Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

The book Night, by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, gives a firsthand account of the events that took place. Several recurring themes, motifs, and symbols are used by Wiesel to show the beliefs and ultimate moral decline that enveloped the minds of many Jewish survivors.
In reaction to the book Night by Elie Wiesel I can truly say that I am shocked and appalled by the fact that the Nazi guards got away with committing such atrocities to their Jewish prisoners such as what they did in this book. In the book the Nazi guards dehumanized their Jewish prisoners by both taking away their rights as human beings, and by treating them like animals.
In the book Elie Wiesel writes on pag 24, "There are 80 of you in the car, the German officer added, if any one of you goes missing, you will all be shot like dogs." In this quote Elie Wiesel shows just how ruthless the Germans could be in their task of deporting the Jews, it also shows just how cruel the Germans were to their prisoners, they packed them into cattle cars 80 at a time and referred to them as "dogs". In referring to the Jews as dogs the Germans dehumaized the Jews by not treating them as human, but as animals.
Another passage where we see dehumanization was when on page 37 Elie Wiesel writes on how the first concentration camp changed the prisoners, "In a few seconds, we had ceased to
be men." This quote shows just how bad the Jews were treated at the first camp they arrived to. After arrival they were sorted, stripped, and forced to run from barrack to barrack, after this process had been going on a wile Wiesel writes that they had "ceased to be men". This is just one of the many ways that the Germans dehumanized the Jews in this book. This passage shows dehumanization because the Germans took away the prisoners human qualities, the Jews were forced to run like animals under the Germans control.
In another quote Elie Wiesel describes their German tent leader, (p. 48) "Our tent leader was a German. An assassin's face, fleshy lips, and hands that resembled a wolf's paws." This quote is describing how the dehumanization affected both the Jews and the Germans. In the quote the leader of the tent in Buna is described with an assassin's face and hands like a wolf this could mean that he is both deadly like a wolf or an assassin, this is an example of how dehumanization affected the guards, in an earlier quote (p.28) the guards surrounded the prisoners "like wolves".
A person's beliefs and values transform with death lingering at every waking moment.
In Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, Wiesel estranges himself from his companions and morals to survive the Holocaust. It is expected that the Holocaust survivors would lose faith in God, their determination to go on living, and their reliance in others because of the horrific experiences that they faced day to day. It is understandable that a Holocaust survivor questions his faith in God when Jews are chanting the prayer of death for themselves. A person would question living when he sees the demise of loved ones and fellow Jews right before his
eyes.
When starting to give up on all hope of life and God, it would be anticipated that one would no longer trust others, especially when they are fighting each other for their own survival. Night illustrates the loss in human ties after the anguish of the reprehensible treatment that the Jews received every day. Wiesel's harsh experiences cause him to question his companionship with God. Wiesel shows the reader the major role that God plays in his life, by starting his memoir with Moche, the beadle.

This is the first time that he actually considers betraying his father for his own survival. A man desperate for food decides to get some soup for himself from the cauldron when no one is looking. "In Night, the relationship between God and man is first questioned and then reversed: God becomes the guilty one who has transgressed and who deserves to be put on trial. Whether or not this is true, Wiesel decides to go on living. When Wiesel enters Birkenau and sees the crematories, he says, "We've got to do something. Perhaps death is the only way to escape the Holocaust. He questions whether or not God exists.
Wiesel is a dedicated reader of the Talmud and the Kabbala, highly sacred books in the Jewish religion. When Wiesel is in the hospital for his foot, his neighbor advises him to leave the hospital as soon as possible. Even though this man is killed for his actions, Wiesel envies him. He contemplates whether he should take his father's rations of food for himself to make him stronger, or give it to his father. He knows that he will not win because he is so outnumbered. Surprisingly, Wiesel is consumed with jealousy. It is imperative that Wiesel changes these attributes of his character so he can become strong enough to survive.
At the end of the book, Elie Wiesel is a devastated man. He says of himself, "The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames." He has experienced and witnessed so much torture and suffering that he even questions the existence of God and sometimes refuses to pray to Him. He feels that he has become an animal, driven only by hunger and an instinct for survival. After he is freed from the concentration camp and looks at himself in the mirror, he sees himself as a corpseI think in truth, he is emotionally deadened in many ways.