Dehumanization In Elie Wiesel's Night

Dehumanization in Night During the Holocaust, approximately six million non-Aryans, especially those who were Jewish, perished under the rule of the Nazis. Prisoners were frequently beaten, starved, and treated as if they were animals. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he recollected the traumatizing experiences he and his fellow prisoners endured. Through these experiences, many began to lose hope and viewed life as one against all. The true tragedy, however, is that the Nazi regime numbed prisoners to the point where they lacked human emotion. The earliest acts of dehumanization occur in the hometowns of the Jewish people. After German officers make themselves comfortable in towns, they quickly begin to strip Jews of their rights and property. Elie writes that “Jews would not be able to leave their houses for three days […] A Jew no longer had the right to keep in house gold, jewels or any objects of value. [..] every Jew must wear the yellow star” (8). This is just the beginning of the Nazis cruel plan. Jews are then crammed into ghettos surrounded by barbed wire fencing. Without food and water, they are then forced into cattle cars. When the Jews leave the cars, the German authorities force them to leave their belongings behind and threaten “[a]nyone later found to have kept anything will be shot on the spot” ( Wiesel 21). …show more content…
An SS noncommissioned officer orders “’Men to the left! Women to the right!’ (Wiesel 27). The SS officer shows no pity towards the eight life-ruining words he says. Following the separation by gender, they are divided into even smaller groups. Those seen as unfit were forced to strip and perish in the crematories, and those seen as fit were sent directly to the barracks, where this time their name is stripped from them. Wiesel recollects “I became A-7713. After that, I had no other name” (39). By taking away their clothes and