Night Essay (Prompt 1)

Luis Acevedo
Mrs. Bosch
Honors English 10
1 January 2009
Dehumanization of Night
At the sound of the word, “Holocaust” one can only help but shudder, for these were times of unparalleled pain for the people of Jewish descent So much pain in fact, that the cruel and inhumane ways of the SS were so horrid that it stripped the Jewish people of their very morality. Slowly but surely the Jewish people were rid of their civility and turned into things, instead of people. The autobiography Night, by Elie Wiesel, depicts the appalling transformation of the Jewish people by the hands of their great oppressors. This piece makes it clear that the dehumanization of the people that were a part of the tragedy that was the Holocaust can be better analyzed through three phases. The dehumanization of Elie Wiesel and his people begins with the stripping of their past lives, continuing with the horrid conditions of the concentration camps, and finally, the effect of the putrid de-evolution can be seen when they finally were purged from the awful place that was the camp. Descendants of that awful place could not possibly come back out as they did in after witnessing, and partaking, in the events they did.
The autobiography Night commences in Sighet Romania, and the never-ending nightmare of Wiesel and his people began at the sight of the first German soldier. At the arrival of the soldiers, they first occupied some of the Jewish homes. Then, they began to make decrees, which would only affect the Jewish. Finally, they established ghettos in which the Jewish people were forced to occupy. Their lives were so restricted by the decrees that it could no longer have been said that it was their home in which the Jewish people resided. The German soldiers slowly stole their town away from them. They took all their possessions, their rights, their past lives. Since the past tends to linger in the present, a major part of their present time was deprived from the Jewish people of Sighet. Everything they had worked for and collaborated to establish over the years was taken away from them in one fell swoop. The sanctity that was the synagogue was now condemned to be unattended and in some cases, it would be set ablaze and burned to ashes. Losing everything that was once reality, causes confusion and begins to make one's hope for salvation and retribution whither away for there was no possible way to counter the German threat. However, although Wiesel and his people were oppressed by the new living conditions enforced with the absurd penalty of death, a shred of hope remained for they were still living in their hometown. The soldiers reassured the Jewish people of their unforgiving genocidal methods by completely demolishing any fragments of hope they had miraculously maintained. The unforgiving, spine chilling shrill of those three overwhelming words projected from the ruthless uncaring German soldiers would soon change everything for Elie and his people, “All Jews, outside!” (Wiesel 16). Transportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp would soon be established for the immediate shipment of the Jewish from Sighet. With their past lives obliterated before their very eyes, and their arrival at one of the dreaded concentration camps drawing ever closer, Elie Wiesel and his fellow Jewish people were disillusioned and turning insane; “And so an hour or two passed. Another scream jolted us. The woman had broken free of her bonds and was shouting louder than before”(26). The never-ending tyrannical oppression would soon run more viciously than ever and the path to dehumanization shall now grow deeper upon Elie Wiesel and his fellow Jews.
The twisted dirty-handed tactics of the SS on the concentration camps are what would turn these people who before, were law-abiding citizens, into little more than savages. On the concentration camps, there would be crematoriums in which the Jewish would have to throw their own people into. Even the most innocent of all, children, would be treated with the utmost brutality and hatred; “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes...children thrown into the flames”(Wiesel 32). The Jewish people were also separated from their families and the bonds between them, torn forever. “And I walked on with my father, with the men. I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever” (28). Primarily, they were torn from their homes and their lives were ripped away from them, afterwards, it was their families that were ripped away from them. After these horrible conditions, to have everything you ever knew and loved to be taken away from you without any opposition at all, it is no wonder why the Jewish people were defeated and lost their morality. In addition to the crematorium and constant fear of death, the Jewish people of the concentration camps were not allowed food at various times. According to an essay written by Michelle Maiese, a graduate student of philosophy, "We typically think that all people have some basic human rights that should not be violated... HYPERLINK "http://www.beyondintractability.org/action/author.jsp?id=26170"They deserve to have their basic needs met, and to have some freedom to make autonomous decisions”(Maiese) and the SS were restricting these needs from them thus they would be dehumanized. Because of the insufficient amount of food allotted to them mixed with the constant fear of death ever-lingering through their thoughts and the irrevocable memories forever engraved into them, it is only understandable that their previous way of living would not be the proper way to live in these camps, thus it would be pertinent for this previous living manner to be replaced with one more suited with the madness and the death that was the camp. The body requires food and sleep in order to function properly and to be able to have thought processes at a normal level, but because they lived in such conditions that “selections” were a thing of normality, the bare basic needs were a luxury to the Jewish people in the camps. Their dehumanization could be visualized when their religion became second in importance to them. The conditions that they lived under removed all hope they had of salvation and even the will to live. Their merciful God was soon replaced by the ruthless demons that were the SS. “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 34). The conditions in which they were forced to live in were so deplorable and rank, that the once extremely religious Elie Wiesel was upset at his father for praying because Wiesel believed he no longer had anything to thank Him for. Deprived of all normal necessities to live, morals begin to twist and twist until they are unrecognizable, and survival is of utmost importance. Everything else is omitted and survival through the use of primal instincts was forged the only thought process available. Sight of their dehumanization is made possible through a quote from Wiesel's autobiography. “In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other”(101). Also, when he descends forth a scene from which one could not have envisioned possible,“' Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me...You're killing your father...I have bread...for you too....for you too...”(191). Death was such thing of normality and food such a thing of luxury at these facilities, that killing one's own family for the most basic provisions was not shamefully looked down upon. Nonchalant were the people when their neighbor had died, for it seemed as though to be the only fate available---death. “Our minds numb with indifference. Here or elsewhere, what did it matter? Die today or tomorrow, or later”(98). It was said that six million Jewish people died during the time of these genocidal acts against them thus life was a mere string holding up an entire society of people that were imprisoned in the camps. Deprived from food, their families, rest, sleep, sufficient clothing, and the thought of dying ever-present, the Jewish people of these camps were slowly dehumanized into ravenous creatures instead of moral humans.
After finally being saved from these hellholes, the aftermath of what had happened is a sign of how detrimentally the Jewish people were mutated. Even after being rescued by the resistance movement, Elie writes, “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we though about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread”(Wiesel 115). Food was such a luxury to them that after being entrapped for the time they were, that is all they thought of. No more thoughts of revenge and the unimaginably awful things that the SS did to them, but just food. So re-wired they were that food was now the grand prize. All other spoils of being free men came long after they had their fill. They were so defeated that they did not even think of revenge against those that brutally beat them and denied them food. Ultimately, even those whom survived being beaten all those years, lost everything in those camps and were essentially dead themselves for their remnants were unrecognizable and defeated even though in triumph. “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me”(115).
Due to the constant one handed oppression of Elie Wiesel and his Jewish brethren by the German soldiers, melded in with the freezing snowy nights, those who were imprisoned into the concentration camps had their morality turned to dust and ashes of themselves were both literally and figuratively left at those infernal facilities that would proliferate death at alarming rates. The Jewish people were impacted greatly by these camps---so greatly that they were turned into things, instead of humans. Slowly the gradual trend towards barbarism became commonplace through the entire camp within weeks and the Jewish people were not who they once were and even when they were finally alleviated from their pain by being rescued, they still could not re-cooperate from those dreaded experiences at the hellish camps were death was a thing of normality and sometimes sought for after so much pain. One cannot be expected to remain as they were when they experience such awful things, and the Jewish people were no exception to this generalization, thus, the disastrous factors at the facilities of death, dehumanized and demoralized them.Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie . Night. 1958. New York: Hill And Wang, 1958.
Maiese, Michelle. "Dehumanization." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003 /"http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization/>.
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