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Essay: Title: Elie Wiesel's Night: Through His Eyes, The Dehumanizing Tactics of the Holocaust

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  • Subject area(s): Essay examples
  • Reading time: 6 minutes
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  • Published: 26 February 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
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  • Words: 1,542 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 7 (approx)
  • Tags: Holocaust essays

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    In Night by Elie Wiesel, we follow the real journey of Nobel Peace Prize winner Eliezer Wiesel as he fights for survival as a Jewish prisoner in the Holocaust. In the book we see Eliezer mourn the loss of his loved ones, his home in Romania, and his relationship with God. The book captivates the audience with disturbing events that everyday prisoners had to live through. All of this happening in one of the most terrifying places on earth, Auschwitz. Night by Elie Wiesel teaches us to never take our possessions, our home, and our hope for granted and to fight for the liberation and equality for all.

In Night, the relationship between Eliezer and his father is similar to a rollercoaster, it goes up and down. In the beginning, we see Eliezer viewing his father the way we view superheroes. He idolizes his father as any young boy would. On page 2 he describes his father as " cultured, and unsentimental man. There was never any display of emotion, even at home. He was more concerned with others than his own family. The Jewish community in Sighet held him in the greatest esteem." But on page 106 we see Elie have no emotion to the death of his father, "They must have carried him to the crematory… I did not weep." The transition from idolizing his strong, powerful father to no longer being able to help him at his deathbed was not a simple transition. In between it all was pain and suffering and using each other to get through it all. In the end, Eliezer loved his father and that love never went away, it only manifested itself in different forms.

I believe that Eliezer would not have survived without his father because of their devotion and daily tasks to keep each other alive gave them a purpose to push through the physical and mental destruction of the Holocaust. Throughout some part of the story, we see Eliezer concealing and saving the golden crown of his tooth saying "It might be useful to me one day to buy something – bread or life." (50). A fellow prisoner finds out about his crown and request Eliezer to give it to him, but Eliezer refuses so he begins to beat his father because "Franek new where to touch me; he knew my weak point." (53) This event shows the undying love Eliezer shows for his father and that he will give up anything to keep him alive because as long as he is alive, so is Eliezer. Eliezer mentions this on page 82 saying "My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me… He was running at my side, out of breath, at the end of his strength, at his wit's end. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his only support." After Eliezer's father dies it was late enough in his holocaust journey for his animalistic instincts to overpower his rational humanistic instincts. We see this when Eliezer says on page 107, " I had but one desire – to eat. I no longer thought of my father or of my mother." Previous to this we see Eliezer eating a majority of his father's rations because the doctor said it was pointless to feed him for he will die (105). We see that Eliezer's survival instincts have taken over and he listens. He no longer needs his father to survive, only his father's rations and for that, he is eternally grateful for him.

    It is a fact that the Nazis used dehumanizing tactics to reduce people to objects. They used forced labor, starvation, theft of their possessions, beating, separation of families, cruel forms of murder and more. Eliezer tells us through his eyes the ways the Nazis dehumanized them. On page 39 he says, "I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." This is an important line and an important example of dehumanization from the Nazi's because by stripping the Jews of their names and reducing them to only numbers, they strip them from their humanity and into nothing, to make them feel as if they are nothing. Eliezer's reaction to becoming only numbers seems like nothing, numbness. This is to him the least hurtful thing they can do. On page 57 Eliezer writes, "I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip… Only the first really hurt." This shows dehumanization from the Nazis because they are breaking the human spirit through cruel forms of abuse. Eliezer reacts by doing nothing and feeling hopeless. The pain caused by the whip does not affect him as much because the Nazis are successfully breaking him and his spirit. The pain they cause is so much that it can no longer be felt. The most disturbing event that shows dehumanization can be found on page 95 when a piece of bread is thrown at starving men. "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… Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying: ‘Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me…You're killing your father… I have bread…for you too… for you too…’ He collapsed. But his fist was still clutching a small crust. He wanted to raise it to his mouth. But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it. He didn't get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him. Others joined in. When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son.” This is a disturbing image because the Nazis have successfully turned these human beings into animals fighting for survival in rabid ways where a son does not see his father who he is killing, he only sees food and survival. Eliezer sees this and cannot feel anything but disturbed, he is slowly watching everyone around him fall into madness and can slowly feel himself fall down the same hole.

    In the beginning, we see a curious Eliezer wanting to learn anything and everything about his God, Judaism, and its secrets. However as we read deeper into the book, Eliezer's relationship with God changes drastically. We see a change in the way Eliezer views God on page 31 when they successfully avoid being burned alive in the crematoriums. "May His Name be blessed and magnified…' whispered my father. For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His Name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?" We see Eliezer question his God and his lack of protection and allowing such horrors to happen to those who worship Him. On the following page of 32, Eliezer says "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust." Here we see Eliezer abandon the idea that God will save him, only Eliezer can save Eliezer. Although Eliezer says he has abandoned God as God abandoned him, it has become a habit to be religious for that is all he knows growing up. He subconsciously thanks God and prays to him from time to time like on page 97 where he says "And in spite myself, a prayer rose in my heart, to the God whom I no longer believed." In the end, we see the strong relationship Eliezer had with God fizzle out like a flame. It was caused by the horrors and moments that lacked humanity that convinced Eliezer that God may not be the hero of this story.

    At the beginning of the story, we see Moshe the Beadle attempt to warn others of the crimes the Nazis were committing and encouraging everyone to run and hide, yet nobody believed him or took his word seriously. There are two possible answers to why people did not believe him, they thought he was just a crazy old man or his claims were seen as impossible to exist, why would anyone want to mass murderer Jews? I do not believe that Jewish people simply allowed his to happen, I believe that they thought there was nothing that could be done to stop it. I believe that they saw it impossible to revolt against the Nazi army is that they are armed and have allies while the Jews were made to feel they were alone and not worthy of help from being dehumanized. I believe the allies allowed all this to happen for so long because they did not believe this was a reality and when they did, they didn't know how to stop this unless they stopped Hitler first.  

In the end, this was a real event and a real part of history that those who lived during the time allowed to carry on for far too long. Elie Wiesel only warns us of the horrors humanity can face if we allow this to ever happen again or if we allow future generations to forget.

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