Category: Elie Wiesel

“I don’t know how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not……It was nothing more than chance”. In his memoir ‘Night’, Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust. He is a Jewish man who got sent to a concentration camp. Elie gets rid of everything he has: everything he worked for in his life, his mother and sister. Elie Wiesel survives by chance. Also, it happens by chance that Elie and his father got together the entire time they are in the concentration camps. Eli never thought he might be in Auschwitz, but he didn’t have a choice to think, he had to do everything quickly and learned to make a decision. He couldn’t talk. Elie tried to do his best to stay with his father. Eli believed that he could control the events around him, but as a result, he lost faith and was disappointed in the world he lives in. Survival was a game, everything to stay alive is a game. In chapter seven, Elie’s father has chosen to die in the selection process. Jewish prisoners are instructed to create two lines. One line is for those who had been selected to die, and the other line is for those who got passed the selection process. Wiesel’s father has been chosen to be in the line for those who are chosen to die. Elie’s father escape when Elie created a mass confusion and his father switches lines. The German leaders did not notice that his father switched lines. The Jewish population survived the Holocaust by the chances which navigating the horrific conditions in the concentration camps.

Elie survived the Holocaust by chance. By chance, Elie and his father are put into the same blocks. Even when they are not, they are never sent to different concentration camps than the other. They got lucky to be together the whole time. In one of the camps Elie and his father lived in, they got assigned to a block under a Jewish man who is looking out for their block. “Whenever he could, he would organize a cauldron of soup for the young ones, the weak, all those who were dreaming more about an extra plateful then of liberty” (pg.48). On April 10, 1945, US troops arrived in Buchenwald, the concentration camp where Elie was staying for a long time. It was the biggest event that saved Elie’s life from joining others who had come to the Holocaust camps. A chance can give you a chance to make a choice, a choice can turn into a chance that will happen in those cases that would never happen. In any circumstances, there is a choice, whether from what we choose or by chance, it depends entirely on our own desire. Our lives sometimes can be directed at the choices we make and give us great power to control our lives.

People can argue that choice plays a huge role in his life, as well as in supporting Elie with his father through to the end. Upon arriving in Birkenau, all Jews split into male and female, as well as age. Elie decides to use the one piece of advice he has been advised, to give him a fake age that will help him escape from being sent to the furnace or otherwise killed due to his ‘useless’ age. “I did not move. What happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing” (pg.31). Elie made this choice to protect himself; if he had come to his father’s aid, he may have suffered a similar punishment or made the situation worse for him or him or his father.

Therefore, Elie Wiesel continued to fight through the Holocaust with his committed chances. By his mendaciousness to obstacles that interfered with his life. And by having a good attitude that helped him ush through terrible moments. Everyone has a chance they can assemble. Chance appears to be the most determining factor in enabling Elie to survive through those months of hardship in the prison camp and later getting liberty from Buchenwald. He learns how to make decisions that involve being silent and just eat, even if you do not like the food. He wants to believe that he has control of the events happening around him, but in the end, he loses his child view of the world in an instant. The alternative he has is to do anything possible to stay alive that is, survive. These decisions are a matter of our life. Sometimes even the smallest chance can change our being forever.

In Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, the values and identities of the Jews have stripped away as dehumanization played a momentous element in their lives during their time spent as prisoners. This is shown through the unfortunate events of prohibition and forceful assimilation the Jews endured in Sighet and Auschwitz-Birkenau, public humiliation including trauma and physical abuse encountered in Buna, and constant eviction and starvation experienced in Gleiwitz and Buchenwald, where their agonizing years as victims of the Holocaust came to an end.

The Germans committed their first act of dehumanization in Sighet by prohibiting the Jews from standard human rights. Day-to-day acts such as leaving the home whenever desired, owning gold or jewelry, worshipping in the synagogue, and dressing in preferable attires of choice were prohibited. The invasion allowed the Germans to bestow their acts of harassment upon the Jews, leading to the forceful assimilation of the Jewish citizens of Sighet making it unable to differentiate between different parties. This is evident in the quote, This quote portrays the thoughts of the author as a fellow villager himself who understood that the prohibition and assimilation dissolved their values and status amongst society. On the other hand, it was important to sacrifice their customs and traditions in order to avoid meeting the harsh consequences that would have otherwise affected the Jews if they retaliated. Therefore, the Jews obeyed the rules the Germans set for the sake of their loved ones.

Furthermore, the Germans not only stripped the Jews of their possessions and basic human rights but also divided their homes into two ghettos with strict restrictions pertaining to staying within the boundaries. This portrays the first step towards dehumanization as an order to stay within a perimeter is similar to restricting animals inside a cage. In another quote in the novel, the author says, This shows that after being stripped off their belongings and being prohibited, they were forced to assimilate to one standard way of being identified. Elie and his family were separated after arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Soon after, the Nazis removed each Jew from their birth name and were given a tattooed number. Therefore, separating Elie from his family, damaged his identity, dehumanizing him and other Jews alike. Normally, this would affect anyone but being attacked with all these prohibitions and assimilations at the age of adolescence can heavily affect one, considering their accommodation; a concentration camp.

The second biggest form of dehumanization the Jews encountered by the Germans in Buna was public humiliation and trauma. Acts such as shaving their heads, making them appear unclothed, providing them with clothes that do not fit, and physically abusing them were some forms of humiliation. They also endured a great load of trauma by being forced to witness hangings and viewing the dead individuals’ faces afterward involuntarily. This is evident in the quote, This quote shows that physical abuse was used in public to ensure to instill fear in the hearts of those watching. It also led to trauma and further humiliation. The Jews were afraid to protect one another whether they received blows or witnessed it, as the impact was the same: fear over fear. Elie describes each blow to be so severe that one could not feel it after a while as it was that painful. Elie himself has felt firsthand the wrath of the German officer, Idek, previously to his father’s beating which is why he understood how excruciating it felt and couldn’t dare to stand up for his father. The physical punishment these victims received dehumanized them to the point of not feeling any sense of remorse or care when it is being done to others.

In addition, another quote from the novel says, Regularly, one would not appeal to the idea of being naked in front of others but nonetheless, the Jews obeyed as they no longer valued anything but surviving. With their identity stripped away long ago they felt no such thing as embarrassment or fear as they have been through uncountable acts of dehumanization. The fact that Elie mentioned that the sight looked as if on the Last Judgement day significantly emphasizes how strict and scared all the prisoners were. They feared men just as an animal would fear its commander, which shows how badly they have all been dehumanized. Hence, considering all they have been through concerning dehumanization, the acts that had broken them from their humanity and hope are public humiliation, trauma, and physical abuse endured in Buna.

Lastly, one of the third major acts of dehumanization that took place during the Holocaust is the constant eviction of the Jews from site to site and the persistent starvation endured over long periods of time. The Nazis generally did not have a single ounce of care regarding the health of the Jews as they forcefully made them run endless hours in the winter with just blankets supporting them against the climate. They fed them morsels of food similar to portions eaten by infants and did not respond or feel remorse when the Jews decided to eat snow to fulfill their week-long starving stomach. This is evidently shown in the following quote, This moment was towards the end of their horrific journey which represents exactly how much dehumanization has consumed every part of what remained in their life. It further shows that even random individuals that had come across the cattle car the Jews were being transported in, treated them in a dehumanized manner. The worker watching with interest doesn’t sound surprising as there were 80 grown men shoved into one cattle car, looking equivalent to animals being transported to a farm in the outside world. Another quote supports this point, This statement was said by Elie Wiesel on the last page of the novel stressing the fact that dehumanization has consumed them as a whole as they no longer valued anything but filling their stomachs with the food they have been deprived of. Therefore, constant eviction and starvation experienced in Gleiwitz and Buchenwald by the Jews without the slightest mercy from the Germans was the final stage of dehumanization in the novel. The Holocaust also known as Shoah between 1941 to 1945 is the most religiously documented example of the damage of dehumanization. Jews were the foremost victims of this genocidal forecast.

Conclusion

From the beginning of time, Hitler and his Nazi followers were assured that the Jewish individuals composed a deadly and terrifying threat to all that was noble in humanity. They were disregarded by humanity; from public humiliation, physical abuse, and starvation to eviction, and were forced into assimilation at many junctures of their lives. Throughout, Elie’s whole journey there were unnumbered amounts of dehumanized acts provided by the Germans towards the Jews which signifies the importance of gaining knowledge regarding their past situation as it is a way of honoring them; the prisoners of the Holocaust who had once been men of great dignity, turned into animals by the hands of the Nazis.

As we all know, the Second World War was a dark time ever, for as though many people got executed and frightened throughout the Holocaust. The memoir, ‘Night’, by Elie Wiesel, mentions the harsh circumstances, he and the others endured and how they were close to losing hope. It has a series of ironic and powerful themes that compels him to question human nature from a historical viewpoint. ‘Night’ is Wiesel’s perspective as a Jew during the Holocaust. In 1944, Elie, who is a boy from Sighet in Romania, did not know what the Holocaust was and believed that the Germans would have lost the war. He and his family were then transferred from Sighet to the ghettos and then later to the concentration camps. He got separated from his mother and sisters in Birkenau. This event led to a horrific series of events in which Wiesel encounters both losing himself and his God. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Elie’s bond with God has changed after witnessing various people die right in front of his eyes. You will be able to see the rapid change by observing Elie’s life before the ghettos, at the ghettos, and when he was in the concentration camps.

At the beginning of the novel ‘Night’, Eliezer, a fifteen-year-old boy from Sighet, Romania, had a powerful connection to God. From a young age, he wanted to venture into the world of mysticism, usually learned by Jewish scholars who are thirty and above. He sought to learn the Kabbalah to answer his questions about God and the purpose of everything. But his father was not fond of the idea of his only son studying difficult topics, and rather have him learn the elements. His father informed his father, “You are too young for that. Maimonides tells us that one must be thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. First, you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend” (Wiesel, 4). Yet, unknown to his father, Wissel found a master, Moishe the Beadle, who became Moishe’s teacher and spiritual guide. Moishe, a poor foreign Jew who lives in Sighet, taught Wiesel about the riddles of the universe, and God’s centrality for the quest to understanding began the study of the realized and advanced Jewish text. One day, Moishe asked Wiesel why he prays, Wiesel, a religious fifteen-year-old, could not answer. So, Wiesel asked him for his reason, and he replied by saying “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions” (Wiesel, 3). He conveys that faith is based on more than just worshiping God, which strengthened Wiesel’s connection with God. Eliezer begins to realize that there is more to worshiping God and ends up with a strong devotion to God.

The next stage is at Birkenau when the prisoners and Elie saw the torturing scene of the child’s murder, this section concludes and symbolically enacts the murder of God. Elie doesn’t believe the sight he sees. He starts to question what humanity had come to. His faith begins to shake, he could not understand what kind of God would let innocent children get burned alive. Eliezer believes that God should not exist where innocent kids are being hanged on the gallows. The death of the innocent children represents the death of Eliezer’s own innocence within the camp, he had completely changed from the kid he was before the Holocaust. He has lost his religion and he’s about to lose his sense of morals and values. He suddenly hears the prisoners reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, which pisses off Elie. He said: “I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the external and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?” (Wiesel, 33), but he also began reciting it. In summation, Wiesel starts to question his humanity after he saw his father get struck by the Kapo with such force that he fell down and stood there paralyzed, unable to move. For this reason, he notices the transformation of himself before and after the Holocaust. Despite his father getting beaten, he comforts his son saying “It doesn’t hurt” (Wiesel, 39), even though you can see the red mark on his cheeks.

Finally, at the end of the memoir, Eliezer no longer had faith that God was a merciful being, he started to think that God might not even exist at all. He made the decision to survive off his own strengths, not believing that God was with him. Although he convinced himself that he was all alone, deep down Elie will forever have a part of himself dedicated to God and his Jewish studies. At the ending summer of 1944, the Jews of Buna gathered simultaneously to celebrate their Jewish holidays Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the new year. They were all praying and praising God together. But Eliezer did not realize why they would praise a God who let them suffer. “Blessed God’s name? Why, should I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel, 67). He begins mocking them for believing that they were the chosen ones and Jewish are God’s people. He comes to believe that God is powerless compared to humanity. “And I, the former mystic, was thinking: yes, man is stronger than God” (Wiesel, 67). After the death of Akiba Drumer, Wiesel doesn’t recite the Kaddish on his behalf, even though he promised him. His loss of religion involves essences betrayal not simply of God but of his fellow people. Elie may have claimed that he did not believe in God’s existence, at the same time he makes an oath that the Holocaust will always be in memory. When he talks about the Holocaust during his Nobel Prize speech, he said: “Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world”. Elie endured countless pain during the Holocaust, his faith weakened, but he still maintained it.

The memoir ‘Night’ records Wiesel’s feelings throughout the Holocaust. Wiesel’s relationship with God experiences its ups and downs, which changes his views of God. In the memoir, the writer first shows his robust devotion to God before the Holocaust, then the writer becomes distrustful of his non-secular beliefs, grows and transforms into a person, and at the same time redefines God’s position in his life. Although it ends with Elie being a shattered young man, unfaithful, and not hopeful for himself or for humanity, Wiesel believes that a unit reason to believe in each God and humankind’s capability for goodness, even after the Holocaust. He recovered his religion in man and God and went on to guide a productive life after the Holocaust after witnessing the never-ending terror that could have resulted in his loss of religion in God and within humanity. Wiesel was lucky enough to survive the Holocaust it was a weird coincidence, without hope and religion he would have ended up dead. He said: “What hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the silence of the bystander” (Wiesel, 170). Elie lost hope in humanity due to people being silent and not standing up for the Jews when they were so much encountering pain and suffering. One of the great lessons he finds out is never to be silent when a human being is encountering pain.

When a person’s religion and belief are tested harshly they start to disbelieve everything. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, religion plays a big role because Elie Wiesel suffers not only because he sees the Jews murdered at eyesight, but also because he feels that his God was murdered. In the book, the Night, the observation of human behavior, motivation, and nature is expressed within the quote we choose. Observation of human behavior is shown because Humans can act differently based on your certain religion. In the book ‘The Night’, the nazi’s are killing the jews based on their religion and because the Jews were minority back then.

Observation of human motivation is shown when Elie Wiesel doesn’t give up his faith in believing in God because if he believes in god he will get that faith and mentality back too think there is a way out of concentration camp. Observation of human nature is the belief of a system of faith and worship in the book the Night. In the book ‘ The Night’, Elie Wiesel loses his faith in God, family, and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp. He also struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. The concentration camp destroys his innocence and his belief in loving God. The author uses imagery because Elie Wiesel claims that his faith is utterly destroyed, yet at the same time says that he will never forget these things even if he “lives as long as God Himself.” Elie Wiesel completely denies the existence of God, he refers to God’s existence in the final line. Against saying he has lost all faith, it is clear that Elie Wiesel is struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he is never able to forget the horror of that night, he is never able to reject his religion.

After being in the camp for one night, seeing the little faces of the horrified children, and a silent blue sky while enduring losing faith in himself (Elie Wiesel), God, and religion, Elie gains back his mentality and reveals, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky” (Wiesel 34). Elie is explaining how he will never forget the terrible things he experienced, and he will never forget how horrific they were. The things Elie and the thousands of other survivors saw, will be etched into their minds forever. These people were tortured, saw others be tortured, and most of them barely survived. It makes it so sad to think that every day they have these terrible memories. There were a lot of horrific experiences during the Holocaust. This quote shows just how much the Holocaust changed people, especially those who ended up surviving.

Elie Wiesel suffers because he sees Jews murdered at eyesight, but also because he feels that his God was murdered. The concentration camp destroys his innocence and his belief in loving God. Despite saying he has lost all faith, it is clear that Elie Wiesel is struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he is never able to forget the horror of that night,” he is never able to reject completely his heritage and his religion.

“I turned into A-7713. From that point on, I had no other name”. Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’ is about a youthful Jewish kid and his encounters through the Holocaust in the 1940’s. He is isolated from his mom and his sister, also is extradited to Auschwitz, one of Hitler’s most discouraging inhumane imprisonments. Wiesel utilizes night as the title as well as an image of time, a world without God, and man’s savagery to men. Night is characterized as a period of day when the sun is torpid, yet for Elie Wiesel, night is unceasing. While stuck inside the camp, trust is immediately decreased in Elie’s psyche, overwhelmed by the profound murkiness that night brings.

Elie Wiesel had such a great deal of adoration for his dad and continued revealing to himself that he needed to endure the grounds that his dad couldn’t live without him. He realized his dad was frail and he was unable to live without the help and love of his child. “Come, Father. It’s better there. You’ll have the option to rest there. We’ll alternate. I’ll look out for you and you’ll look out for me. We won’t let each other nod off. We’ll take care of one another”. Elie and his dad were running for unlimited miles through the dim and freezing night. In case of somebody nodded off a decent possibility that they could never wake up again. Elie was securing his father when he said they should care for one another. He did not want to allow his dad to bite the dust so he made himself remain alive to support his dad. Moreover, Elie solaces his father while he is crying. “The world isn’t keen on us. Today, the sky’s the limit, even the crematoria. His voice broke. ‘Father’, I said. ‘On the off chance that that is valid, at that point I would prefer not to pause. I’ll run into the electric security fencing. That would be simpler than a moderate demise in the flares’. He didn’t reply. He was sobbing. His body was shaking”. This is the point at which the Jews had left the ghettos and had been shipped to Auschwitz. When his dad is destroyed about his better half and girls, Elie attempts his best to comfort his dad since he realizes he can’t lose all his family. He is telling his dad that he will battle for his right or privilege.

One more factor that added to Elie’s endurance was his well-being and appearance. Elie was a youthful and sound kid, which means that if you’re a detainee in the Holocaust implies you evade quick passing. ‘Quickly, I remained before him. ‘Your age?’, he asked, maybe attempting to sound fatherly. ‘I’m eighteen’. My voice was trembling. ‘Healthy?’. ‘Yes’. ‘Your calling?’. Tell him that I was an understudy? ‘Rancher’, I heard myself saying. This discussion kept going close to a couple of moments. It appeared to be an unending length of time. The twirly doo highlighted the left. I stepped forward. I originally needed to see where they would send my dad. Were he to have gone to one side, I would have pursued him. The twirly doo, again, moved to one side. A weight lifted from my heart’. The SS official had seen that Elie was healthy and at a youthful age. This spared Elie from being sent to the crematoria directly off the bat. Some other time Elie’s well-being spared him once more. “I was placing one foot before the other, similar to a machine. I was hauling this skinny body that was still such a weight. In the event that no one but I could have shed it. Despite the fact that I attempted to forget about it, I was unable to help believing that there were two of us: my body and I. Also, I abhorred that body. I hushed up about rehashing, ‘Don’t think, don’t stop, run!’. Near me, men were falling into the grimy snow’. While the detainees were emptying their camp, they needed to run many, numerous miles in the freezing cold. A significant number of the detainees dropped dead in the center of the departure. Since Elie was a sound youngster, he endured the run. On the off chance that he wasn’t solid, he wouldn’t have endured the run.

Despite the fact that it’s practically difficult to undergo the Holocaust, love for his family, humankind, and his well-being and appearance helped Elie Wiesel go through the Holocaust. These things contributed significantly to Elie’s experiences. His experience as a prisoner during the Holocaust is past anything we can envision. Elie came out of the experience with no living relatives and even got food contamination three weeks after he was freed. Elie turned out a more grounded individual too, and even composed this book about his experience of the Holocaust.

Identity is what makes a person who they are and when one goes through trauma and dehumanization the way they see things changes, which causes their identity to reshape. ‘Night’ by Eliezer Wiesel is a Holocaust memoir where Elie narrates his life experience in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie provides horrifying details of the atrocities he and the Jews suffered in the camps. The suffering and trauma Elie endures in ‘Night’ affect his choices, resulting in a loss of faith in God, loss of faith in family and love, and loss of self-worth, which shapes and reshapes his identity.

In Elie’s childhood before his experience in the camps faith in God and religion was a huge part of his identity but this was tested and changed over and over in the camps. The moment when Elie’s faith in God is really tested is when little pipel is hung. “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’, and from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where-hanging here from these gallows” (Wiesel, 65). After witnessing something so inhumane the murder of an innocent little boy Elie’s faith in God is slowly dying like the little boy in front of him. To Elie, God walked away when he suffered and needed help and guidance the most. Elie became sick and tired and God’s silence so rebelled against God in his own way. “I did not fast… I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, or protest against Him” (Wiesel, 69). Elie is mad at God for staying silent when all these atrocities are killing innocent believers in God, causing him to lose his faith and with that, he loses a huge part of his identity caused by the hardships, dehumanization, and trauma he is exposed to.

Elie’s family was a huge part of his childhood and identity growing up and he lost everyone all in one day. After witnessing so many families break apart in the camps, from the boy who killed his father for a piece of bread to the abandonment Rabbi Eliahou’s son, all Elie had was his father and he prayed that he would never treat his father like that, but their relationship was tested again and again in the camp. When Elie first arrived at camp his father was hit on the face by a gypsy, he felt ashamed of himself standing there and doing nothing, after watching his father getting hit right in front of him. Later when Elie’s father is beaten up by the Kapo Elie blames his father. “I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn’t he have avoided Idek’s wrath” (Wiesel, 54). This shows the change in Elie’s attitude towards his father. The father Elie once looked up to and respected is now just a burden in this camp of death. Near the end of the story, after Elie’s father develops dysentery, Elie starts to have feelings of resentment towards his father and, at times Elie even thinks about taking his father’s food and leaving him alone but did not have the heart to do so. He stayed with his father until the very end. After his father’s death, Elie did not cry. “It pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last” (Wiesel, 112). Elie was ashamed of the fact that he felt free after his father’s death. Elie felt a burden taken off his back because to Elie love and family were a weakness in this camp.

As a result of how brutally Elie was treated and the thought of being selected to die if not needed, Elie lost all of his self-confidence and self-worth. During the selection process, SS officers picked the fittest prisoners and annihilated the other prisoners that did not make the cut. This process dehumanized Elie and the prisoners by slaughtering prisoners not worthy of living just like animals. “It was my turn. I Ran without looking back. My head was spinning: you are too skinny, you are good for the ovens… The race seemed endless; I felt as though I had been running for years… You are too skinny, you are too weak… At last, I arrived Exhausted” (Wiesel, 72). This shows how fearful Elie was. The thought of not being worthy enough to live; he was ‘too skinny’ and ‘too weak’. This was precisely what the Nazi’s wanted the prisoners to believe that they were worth nothing, their lives were worth absolutely nothing. Even after Elie was liberated what he experienced in the camps changed him forever. “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall… From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel, 115). Elie’s dehumanizing experience transformed him into a living corpse. Elie was not able to look at himself as a living being anymore; he not only lost his self-worth but his identity of living as well.

Elie’s identity is reshaped by the cruel and inhumane treatment in the camps. Going through so much and watching an innocent boy murdered in front of him while God stays silent causes Elie, to lose faith in God. Witnessing so many families break apart in the camp and having his own father feeling like a burden causes Elie to lose faith in love and family. Going through the selection process being judged whether one is useful enough to keep living causes, Elie, to lose faith in his own self-worth. Going through such dehumanizing experiences Elie loses his faith in God, loses his faith in love and family, and loses his faith in his own self-worth which was a huge part of his identity. These experiences affected Elie’s beliefs and life forever even after the Holocaust.

‘Night’, Elie Wiesel’s report of his experiences as a 15-year-old during the Holocaust, is a memory of prodigious power. His humanity glows from every step as he bears witness to the tragedy which destroyed the Jewish race by the power of the Nazis. Stripped naked and beaten for bread, prisoners were treated worse than animals. During the Holocaust, prisoners were forced naked and humiliated, forced to wear rags. There were children passed on between homosexuals in power and prisoners were forced to starvation to fighting for bread. ‘Night’ is a memoir representing the horrors Elie had experienced in the concentration camps. The act of violence the story shows is terrifying. Elie experiences dehumanization by the policies and rules of the concentration camps, the SS officers, and prisoners as well.

Ellie and the other prisoners were dehumanized by the policies followed inside the concentration camps. The medical personnel weren’t to take note of the prisoners who had a gold crown in their mouth, yet Elie was one of them. “I sat in the chair and asked him humbly. Please, what are you going to do? Simple take out your gold crown, he replied indifferently” (Wiesel, 49). Before the Jewish people were placed in concentration camps, all things of value they owned were to be taken. This eventually included things as measly as a gold crown on a tooth, for God’s sake. Stripping people of their belongings were in the very first step of the Jews degradation. Farther into Elie’s time at concentration camps he finds Idek, the Kapo in charge of his block, laying in a bed with a polish girl. He laughed but was punished for it. “Lie down on it! On your stomach! I obeyed. Then I was aware of nothing but the strokes of a whip” (Wiesel, 55). If the prisoners were to do something like stealing or opposing authority…they were either punished in front of every prisoner or hung. This dehumanized prisoners, their lives treated in such a cruel manner.

The prisoners in the Holocaust were dehumanized by the SS officers who were keeping rules in place. Once Eliezer and his father first reach Auschwitz, Elie catches sight of SS officers throwing babies into the crematory. “They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load, little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it…saw it with my own eyes…those children in the flames” (Wiesel, 30). During the Holocaust the SS officers followed such terrible policies without sympathy, and would even put the prisoners through various tests to eliminate the weak. The SS officers did this by using the selection, a string of different examination to test if the strength of the prisoners were substantial. “My head was spinning, you’re too thin, you’re good for the furnace… The race seemed interminable. I thought I had been running for years… You’re too thin, you’re too weak… At least I had arrived exhausted” (Wiesel, 68). The prisoners were forced to do multiple activities such as running, to prove themselves to be useful. Those who failed to be fast enough were written down, and thrown into the furnace.

The prisoners of the Holocaust were dehumanized by everyone around them, including themselves. Again, if prisoners were to break the rules of the concentration camp, they were to be hung. During one of these hanging ceremonies, Elie’s friend inmate complained. “Do you think this ceremony will be over soon? I’m hungry…” (Wiesel, 59). The dialogue proves the disinterest prisoners would show to something as horrible as a hanging. They were more concerned with their own ration of food than that person’s life. To treat others with less importance than something simple is terrifying. It becomes worse when the prisoners are being transferred to a different camp, and fight over bites of bread. “One day when we had stopped, a workman took a piece of bread out of this bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought each other to the death for a few crumbs. The German workmen took a lively interest in the spectacle” (Wiesel, 95). The prisoners had beat each other for bread. A prisoner’s son beat his father for bread to the point of death! Afterward, the son then died himself. To think that people were driven to such a long time of inhumanity, and to treat everyone else as if they’re in your way is saddening.

The prisoners of the Holocaust were dehumanized every step they took. The policies of the concentration camp, the SS officers, and even each other. Still, the Holocaust proves the true power humans hold and how it can shape identity. Whether it be through violence or keeping your friends close, the will of survival had fueled the prisoners’ instinct. The Holocaust is a tragedy that tested to what lengths humankind will end up to, even with morals thrown to the can.

In ‘Night’, Elie Wiesel provides his story about his experience in the Holocaust to show, the theme of how horrible people were treated in the Holocaust and how they were dehumanized. The book centers around a young Jewish boy named Elie. In the book Elie tells his experience of what he faced throughout the Holocaust. He talks about the problems and hardships he faced throughout his life when he was in the concentration camp. When Elie was in the camp, he faced a bunch of problems, one being dehumanization. Dehumanization is that the German soldiers treated the Jews as if they were animals, they didn’t get treated like people.

In the story Elie provides us with some examples how the Jews were dehumanized. Wiesel (1958) provides, “Nor shall I ever forget the world for having pushed me against the wall, for having turned me into a stranger, for having awakened in me a beast, most primitive instincts” (p.12). Elie talks about how he feels like he was a stranger, or a beast. Being in this camp made Elie no longer feel as if he was human, he felt like an animal. He lost the ability to feel human and feel what normal people felt. Wiesel (1958) says “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (p. 42). When Elie was at the camp, he got a marking on his arm, from now on Elie wouldn’t be known by his real name anymore but by something on his arm. He lost meaning to himself and anything that had to do with him just became numbers on his arm. Wiesel (1958) also provides, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me”. Elie says this at the end of the story. He has been in the camp for so long that he no longer sees himself as ‘Elie Wiesel’, but he sees himself as just a corpse that has been hurt and treated poorly.

Elie provides us with more examples of dehumanization throughout the whole story. When the Jews were in these camps the Germans treated them very poorly. Wiesel (1958) tells us that “strange-looking creatures, dressed in striped jackets and black pants, jumped into the wagon” (Wiesel, 28). Elie notices men in striped jackets when he comes into the camp. He witnessed the men and women who have already been there working and suffering. He sees these men and women and this could be used as foreshadowing to Elie to show him what will happen to him in these camps. Wiesel (1958) gives us an example of something he witnessed from the camp he was in: “One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest” (p. 100). Elie witnessed a worker toss bread into a wagon, the people stampeded and this could represent a group of ducks at a park, a person could be sitting on a bench and throws a piece of bread and all the ducks, which are animals, stampede each other and fight for this piece of bread. Elie could be telling us this because he could be referencing the people fighting for food to animals. Wiesel also gives us this example: “Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes” (Wiesel, 101). Back to the quote above when the Jews were fighting over bread. For the most part the Jews didn’t have much excitement they were all people being controlled and having everything ripped from them, they were like zombies, the walking dead, but all of a sudden when someone showed food, they all turned into wild beast and started attacking each other because they were that desperate, this leads to them being ‘animals’ or ‘not human’ because it labels them as beast and they were acting like beasts.

Lastly, Wiesel (1958) talks about the cattle cars and what he experienced in them “climb into the cars eighty persons in each one” (p. 22). “Shoved us inside a hundred per car we were so skinny!” (p.97.). “We had been a hundred or so in this wagon. Twelve of left it” (p.97). Wiesel gives us some examples of what happened in the cattle cars. He tells us how there were many people in them 80, maybe even 100. He also talks about how twelve didn’t make it anymore, probably because they were starving or disease. The Germans shoved them in cattle cars, it even says it in the name, they were shoved into the train cars like cattle. That can be used as a form of dehumanization.

Introduction:

Recognition of human features is a natural process and it affects thinking and how others perceive the world. By removing these human features, the brain cannot process what usually stops one from treating others with dehumanizing disrespect. In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, conducted the Milgram experiment which was a test based on dehumanization and the rates of obedience and was a very important experiment with extremely troubling results. In these tests, there was a teacher and learner where the teacher inflicted pain upon the learner if they did not get an answer right. Obedience was tested and showed how far one would go to dehumanize another just to “follow the rules”. A scientist was the authority figure who pressured the teacher to shock the learner. Similar to the scientist, Hitler, and the Shah were two prominent figures of authority who were able to manipulate thousands to follow their steps in dehumanization through propaganda techniques and the removal of identity. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, and Marjane Satrapi’s Memoir, Persepolis, connect to this experiment and show just two of the dozens of occurrences where this manipulation occurred. These memoirs follow two young adults both suffering in their ways. Night follows Elie Wiesel, a Jew living in Sight, who was taken to a concentration camp where his dreams and happiness were shattered before his own eyes. Nazis continue to take control of him and he just waits to be picked up and tortured like the Teacher and the Learner in the Milgram Experiment. As he was dehumanized to the point of a corpse, he learned to sacrifice, and survive on nothing, and he was truly alone in a group that looked the same. Similarly, in Persepolis, Marji fits in a group without special characteristics. Persepolis describes Marji Satrapi, a young girl who lived during the Iranian Revolution. During this Revolution, the propaganda and enforcement of living the same life as others change her. She learns how she is alone in the world and that she will never be the same. Both of these adolescents question and later answer what led them to this hopelessness and how their lives were controlled as if they were puppets on a string. Wiesel and Satrapi suggest that during a time of crisis, the removal of individuality was necessary alongside propaganda for the acceleration of dehumanization faced by the victims, leading to some seeing themselves as superior to others.

Body paragraph 1:

Elie and Marji propose that removing individual characteristics from a large population influences the rate of dehumanization. Even at the commencement of the dehumanization in their memoirs, Elie and Marji’s individual qualities began to be removed. Nazis were ordered to begin transitioning the Jewish to concentration camps, where Elie would later end up. They gradually began to increase the dehumanization enforced on the prisoners: “Jews were prohibited from leaving their residence for days, under penalty of death…But new edicts were already being issued. We no longer had the right to frequent restaurants or cafes, to travel by rail, to attend synagogues, to be on the street after six o’clock in the evening” (Wiesel 10). At this point, the Jews were still oblivious to what would crumble their lives in the next several weeks. By beginning to remove several individual qualities from them, it was easier to treat them worse and worse until they were viewed as objects. They were forced to stay inside, and if they disobeyed they were shot and killed. By removing a simple right of leaving one’s house, Jews lost a natural right of a person. But, they accepted this, and “Little by little life returned to ‘normal’’(Wiesel 11). This statement is continuously repeated throughout the novel and shows their oblivion to the removal of individuality which made dehumanization even easier. Then, their right to go to synagogues was taken away. By not going to synagogue their religion was removed, which was what Hitler and the Nazis hated most. Without their religion, they were missing an aspect that most differentiated them from others. By not letting them go out, they could not socialize which was a key social interaction the brain needed. By removing these characteristics. they were closer to objects than people. They got used to being treated like objects which made it even easier for them to be dehumanized. Soon the Jews were moved into mass homes as if they were filthy dogs in a shelter: “The ghettos were created in Sighet. We gave some of our rooms to relatives who had been driven out of their homes(Wiesel 11).” Ghettos were areas where minorities were permitted to live in but could not leave. Usually, a family lives in a home with a specific address. An address is a unique quality of a unique family. By removing these specific qualities, they all shared one home. They were now one group, one people. Not only that, by not having everyone in separate homes, they were much easier to send to concentration camps like cattle waiting to be sent to the slaughterhouse. Similarly, Marji in Persepolis was stripped of her individual qualities until she was simply a skeleton made of only general qualities that identified her as a population. Before the Iranian revolution, there is a multitude of panels focusing on the children running around carefree (Satrapi 4). The background of the panel is white, depicting a lighter theme, specifically a light-hearted and cheerful tone. The white contrasts the dark strokes on the page that illustrate smiles on the children’s faces, their eyes intertwined with each other mischievously. This contrast emphasizes the joy children should be allowed to feel, alongside the freedom that developing kids need to experience. Promptly after the Iranian Revolution began, all the girls were required to wear a veil along the closing of bilingual schools as seen in a row of panels(Satrapi 4). In these panels, the background is black, representing the aggravation and coldness on the government’s part. It also proves the effects that these cold words had on the people. The darkness represents the void that would later suck away the joy and individuality of the women and in general, people of Iran. These panels show the impact on the students. Their faces are no longer smiling and are pale contrasting the darkness of the scenes. Many protested these new laws, especially women who were used to the freedom of showing their hair as well as other qualities. Including the protests is a panel depicting some women for and against the veil(Satrapi 5). On the left are women for the veil, with their eyes closed. The women on the right are women against the veil, with their eyes open, shouting for freedom. The way the women’s eyes are closed can symbolize how Marji thought of them. Closeminded and not open to the world. Not only that, their veils blend in the darkness and show how they were not individual bodies but one group, all the same. This contradicts the women on the right who were in white clothes as if to show they were in the light, as well as being outlined by thick lines which show they are individual. This individuality was removed as the laws became stricter and the government used fear to control the people as a group. Massacres had started. After black Friday, a panel shows hundreds of dead bodies, protestors who were murdered (Satrapi 40). In this panel, the same image of a person is repeated over and over again, their mouth open and eyes rolled to the back of their head. They all look the same. This depicts what happened to those who protested for individuality. They were dehumanized to the point of death as a result of wanting change. Not only that, the panel shows the horrific representation that they all look the same, and proves that to the government, at least they weren’t individualized at death.

Body paragraph 2:

The authors of the memoirs advocate that propaganda is needed for the process of dehumanization to occur with such large crowds of victims.

Pg 42 In Persepolis they celebrated, and their mouths looked like voids which represents they were filled with darkness and brainwashing.

Propaganda is extremely influential to students in Iran as school is a place where Marji and her classmates spend the majority of their day. Children expect schools to always tell them facts and by using propaganda in schools, they are more easily influenced. As hatred for the Shah became widespread, schools were required to make the future generation listen to the propaganda. A panel specifically encaptures this where it describes a teacher forcing her students to tear pictures of the Shah out of their textbooks(Satrapi 44). In this panel, all students are looking down except Marji who is making eye contact with her teacher. This can signify how all the other students were just trying to stick in and as a result, were listening to the propaganda. Marji, whose eyes were open represents how she was more open to other ideas. Similarly, in this panel, the teacher is depicted as larger than the students. This symbolized the social hierarchy within the school and how the teacher was a mass dispenser of propaganda to the students who had no choice but to follow her ideas. After occupying the US embassy and not allowing anyone to enter the United States, the government shows more and more propaganda through television. A large panel depicts Marji and her parents sitting in their room and watching the news on the television(Satrapi 73). This panel transitions straight to a television of the Ministry of Education discussing the closing of universities for two years. This transition can represent how the information goes from the television straight to the families listening easily. It also shows the effects the propaganda will have on families. Also, the TV in the scene is 2D and on one side. This can represent how the information is one-sided and biased. The information that the Ministry of Education is extremely untruthful and only shows one side of a story with many different views. The speech used also is extremely manipulative. The Ministry includes words such as, “Decadent” and “Future Imperialists” to describe what would happen to students if Universities were not shut down. By exaggerating word choice and also using a slippery slope technique to describe children’s careers, it influences parents to follow and accept the propaganda. Not only was propaganda heavily shown in schools, but students also repeated it outside to their families. Included in Mrs. Nasrines and Mrs. Satrapi’s conversation on keys to heaven, was a specific panel where Mrs. Nasrine is holding the key describing what was said to her. In the panel, Mrs Nasrine states with emotion, “They gave this to my son at school. They told the boys that if they went to war and were lucky enough to die, this key would get them into heaven”(Satrapi 99). This quote describes how the schools are influencing the children with keys. These keys represent a key to heaven. The specific phrase, “Lucky enough to die,” is extremely influential. The specific use of euphemistic language is manipulative, especially towards young children. The word, “lucky” is typically presented as the situation of joy. Using such a positive word in an explanation to young children about forcing them to go to war, shifts it to a more neutral tone instead of depressing and dark. Additionally, Marji’s culture revolves around faith and religion and it is extremely important to their daily lives. By saying that the key will bring them to heaven they are connecting faith into war. This is essentially lying to gullible children and parents by revolving the key not around dying in war but around god and heaven. This too shifts the language more positively and is extremely influential propaganda. Furthermore, the influence of this propaganda is seen right before Marji goes to a party. The panel depicts dead bodies flying as a result of a bomb explosion(Satrapi 102). The keys to heaven are around their necks. At the party, however, the panel similarly shows bodies flying(Satrapi 102). Except, their bodies are in the air due to the dancing and the children are smiling with excitement and joy. The contrast in these themes of panels shows how much of an impact propaganda has. While both show bodies in the air, the first one is from death. The panel is very large to show the reality of the war. It shows the impact it had on the boys themselves. But, at the party silhouettes in a similar fashion symbolize that the propaganda had worked. The tone in this panel of joy juxtaposes the tone of the panel of the boys. This difference in tone shows the harsh reality without anyone knowing. The boys had been convinced to willingly die for god but nobody else knew or cared. This shows how easily young boys can be dehumanized and killed without a thought from others. Like the propaganda in Persepolis, Elie was specifically targeted by propaganda because of being a young boy. Once at the concentration camp, all the younger stronger men were riled up, secretly the only ones with a slim chance of survival. The Nazis ordered them to start marching towards the crematorium. Eli remembers walking towards the flames thinking he was going to be killed when suddenly they turn. Elie describes, “My heart was about to burst. There I was face-to-face with the Angel of Death…No.Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn left and herded into barracks. I squeezed my father’s hand”(Wiesel 34).

Body paragraph 3:

Wiesel and Satrapi showcase how removing idiosyncratic qualities from prisoners and Iranians leads to some seeing themselves as predominant to others. In the memoirs, both Elie and Marji notice this phenomenon and they even follow it.

Conclusion

Elie and Marji were stripped to the core of their individuality. No longer were they people but moreover objects in the control of others. Like puppets, they were played with and laughed at. They were manipulated into acts like Stanley Milgram conducted in his experiments on the psychology of obedience connecting to individuality. In the Milgram experiment, the teacher was influenced because they saw the learner as an object. The learner did not have a name, neither were they in the same room as the teacher. No human interactions were present which was necessary for the obedience of the teacher to dehumanize the learners to the point of death. Originally, Elie and Marji were ignorant about the manipulation they endured by a slow removal of individual characteristics and propaganda which was so necessary for the rate of dehumanization to accelerate alongside other factors. However, as they begin to recognize the psychology behind the schemes, it is too late and they are only a skeleton of their bare needs. Night and Persepolis demonstrate personal encounters of what has happened over and over through multiple events, how mass crowds are played with like Barbie dolls. How they no longer have any qualities but are rather corpses. Rather than enduring these events again, these memoirs warn the world to never let these events happen again as they fight the different perceptions. “It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation”(Milgram). Like Puppets on strings, Elie and Marji were played with, under the brainwashing of a higher power, simply by the removal of essential qualities and control of crowds with false information. This was only a result of the treatment they endured. Therefore, Wiesel and Satrapi prove that during a time of crisis, the removal of individuality was necessary alongside propaganda for the acceleration of dehumanization faced by the victims, leading to some seeing themselves as superior to others.  

Religious views can change depending on the things a person experiences. Some traumatizing situations could lead a person to question their belief in God. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, ‘Night’, talks about Ellie’s life as a Jew during the Holocaust and his relationship with God. From Sighet to Buchenwald’s liberation, Elie Wiesel’s faith changes from strong devotion to a cynical view to changing the position God holds in his life.

In the beginning, Elie Wiesel shows a strong devotion to his relationship with God. During the day, he “studied the Talmud” and at night Elie would go to “the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple” (pg.3). Wiesel ingrained his spirituality in all of his activities and started studying the Kabbalah and advanced Jewish text, with the help of Moche the Beadle. He wanted to devote all of his time to religious studies and spend his life dedicated to Judaism. Wiesel follows Judaism instinctively, like a body function. When Wiesel is asked by Moche why he prays, he cannot answer, but thinks to himself: “Why did [he] live? Why did [he] breath?” (pg.4). With Moche’s guidance, he studies the Zohar to “discover within the very essence of divinity” (pg.5). Wiesel maintained his devotion to Judaism when his situation started to deteriorate. When they first arrived at Auschwitz, he and his people thanked God and had their confidence restored because they “felt free of the previous nights’ terror” (pg.27). When Wiesel’s shoes are covered in mud and not discovered by the SS guards, he “thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe” (pg.38). Wiesel clung to the belief that God was watching over them and helping them survive.

As ‘Night’ goes on, Wiesel starts to become disillusioned with God’s power and starts to question his devotion. When he is confronted with terrors of the crematorium and hears the sound of men reciting the Kaddish, “the prayer for the dead”, he ponders why God “chose to be silent” (pg.33). This event caused him to become angry and question himself as to why he should thank God and sanctify his name. While in the camp, Wiesel felt that God was nonexistent. After the first night in Auschwitz, he was changed as a person in both his beliefs and the way he sees the world. Wiesel mentions how he never would “forget those moments that murdered [his] God and [his] soul and turned [his] dreams to ashes” (pg.34). Elie could not get past the thought that God should be able to stop what was happening. This leads him to resent God and revolt against him. He found himself asking “Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (pg.67). Wiesel questioned why God would “go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies” (pg.66). He resents God because he believed God had abandoned them.

In the end, Elie redefines the position God holds in his life. He sees that the Holocaust does not only bring out the evil and cruelty in the Nazis, but also the other prisoners, and even himself. Elie feels that he is better off alone, without God. God must not exist if the world could be so cruel. “[On Yom Kippur] I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against him” (pg.69). Despite all this, Elie realizes that his belief of God was always present and his habit of religion will never leave. “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed” (pg.91). Even though Elie claims to not believe in God, he still turns to him when he doubts his ability to control himself.

Throughout ‘Night’, Elie’s relationship with God faces hardships and setbacks which changes his view on religion. Wiesel’s started out as very devoted, but as the memoir goes on, he starts to have doubts in God. In the end, Elie says he doesn’t believe in God, though he realizes his religion and relationship with God will always stay with him.