Dehumanization of the Jews in Night by Elie Wiesel

“I will never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitude of a wounded animal.” (Wiesel 106) In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Jews were treated like animals and stripped of their humanity. Night tells the story of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and other Jews endured during the Holocaust, and the entirety of their internment. In the beginning, Elie was warned about Jews being brought to concentration camps and being slaughtered, to him actually living it. His journey embarks as he and other Jews lose their identity, faith in humanity, becoming apathetic, cold, and dehumanized. The enslaved Jews experienced the worst forms of inhumane treatment, they were pushed beyond their ability to deal with the oppressing starvation, cold, disease, exhaustion, and cruelty. 

After arriving at the concentration camp in Birkenau, the Jews got their clothes taken away, heads shaved, tattooed numbers on their arms, and they were put into the same clothes. The Jewish community was stripped of their identity and were dealt like shipping goods. Numbers were tattooed on their arms to label and identify them, they no longer had a name. Their heads were shaved, and they all got put in the same clothes, thus taking their physical identity away. Now they were seen as products with expiration dates. When they got tired and couldn’t work anymore, they were killed. “We were incapable of thinking anything at all. Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into the fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us” (Wiesel 36) The Jews were now prisoners, and labeled as undesirables. They became an empty shell, who no longer felt fear or nervousness, it was all replaced with a weary, dull, feeling, almost inhuman. Everything they have ever known or loved was taken away from them, and they were left with nothing. They no longer had anything to call their own or to represent them. The only thing that kept most alive, was knowing that their loved ones or friends were there.

The Nazis did not see the Jews as anything more than animals. The Jews were seen as just another life and a way to get work done. The Jews thought of their conditions as, “survival of the fittest” due to execution upon refusal to work. They lost their ability to express emotions, as they began to lose their sanity and morality. “A truck drew close and unloaded it’s hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes...children thrown into the flames” (Wiesel 32). One of the most dehumanizing aspects of the Holocaust was how the body of those deceased had been disposed. When children, elders, exhausted people died, they were burnt and thrown away in an open grave. It wasn’t long until these poor people were replaced. The Jews well-being meant nothing to the German officers, to them the Jews could be replaced if needed. They were being killed left to right, and the Nazis did not value their life.

Picture this: No food for days, running so fast for so long in the freezing cold, until finally everything is numb. This is a description of one of the horrific experiences the Jews had to face. They went on tortuous journeys, where they were starved and ran for ten days straight in treacherous weather like snow. They were being watched and guarded by the Nazis, while they enjoyed watching the Jews suffer and shot anyone who slowed down or stopped running. “We received no food. We lived on snow; it took place on bread. The days resemble the knights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their Darkness” (Wiesel 100). The prisoners were starved and forced to fight each other just for a piece of bread. When there was nothing left, they ate snow instead. Not only were they being starved, but the Nazi sent them on a death march. Seeing the Jews weak, tired, dying, helpless, and killing one another, excited the Nazis.

Dehumanization; The deprivation of human qualities, personality or spirit. It affects a person’s mental and emotional state. Due to the Nazis taking the Jews valuables away, treating them like dirt and killing them off, the Nazis made the Jews feel like and act less than humans. They experienced many kinds of dehumanization and struggled through many mental and physical abuse in the concentration camps.  The novel Night demonstrates the effects of dehumanization by portraying the loss of freedom, that lead to animal-like treatment, and physical abuse.

Work Cited 

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006.