Genocide can be defined as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race” (Encyclopedia Brittanica). Throughout history multiple genocides have taken place all over the world, such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. During these genocides members of the minority were dehumanized in some form. Many steps are taken when genocide goes into action such as dehumanization. Dehumanization is the act of portraying members of a minority in a sub-human category and the denial of human rights to a minority group (Whitehorn 16). Many acts that take place within the novel Night and during the Rwandan genocide can be categorized as acts of dehumanization such as, how the Jewish people and the Tutsi’s were viewed, the brutality that took place during these genocides, and the control that was placed over the minority groups of the Jewish and the Tutsi’s. The novel, Night, tells the story of a teenager, Elie Wiesel, being taken and moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp and then to the Buchenwald Concentration camp. Elie Wiesel’s time in these concentration camps occurred in 1944, which were the later years of the “Holocaust” known as the mass killing of the Jewish. During Elie Wiesel’s time in these concentration camps he witnesses many deaths, such as the deaths of his family members, deaths of other member that resided in the concentration camp and even the death of his own innocence. Throughout the entire novel there are events that take place that can be categorized as dehumanization towards Elie Wiesel and other characters in the novel. In comparison, during the Rwandan genocide there were also acts that dehumanized the Tutsi people. The Rwandan genocide is categorized as the mass killing of the Tutsi people performed by the Hutu. Dehumanization occurs when a minority group is
Millions of Jews forced out of their homes and are either killed immediately or forced to work until bodies gave up on them and died. Night focuses on the aspect of inhumanity a lot. The Nazi’s practically dehumanized the Jews and caused them to suffer each day, which is evident in Night. In the book, however, the Nazi’s are not the only ones subject to inhumanity; the Jews are a part of it also. Due to the harsh treatment, many of the Jew lose a sense of empathy. For example, when Eliezer’s father was practically dead the other prisoners beat him just because he didn’t deserve to live any more. The author is ultimately trying to argue that under the right conditions we may all lose our
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps.
Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood lifestyle is very pronounced within the book, Night. This book, written by the main character, Elie Wiesel, tells the readers about the experiences of Mr. Wiesel during the Holocaust. The book starts off by describing Elie’s life in his hometown, Sighet, with his family and friends. As fascism takes over Hungary, Elie and his family are sent north, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie stays with his father and speaks of his life during this time. Later, after many stories of the horrors and dehumanizing acts of the camp, Elie and his father make the treacherous march towards Gliewitz. Then they are hauled to Buchenwald by way of cattle cars in extremely deplorable conditions, even by Holocaust standards. The book ends as Elie’s father is now dead and the American army has liberated them. As Elie is recovering in the hospital he gazes at himself in a mirror, he subtly notes he much he has changed. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie loses his innocence and demeanour because he was traumatized by what he saw in the camps, his loss of faith in a God who stood idly by while his people suffered, and becoming selfish as he is forced to become selfish in the death camps to survive.
The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
The author of the book Night , Elie Wiesel, explains his life, as well as his fellow Jews, as a young Jewish boy in concentration camps. The Jews who were sent to concentration camps were put under extremely harsh conditions and were treated like nothing but animals while under the control of the Germans. Wiesel illustrates a picture of these horrific events in his book NIght. He also describes the gruesome conditions the Jews were forced through while under the power of the Germans.
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
The process of dehumanization is a process which has been repeated throughout history. Dehumanization takes place in the book Night, in which the author of the memoir, Elie Wiesel, is exposed to its effects. He is taken from his family and home, sent to a concentration camp in which he first comes in contact with people who have gone through the process of dehumanization. Most mistake the noun “dehumanization” as the verb “to dehumanize.” Dehumanization is a process, a twisted art; while to dehumanize someone is to persecute in one’s mind and actions whilst the subject being dehumanized still acts and thinks humanly. In a basic summary, to dehumanize is just a step in the process of dehumanization. Dehumanization is a process in which the subject/s are prosecuted (dehumanized), thieved of their family needs, and then stripped of their physiological needs.
When the Holocaust happened there were many Jews killed due to gas chambers and fires that hid their remains. The book Night is about Elie wiesel (a survivor of the Holocaust) and what had happened to him in auschwitz. Elie wiesel is an actual survivor of the holocaust who wrote this book to show the horrors of auschwitz. He was very changed after he came out of the concentration camp known as Auschwitz(the biggest concentration camp during the holocaust). In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, was affected by the events in the book because he didn't care if he died, he wasn't mournful over death, and he was psychologically affected.
Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote Night with the notion for society to advance its understanding of the Holocaust. The underlying theme of Night is faith. Elie Wiesel, for the majority of this work, concerns the faith and survival of his father, Chlomo Wiesel. The concept of survival intertwines with faith, as survival is brought upon Elie’s faith in his father. Both Elie and Chlomo are affected in the same manner as their Jewish society. The self-proclaimed superman race of the German Nazis suppress and ultimately decimate the Jewish society of its time. Elie and Chlomo, alongside their Jewish community, were regarded as subhumans in a world supposedly fit for the Nazi conception. The oppression of Elie and Chlomo begins in 1944, when the Germans constrain the Jews of Sighet into two ghettos. During the time of Nazi supremacy, Elie and Chlomo are forced to travel to various concentration camps, including Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
Night is an autobiography by a man named Eliezer Wiesel. The autobiography is a quite disturbing record of Elie’s childhood in the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald during world war two. While Night is Elie Wiesel’s testimony about his experiences in the Holocaust, Wiesel is not, precisely speaking, the story’s protagonist. Night is narrated by a boy named Eliezer who represents Elie, but details set apart the character Eliezer from the real life Elie. For instance, Eliezer wounds his foot in the concentration camps, while Elie actually wounded his knee. Wiesel fictionalizes seemingly unimportant details because he wants to distinguish his narrator from himself. It is almost impossibly painful for a survivor to write about his Holocaust experience, and the mechanism of a narrator allows Wiesel to distance himself somewhat from the experience, to look in from the outside.
Language has the ability to impact the mood and tone of a piece in literature. In Night, Wiesel uses imagery, symbolism, diction and foreshadowing to illustrate dehumanization. The deeper true horror of the Holocaust is not what they Nazi’s did, but the behavior they legitimized as human beings being dehumanized by one another through silence and apathy.