the possibility of remaining alive. Humanity is vicious and will do anything for a chance to survive. The look in the prisoners eyes signifies an intense hatred, and competition between everyone aboard the train. The men are using all energy they have to get the piece of bread, and they will kill anyone who can destroy their chance of survival. Wiesel describes their beast-like actions as “an extraordinary vitality [possessing] them, sharpening their teeth and nails” (101). The hyperbolic statement is used to exaggerate humanity’s animal-like instincts. This exaggeration represents savagery because its describing them by using the actions of beasts. Wiesel writes this to depict a stronger idea in human’s main goal to survive. The uncivilized actions not only causes the deaths of several passengers, but makes the men ravenous

In Ellie Wiesel’s non-fiction novel, Night, he is telling his experiences of living in a concentration camp. The following passage is one that gives an example of how human lives were disregarded, “Faster, you filthy dogs! We were no longer marching, we were running like automatons. The SS were running as well, weapons in hand. We looked as though we were running from them.

In the text it states that “ There were eighty of you in the wagon. Added the German officer” (Wiesel, 15). Why would they do that do anyone they didn’t have room or food, they couldn’t even use the bathroom. People should not be treated like this but when you put people in these situations it makes it worse of an experience then it already is.

Without a doubt, the Germans throwing deceased naked human bodies out of a wagon and into the cold snow is unconceivable. The mere fact that the weakened surviving Jews had to witness this atrocity is unimaginable. No proper burial, no time to mourn, and no time for the Kaddish for their deceased. Instead, the bodies were thrown off the wagon as if they were nothing more than a piece of worthless trash. Without question, the Germans dehumanized the Jews by treating them as if they were incapable of human feelings.

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).

My feet, without any cloths to protect them were bloody and covered in sores from rubbing against sharp stones. Like some of the horrible bed sores one of my many brothers had gotten years ago. At least that is how I am picturing them in my mind, as couldn’t see them in this light, or lack of. My feet ached, hunger pains were beginning to rise, my head, with such intense pain and that awful, awful feeling that I was not alone. I could feel the hairs on my neck stand as the eerie buzz of silence screamed in my ear. Unconsciously my slow pacing of the perimeter broke into a full speed run.

The Germans in charge of coming up with a sufficient means of transportation had a heavy sense of superiority in that their prisoners were lower than animals. They had only tried to maintain the cheapest, most efficient method of transit of the Jews to their concentration camp. The deportees who survived were left with a scarring imprint of this trip, as it was the first branch of their torture, for most, the rest of their lives. After two interviews with two different survivors, it is inferred that the same approach was used for all the prisoners being transported to their destination of their demise. The people who were forced to endure this dehumanizing means of transit underwent a complete stripping of humanity that foreshadowed their ultimate

This was as a last resort for the Nazis to stay in control of the prisoners as the resistance grew near the camp. As these cattle passed through the German towns, the workers of the town through scraps of food at the prisoners as if they were zoo animals. Those aboard the train fought like rabid animals over the scarce scraps. The workers continued to throw scraps as a source of entertaining. Wiesel writes, “Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The workers watched the spectacle with great interest.”(100). This excerpt demonstrates the dehumanization of the Jewish prisoners. It shows how the deprivation of food has led them to act like animals out of desperation to survive.

Stuffed between two pillows,my head was still and my breathing was warm and hard,with the prickling feeling of guilt covering me like a blanket.I ached to sob, but my eyes wouldn't succumb,they seemed adement on keeping my irises dry and stinging from perpetual burning.

They left them to starve with little food, to work in all terrible,deplorable, uncouth conditions all for them to feel and to be treated like vile animals. Prisoners even acted like animals fighting for food,water and clothing - anything to get them to live one more day. A lack of compassion for others can not change what they saw in the concentration camp ”bela katz- son of a big tradesman from our town-had arrived at Birkenau with the first transport, a week before us. When heard of our arrival, he managed to get word to us that, having been chosen for his strength, he had himself put his father’s own body into the crematoria oven “ (Wiesel 33) Having to put his own father into his own death bed is a harrowing experience and not being able to protest at the fear of his own death is an irrefutable memory that will never be forgotten. The nazis and their unvarnished mistreatment,ciless hostility that showed no compassion for the prisoners “ then came the march past the victims two men were no longer alive .their tongues were hanging out swollen and bluish . but the third rope was still moving; the child too light was still breathing ….. And so he remained for more than half an hour lingering between life and death,writhing before our eyes.and we were forced to look at him at close range he was still alive when i passed him .his tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished”(Wiesel 65) . death

During transportation of Wiesel’s pity of prisoners through villages, “many Germans watched” them with “no surprise”, the guards began to flirt with “some young German girls”. There is a juxtaposition formed between two universes: the impoverished Jews and the typical, casual, German citizens. Such juxtaposition coupled with the casual reaction of the Germans portrays how naturalised the Jews were in their sub-human state. However, due to how natural the situation seems, there is a more disturbing analogy embedded in it; that of a group of farmers’ herding their drove. From this analogy, it can be understood why German citizens reacted so indifferently to the Jews; to them, empathising with the Jews was equivalent to empathising with animals. Dehumanisation created a barrier that would impede the natural flow of empathy – the Nazis had truly forged a universe where Jews could be massacred “like cattle in the

One of the first examples of dehumanization that occurs in Wiesel’s memoir is when he depicts the transport that takes him and his family from their beloved home of Sighet, Romania, all the way to Auschwitz. When Wiesel writes “We walked towards the station, where a convoy of cattle cars was waiting. The Hungarian Police made us climb into the cars, eighty persons in each one. They handed us some bread, a few pails of water,” (Wiesel 22) it is shown that human beings were forced not onto a passenger train, but into cattle cars as if they were nothing more than livestock. As if cattle cars were not demeaning enough the Jewish prisoners are fed bread and given water in pails, reinforcing the idea that they are merely livestock. This is only the first example of how the Nazi’s began to plant the idea, in the mind of the Jews, that they were less than human. Unfortunately, it did not stop there, the Jews continually faced dehumanization during the Holocaust.

On the cattle car back from Auschwitz, Wiesel describes the prisoners as being beasts of prey, almost like the Holocaust has destroyed their humanity and transformed them into animals: “Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes...the spectators observed these emacipated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread” (Wiesel 101). This quote mainly serves as a device to express prisoners as being animals, but also describes the role of a bystander. The Holocaust was a period of time full of passive bystanders who didn’t do anything despite having full knowledge of what was occurring in the concentration camps. The unnamed spectators in this quote symbolize all of the people that turned a blind eye once they figured out what the Nazis were truly doing to jewish and other “lesser” populations. In addition, in the last line of the memoir, Wiesel sees himself in a mirror for the first time since he had left his ghetto. Wiesel describes himself in the third person as being a corpse, displaying the immense toll that the Holocaust has had on certain people: “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he

There is a part where we watch as humans are so ugly that it is hard for us to imagine that what they had done is possible. Liesel is playing soccer in the park and all of a sudden all the kids stop because of a noise they hear coming down the street. They think it could be a herd of cattle, but that not what it is. It is a group of Jewish people being led, or forced, to the death camps by German soldiers. On there way we watch a man die “He was dead. The man was dead. Just give him five minutes and he would surely fall into the German gutter and die. They would all let him, and they would all watch”(Zusak 393). This is talking about how when a Jewish person would die, the Germans wouldn’t do anything. They wouldn’t care that a man died right in front of them. While the Jews are walking Hans, Liesel adopted father, gives them bread. While Hans is giving this man bread a German soldier notices what is going on. He walks over to the man and, “The Jew was whipped six times. On his back, his heart, and

I stared in horror – that wall was stained with gruesome blood stains. What the smell was became all too obvious and I felt the need to vomit… that motion put away and forgotten in an instant when the shuffling of feet rustled behind me. Panic. I turned around in a blur, my eyes huge and watering. My stomach stirred in the slightest. A lamp? Indeed, a tall standing lamp radiated a warm light only a few metres in front of me. Was it real or a figment of my abused mind? Curiosity would get the best of me, lending me a tiny spurt of energy to boost me on my feet. Teetering footsteps led me forward cautiously, random tremors reminding me of my weakness. The lamp was close enough to touch, its friendly warmth the only hope in the world to me. Basking in it for some slow seconds, I wondered, maybe there were more things in the room that hadn’t been revealed to the naked eye? Turning sharp on my heel, I let out a blood curdling screech as I came face to face with the most horrific thing I had ever seen. Huge fly-like eyes took in my paling complexion, and a lopsided smile of stinking razor sharp teeth mocked me. Rancid skin that looked like the algae layer that sat upon a swamp bubbled and oozed, trickling down a sharply shaped ‘face’. Flight or fight reaction chose the obvious option and I turned back again to run. Where, I did not