Inhummanity in Night

Inhumanity of the Holocaust
Shelby Finlay

History is racked with evils that plague the human psyche with intrigue and mystery. Despite the many evil images in history, one image stands on its own level of inhumanity and atrocity. The epitome of evil can be surmised in one person, Adolf Hitler. No one in history can compete with the horrible deeds and philosophy of Adolf Hitler. Hitler set out to conquer the world by deluding thousands of German citizens to embrace a way of thinking that would destroy all the impurities of the German race to ensure world domination by the perfect Aryan race. The atrocious mass killing of the "impure" races The Holocaust, the mass killing, has become synonymous with the symbol of the Jewish resilience because the majority of Holocaust victims were Jews. Hitler felt that Jews were behind all the adverse conditions affecting post-World War I Germany. Hitler would construct the Holocaust and the mass killing of the Jews as an effort to create the "perfect" race; his anti-Semitic philosophy would create a horrendous mass killing of innocent victims in the Holocaust. The Holocaust being the most intriguing horror in history. Book’s such as Maus (Art Spigealman) and Night (Elie Wiesel) were written so that these horrors would not be re-lived.

Six months into his dictatorship, Hitler began systematically stripping the Jews of their basic privileges and rights. The right to own land, hold health insurance, serve in the military, or seek legal counsel was all seized from Jewish life, (History). Thus leaving them homeless and with no-where to go. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie writes of how his family was thrown out of their homes and forced to like in cramped, dirty Ghettos. Hitler justified his actions against the Jews with his belief that Jewish people are inferior to the human race. Hitler used his beliefs to convince much of the German population that the Aryan race was pure and honorable. He believed the Jewish race would be the downfall of the great nation of Germany. His deep-rooted prejudices would become the justification to the great horrors the "unfit" citizens of Germany would endure.

According to Léon Poliakov in Harvest of Hate, only two prominent men of the Nazi party, Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbels, verbalized their personal beliefs during this time. In a speech Julius Streicher revealed, "It is wrong to believe that the Jewish question can be settled without bloodshed: The only possible solution is a bloody one,"( Elie Wiesel, 97) Elie and Joseph Goebbels declared a similar sentiment in an interview when he said, "Death to the Jews' has been our cry for fourteen years. Let them die." the Nazi party held a strong, intense hatred of the Jewish people.

The youth of Germany was even bombarded with morale’s of Nazism in school and in special programs after school called the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth implanted Nazi values and prejudices in children through lectures and study, (Bendersky 165).He also used intricate propaganda plan that appealed to the mass of German citizens. This "political advertising," as Hitler called it, was successful in persuading the mass of German citizens that Nazi ideals would save the country, (Bendersky 67).With the ideals of Nazism enforced and accepted readily by most of the public in Germany, Hitler was able to construct and implement one of the greatest horrors in history, the Holocaust.

Hitler ordered Jewish towns and neighborhoods be evacuated to Jewish ghettos. These ghettos were cramped, dirty, horrible places to live. The daily comings and goings of Jews were closely monitored or forbidden by the gestapo, the Nazi police of the ghetto. Jews were usually moved from ghetto to ghetto before being shipped to a concentration camp where they were either worked to death or immediately put to death by gas chambers. Elie and his family in Night were separated here, him and his father going to one camp and his mother and sister going to another. It was in these camps that Elie’s father became very ill and he watched his father slowly die before his eyes, the Gestapos refused to help his father.

One act of resistance within concentration camps was the sacrifices between Jewish brethren, (Druks 57). This is illustrated in Elie Wiesel's expose of the Holocaust, Night. Wiesel writes about his struggles to remain with his father in the various concentration camps they were forced to work in. Numerous times, Wiesel depicts him and his father taking less or completely giving up rations of food for the other's wellbeing. "Like a wild beast, I cleared a way for myself to the coffee cauldron. And I managed to carry back a cupful. I had a sip. The rest was for him [my father], (101). Wiesel's book exhibits the comradely between two prisoners within a camp. Granted these two prisoners were family, but that did not necessarily assure that sacrifices would be made. For example, Wiesel illustrates the harsh savageness shown in some prisoners. He describes a man crying out to his son that he has bread for them both. The son is beating his father for the small morsel of bread. The man cries out to his son, "Meir. Meir, my boy! Don't you recognize me? I'm your father . . . you're hurting me . . . you're killing you father! I've got some bread . . . for you too . . . for you too . . . ," (96 Wiesel). Wiesel demonstrates the harsh reality of the concentration camps through his own experience. He exudes the animalistic behavior of some prisoners, but he never resorts to the behavior of the son that abandoned his father. Wiesel never lets go of the sight of his father. He takes care of him despite his father's ailing condition. This is a sign of passive resistance of Wiesel's part to the Nazi SS men, for he does not give in to the SS threats of death.

"In the United States today, the normal adult food intake ranges from 1,800 to 3,200 calories daily. In the Warsaw ghetto in 1941, the official food ration, on paper, was 336 calories; the amounts of food actually issued came to a mere 229 calories, on the average," (33).This starvation of the ghettos was common throughout Europe. The survival of the Jews depended food smuggled into the ghetto. Despite the added food, the Jews were still surviving day to day on a dangerously low calorie intake. As many as 11 million people died in the Holocaust, some from starvation, others were burned in the crematorium or suffocated in the gas chambers. Some died from being beaten to death, by the Nazis and fellow prisoners and many deaths were long, drawn-out, painful deaths Few were lucky enough to be ended quickly.

The Holocaust was one of the most intricately constructed forms of evil in history. One man rose from the soil of Austria to take domination over Germany and much of Europe. Adolf Hitler has become the epitome of evil after creating concentration camps that became the killing ground for millions. The struggles of such evil embedded into the floors and walls of the numerous concentration camps would be destroyed as the Ally forces won the war, but sadly, the liberation of these camps would come too late for millions of innocent Jews across Europe. The souls and the lives of these people shall never be forgotten as long as the story is taught to every generation of people worldwide.