“We human beings have a remarkable ability to dehumanize one another: to conceive of others as subhuman creatures, and to treat them accordingly” (Smith). This was said by David Livingstone Smith Ph D. and he isn’t necessarily anyone famous, but his arguments and points made in the article, Dehumanization, Genocide, and the Psychology of Indifference, relate unbelievably to Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust in the book, Night. David Livingstone Smith also relates to Night because he brings up dehumanization a lot and that is because the main theme of Night is dehumanization. The book is a recollection of what happened to Elie Wiesel during his time in the Holocaust. Not only in the book were the prisoners dehumanized but also those who
…show more content…
Some of the camps, like the one where Elie was, were work camps. These men had to work everyday, but it wasn’t owning a shop or anything of that sort. Elie explains his work, “Sitting on the ground, we counted bolts, bulbs, and various small electrical parts” (Wiesel 50). That isn’t a very hard job but it is a pointless job. There was no point in having those men do those jobs but in making them do so and punishing the men working if something went wrong the Nazis and anyone in power, they dehumanized the men just by having them count electrical parts. Similarly, another time in the book was right before the men were told to leave the camp to start the trek to Appelplatz. “Suddenly the Blockalteste remembered that we had forgotten to clean the block. He commanded four prisoners to mop the floor... One hour before leaving camp! Why? For whom? ‘For the liberating army,’ he told us. ‘Let them know that here lived men and not pigs.’ So we were men after all? The block was cleaned from top to bottom” (Wiesel 84). In order to not look dehumanized their Blockalteste, decided to mop and clean their room as to not look like pigs and look like real men. Dehumanization is shown in many ways in Elie Wiesel’s Night, both showing how impactful it can be to be dehumanized and “degraded” by …show more content…
It is also shown in a movie that is centered around the Holocaust, Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The movie is based on a true story and is about Bruno, and 8-year-old who has to move to Berlin because of his father's job during World War ll. With a concentration camp basically in his backyard, he goes and explores and finds a little boy named Shmuel, who is a boy in the camp who is Bruno’s same age. The boys then agree to meet everyday and they do until Bruno decides to dig under the fence to be with Shmuel and that causes a whole whirlwind of problems. In this movie the theme of dehumanization is very prominent in many different characters, especially those of his family. His father, a commandant of the concentration was dehumanized himself! He was taught by his previous generals and commanders that Jews and people different than himself were bad. This made Bruno’s father lose his right of opinion and beliefs. Also in the movie, Bruno shows the opposite of dehumanization. Bruno ignoring everything and not being prejudice he let himself not be changed by his father the commander or his sister who changed to believe everything about Nazis. Though the theme in Night is dehumanization, that same theme is shown in other recounts of the Holocaust such as the movie The Boy in the Striped
Some of the camps, like the one where Elie was, were work camps. These men had to work everyday, but it wasn’t owning a shop or anything of that sort. Elie explains his work, “Sitting on the ground, we counted bolts, bulbs, and various small electrical parts” (Wiesel 50). That isn’t a very hard job but it is a pointless job. There was no point in having those men do those jobs but in making them do so and punishing the men working if something went wrong the Nazis and anyone in power, they dehumanized the men just by having them count electrical parts. Similarly, another time in the book was right before the men were told to leave the camp to start the trek to Appelplatz. “Suddenly the Blockalteste remembered that we had forgotten to clean the block. He commanded four prisoners to mop the floor... One hour before leaving camp! Why? For whom? ‘For the liberating army,’ he told us. ‘Let them know that here lived men and not pigs.’ So we were men after all? The block was cleaned from top to bottom” (Wiesel 84). In order to not look dehumanized their Blockalteste, decided to mop and clean their room as to not look like pigs and look like real men. Dehumanization is shown in many ways in Elie Wiesel’s Night, both showing how impactful it can be to be dehumanized and “degraded” by …show more content…
It is also shown in a movie that is centered around the Holocaust, Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The movie is based on a true story and is about Bruno, and 8-year-old who has to move to Berlin because of his father's job during World War ll. With a concentration camp basically in his backyard, he goes and explores and finds a little boy named Shmuel, who is a boy in the camp who is Bruno’s same age. The boys then agree to meet everyday and they do until Bruno decides to dig under the fence to be with Shmuel and that causes a whole whirlwind of problems. In this movie the theme of dehumanization is very prominent in many different characters, especially those of his family. His father, a commandant of the concentration was dehumanized himself! He was taught by his previous generals and commanders that Jews and people different than himself were bad. This made Bruno’s father lose his right of opinion and beliefs. Also in the movie, Bruno shows the opposite of dehumanization. Bruno ignoring everything and not being prejudice he let himself not be changed by his father the commander or his sister who changed to believe everything about Nazis. Though the theme in Night is dehumanization, that same theme is shown in other recounts of the Holocaust such as the movie The Boy in the Striped