Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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According to Dictionary.com the definition of dehumanization is to deprive of human qualities or attributes. In the late 1930's and early 1940's Nazi Germany was thriving by dehumanizing people who had different ideas or beliefs, such as: gypsies, homosexuals, war criminals, and the Jewish population. In the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel the author explains the harsh conditions people had to go through whilst living in the concentration camps run by Nazi Germany. A few examples of this is when the people in these camps were no longer actual humans, they just became workers with numbers for names, as well as when they became vicious beasts and attacked each other in order to get food, and how the sight of family members, friends, neighbors and communities' dead bodies did not phase a single soul. …show more content…

A quote that explains this point is, "We were incapable of thinking. Our senses numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything," (Wiesel 36). They no longer viewed themselves as men are capable humans, they had just become the hunted. On page 42 Wiesel stated, "I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." This single quote explains the point that the victims of the Holocaust were not "human." It is known that they would have roll call multiple times a day and once they became long-term residents in the camp system their numbers were their names and that is how they were identified. This takes away humanity because the name of a person is their identity, without a name it is like cattle. Comparing to cattle doesn’t even explain what animals the camp residents

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