One of Wiesel’s strengths in Night is to go through the whole phase of Dehumanization. Dehumanizing people was a huge role that the Nazis took during the Genocide and the Holocaust. One of the horrors of dehumanization was the tattooing of numbers on the prisoners. Elie’s number was A-7713; his number is by definition a clear example of dehumanization. I would suggest that Wiesel shows the true horror of dehumanization during the Holocaust in the book Night through a personal experience. Dehumanization is as defined by the American Heritage College Dictionary, “the derivation of human qualities such as compassion. Whether it is killing of an innocent civilian, the bombing of a peaceful area or verbally cursing at someone… it is all dehumanizing someone.” (American Heritage College Dictionary 1969). Night by Elie Wiesel tells us his story of the time he spent in a Nazi death camp where he experienced dehumanization such as beating, separation between family and friends, and the treatment like animals.
“Men to the left. Women to the right!” (Wiesel 3.4-10) One of the most conflicting and emotional times during Night was the separation between family and friends. Since the Nazis were transporting so many Jews to all the concentration camps, their plan was to get rid of all the “weak”, “useless” and “disabled” ones. For the Nazis, it was already going to be hard for them to keep six million Jews alive; therefore, their strategy of separating them was keeping the Jewish men and boys and put them out to work. While they put the women, children, disabled, and the elderly to the gas chambers. In Night the reader gets to experience Elie witnessing his sister and mother being sent to the gas chambers on the right, separating families was just another form of inhumanity and dehumanization being affected on the prisoners at the time. It must have been terrible not having the knowledge to know if one’s family members were alive; even if one would see them ever again. Much less did Elie know it was his last time seeing his mother and sisters when they hard to turn to the “right”. So many Jews had lost their love ones, that they had lost hope in living.
“He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood” (Wiesel 53). During the holocaust, another one of the horrors was abuse; including random beatings, random shootings, and the Germans having no mercy for any of it. Violence in Night is used to dominate the Jews, intimidate and threaten them. In the novel for example, Elie gets lashed out and abused by Idek from crazed anger. The result of his beating made Wiesel feel trapped and powerless in his situation since he had gotten arbitrary rage vented physically. The violence in Night wasn’t just between the Germans abusing the Jews, but also between Jews themselves. Use of violence against each other was extreme and excessive as they struggled to survive. Prisoners were losing hope and losing their mental capacity.
“You….you….you…’ they pointed their fingers, the way one might choose cattle or merchandise” (Wiesel 49). The quote demonstrates how in Night the prisoners were starting to be treated as if they were animals and objects. The ones who were pointing at Elie and his father were the Kapoks who were given special authorities to demean the other inmates. Out of all the example of dehumanization the treatment of humans as if they were animals was by far the most cruel and horrific of them all, humans have value. The value that humans have isn’t to be treated like animals; when even sometimes these people would be treated worse than animals. The Nazi’s had no mercy on how they were treating their prisoners. If one thinks it’s wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat; then for the Nazis, all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others were rats to them. It had already reached an extent once the Germans had agreed on numbering the Jews with tattoos on their wrists, as if they were cattle with bells around their necks. Tattooing the Jews was a lose of their names. They weren’t none as anything but their numbers; they were dehumanized. Twins were even experimented and the experiments were extremely crucial; the experiments would result in either death, trauma, or permanent disability. No human deserved to be treated this way. Especially if they were being experimented, tattooed and forced to run around naked, for the sake of the doctors to check who was healthy or not; it was terrific. Most of the time they were forced to do labor. Labor that was extremely unsuitable for the human body. During the winter, the Nazis would command the prisoners to carry massive stones across the camps in the freezing weather. It was unsurvivable because the Nazis wouldn’t provide the Jews with the correct attire for the weather.
The dehumanization process not only affected them physically but also psychologically. They were made to believe that the Germans and the Nazis were suprior to them. They were even made believe that they were animals, while physically abused and separated family and friends of the Jews. Nazis had no care or emotion killing the Jews families and friends. The hatred that the Nazis had for the Jews was extremely strong, that they no longer saw them as humans. The world can identify the Holocaust as one of the most gruesome killing of mankind. Like Elie Weasel, some were able to come out and say their own stories. Such cruelty and deep hatred is something that will remain to be in the history of mankind forever.