Dehumanization, the act of making someone feel or appear less than human, is frequently used against victims of racism and bigotry. The Elite Wisel shows the horrors of the dehumanization of Jews in camps during the Holocaust (Wiesel). The process of dehumanization is when people are put into necessity ties depriving conditions when they doubt the essence of their existence which is shown in the Night.
Depriving first living necessities, such as food and clothes, is the first and primary factor of dehumanization. This is demonstrated when several German workers start tossing bread into the car while they stand around and watch the prisoners rip each other to pieces in the hopes of getting some crumbs. The convicts are ready to kill one another for bread after being starved for ten days, and it highlights the measures they had to take in order to survive (Wiesel 89). The Jew inmates were stripped of their clothes, given new ones that frequently did not fit them, and tattooed with an identification number that serves as their new name, clearly a dehumanizing act.
One of the significant factors of dehumanization is forcing people to doubt their existence. While Eliezer struggles to survive hunger and abuse, he also works with the destruction of his faith in God’s justice and struggles with the darker side of himself (Wiesel 65) The living conditions are so harmful and unjust that any religious ideas seem cruel lie. Religion is deemed initially to support people in difficult periods. The doubting of God results from the understanding that people are not human beings anymore and are not loved by God.
Overall, the difficulties Jews encountered in the death camps led to their dehumanization to the point that their own survival became their top priority. Based on the described memorials, it is clear that dehumanization destroys the personality through psychical and moral torture. The dehumanization of Jews forced them into believing that they were not people. The dehumanization of Jews shown in Night is a real example of how disastrous the depriving of human rights can be.
Work Cited
Wiesel, Ellie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006.