The Issue Of Intolerance In Night By Elie Wiesel

Things took a turn for the worst for the Jews in Germany and surrounding countries on January 30, 1933. Anti-Semitism began to grow during the Middle Ages, slowly increasing the amount of hatred towards the Jewish population in Europe by the 20th century. On September 30, 1928, Elie Wiesel, writer of Night was born into the Jewish race. Around twelve years later, the Nazi population removed Elie and his family from their home and began to move them into concentration camps where he would experience nightmares and situations that no person should have to go through. The Nazi’s leader, Hitler, uses antisemitism to his advantage, along with his speaking skills, to downgrade the Jews as a way to gain power in Germany. Another piece of literature,

Elie Wiesel’s book Night, tells what he went through and what was going on in the concentration camps. He was one of the few that made it out of the camps, and he suffered through all of the bad doings of Hitler and his men. This book gives many examples that show how Elie and the other Jews were dehumanized by being treated as something less than a human.

​ Terrible. Depressing. Horrific. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel many terrible things happened. This book was written about the horrific events that took place during the holocaust. In the beginning of the book a Jewish boy named Elie was separated from his family as they entered a concentration camp, Elie was kept with his father but his mother and sisters were taken away. Every Jewish person was dehumanized by being made to feel unworthy, loss of compassion, and having to be concerned with their survival. ​ Every Jewish person was dehumanized by being made to feel unworthy of their life in Night by Elie Wiesel. Our names are given to us so we can be individually called out. The SS took away the Jewish peoples names. This took away

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.” Elie and his family just wanted to live a normal life. They didn’t have very much money, but were happy with the state they were in. One day, SS officers showed up and took Elie and his family away. Not knowing where they were going, they were obviously scared. Once they finally got there, they realized what they were in for, and that Moishe the Beadle was right. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the rest of the Jewish prisoners by depriving them of love, safety, and physiological needs.

Elie Wiesel, the author and main character of Night, went to two concentration camps and had different experiences at each one. The three concentration camps he went to were Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Birkenau. In Maus, Artie's mom (Anja) and dad (Vladek) went to concentration camps too. Like Ellie, they went to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, but they also went to Dachau. Ellie's life in the concentration camp was like Vladek's life in the concentration camp.

In his autobiographical memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel conveys the dehumanization of the Jews through the devastating events placed upon them in the concentration camps. In an attempt to show the Jews’ inferiority, the Nazis created the concentration camps, which stripped them of their identities, one by one. The Germans shaved each prisoner’s hair off, dressed them in the same clothes, and referred to them as numbers instead of their name. Jews lived under agonizing circumstances. They were unhealthy and weak but were still able to endure such intense circumstances day after day instead of being shot or sent to the gas chambers.

As a whole, acts of inhumanity seem to be a common theme throughout the different internment camps that Elie Wiesel and his father Shlomo were detained in during World War II. Within his memoir “Night”, Elie even wrote about acts of inhumanity that occurred prior to their arrival at Birkenau (the first concentration camp they were imprisoned in). For example, on page twenty- five when the Jews are in the cattle cars on the way to their tragic fate and Madame Schachter was madly shouting, Elie wrote, “Our terror could no longer be contained. Our nerves were reaching a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound and gagged her.”

In Elie Wiesel’s autobiography, “Night” there are many examples of dehumanization from start to finish. Dehumanization is stripping a person of every quality that makes them human. This includes their identity, individuality, and soul. The Night shows the process by which the Nazis reduced the Jews to little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. The book takes place in World War 2, in the Holocaust. Eliezer and his family are very much directly affected by actions taken by the Nazis as well as all the other Jews. Throughout the whole book, the Nazis use practices such as beatings, starvation, theft of possessions, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, and many more actions represented through the text of this book that are all examples of dehumanization. Eliezer, the narrator of the story, arrived at the concentration camp of Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. He arrived by the transportation of cattle cars. Within the various camps, Eliezer spent ten months of abuse and dehumanization. He lost so much due to the Germans.

"Night" by Elie Wiesel is "A slim volume of terrifying power" (The New York Time), the novel is concerning the tragic events that occurred during the Holocaust. The first section of the memoir raises an internal conflict, regarding the Jews of Sighet being ignorant about the terrifying events that are occurring outside their small town. This conflict is created when Moishe the Beadle escaped from the Gestapo and returned to Sighet to warn the Jews of the crisis, which is happening right under their noses. This is shown in the following quote, "he went from one Jewish house to the next, telling his story" (7), despite warning his community of the dangers that are progressing towards them, the Jews of Sighet ignored him and did not believe Moishe. The ignorance of the Jews is shown when

Dehumanization is to deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Wiesel’s experiences of dehumanization are reflected through starvation, physical abuse, and mental abuse. Wiesel was put through dehumanization many times in the book Night. The other Jews were put through dehumanization also. Let’s get into more detail about how they were dehumanized.

At this point, the Jews are very comfortable and go so far as to recognize

Conformity and rebellion affect people in many different ways. Those who defy social norms are often unaccepted or even punished. Also, taking the risk to rebel triggers fright in individuals. Whether it is the fear of physical harm or social intolerance, it takes great strength to overcome this fear in order to resist injustice. In Night, many characters experience conformity and rebellion. Elie struggles with his doubts in God. On Yom Kippur, when he was supposed to fast, Elie explains, “And I nibbled my crust of bread. In the depths of my heart, I felt a great void” (66). By eating on Yom Kippur, Elie stages his personal revolt against his religion. As Elie witnesses the horrors of the Holocaust, he loses his faith in God. He describes,

Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown all these names are well-known in the black community of America. In today’s era where we recently had an African-American as the President of the United States, does that mean America has become post-racial? As former President Obama said in his farewell address “... such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.” So after 152 years of slavery abolishment and forty-nine years have elapsed since the Civil Rights Movement, why is America still avoiding the fact that racism is still prevalent? In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel depicts racism perfectly: indifference is worse than hatred. Racism is still rife in America whether

As humans, we require basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter to survive. But we also need a reason to live. The reason could be the thought of a person, achieving some goal, or a connection with a higher being. Humans need something that drives them to stay alive. This becomes more evident when people are placed in horrific situations. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he reminisces about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. There the men witness horrific scenes of violence and death. As time goes on they begin to lose hope in the very things that keep them alive: their faith in God, each other, and above all, themselves.

Imagine, losing the part of you that makes you unique, or being treated like you were worth absolutely nothing. Think about losing all that you hold on to: your family, friends, everything that you had. Imagine, being treated like an animal, or barely receiving enough food to live. All of these situations and more is what the Jews went through during the Holocaust. During the period of 1944 - 1945, a man by the name of Elie Wiesel was one of the millions of Jews that were experiencing the wrath of Hitler’s destruction in the form of intense labor and starvation. The novel Night written by the same man, Elie Wiesel, highlights the constant struggle they faced every single day during the war. From the first acts of throwing the Jews into