Essay On Dehumanization In Night

Dehumanization is the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities. When the jews went to the concentration camps they did not know what was happening because they trusted Hitler. The jews were taken from their homes and put in ghettos, then put in cattle cars. After the jews got to the camps and were immediately dehumanized, they were put into groups of guys and women and then it all started. In the memoir night by Elie Wiesel it explains how the Nazis dehumanized the jews in the camps, they took away their name and gave them number, they put them in cattle cars, and they took away their belongings.
The first way they were dehumanized was when they got to the camps they took away their names and gave them numbers. Wiesel
says, “needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel pg. 72) The Nazi’s did not care to know their names because they were doing what Hitler told them to do. They would no longer call them by the names, they want by the number on their arms. When the first selection happens, Wiesel says, “I had but one thought: not to have my number taken down and not to show my left arm.” (Wiesel pg. 72) If they seen their left arms they would see their number, then write them down as too weak. If they ran at slow it would give them time to see the person's number on their arm and write it down, so they ran like the devil was at their heels.
The second way the Nazis dehumanized was because they put all the jews in cattle cars like they were animals. Wiesel says, “The next morning, we walked toward the station, where a convoy of cattle cars was waiting.” (Wiesel pg. 22) When they were leaving to go to the camps, they got them their by cattle cars, there was 80 people in one car and there was very little food for them all to share. By the very end of his memoir they were putting 100 people in one car at a time. Wiesel say, “The Hungarian police made us climb into the cars, eighty persons in each one.” (Wiesel pg. 22) The police did not care if they did not have room, they just wanted to get them there and for them to start working. The Nazi’s told them if one person was to get out of the car when they stopped, then to would have shot them all.
The last but not least way they dehumanized the jew was they took away their belongings, the last thing they had from their homes and families.
Wiesel says, “Our clothes were to be thrown on the floor at the back of the barrack.” (Wiesel pg. 35) They took their clothes and did not give them a lot to wear, even in the cold winter. The only thing they gave them to keep warm at night was blankets, but they had to share them with the others in their bunk with them. Wiesel also states, “Kapos came in to check if, by chance, somebody had a new pair of shoes. If so we had to hand them over.” (Wiesel pg. 38) The Nazi’s did not want them to have anything new or anything of their own. Wiesel did not have to give his up his new shows because they were covered in mud.
The Naiz’s treated the jews like animal even though they did not do anything wrong. Hitler dehumanized the jews so much to if they did make it out of the camps, they would not even realize their own body anymore. The jews were dehumanized to when they got put in the ghettos to when they died or got their freedom. Many lost everything, families, friends, and even their lives in the Holocaust. They were dehumanized by taking their names, putting them in cattle cars, and taking their belongings
away.