In the novel, Night, written by Elie Wiesel, a true story is narrated about the author’s experience of Hitler’s inhumane Holocaust. Living through this tragic event in history, Wiesel was only sixteen and one of few who escaped the grasp of death that millions of Jews did not. With almost dying from starvation, frostbite, thirst, and beatings, Wiesel miraculously survived Hitler’s bloodbath and later wrote about his traumatizing past in the concentration camps. The inhumane acts of Hitler’s Holocaust during World War Two dehumanized the Jews into people as valuable as dirt, cramming them into cattle cars like animals, exterminating useless human beings for no reason, and disowning the Jews of their names by getting a number tattooed on their
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Many of the survivors still have that number engraved in their skin and it remains there as a horrific memory of their past lives. The process: “. . . were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel, 42) The numbers on the prisoners arms symbolized how insignificant a name had become to the Nazis. For a name didn’t matter, from then on, they were labeled with a number. By taking their name and individuality away, dehumanization was shown because the prisoners were as worthy as a number towards Hitler and the Nazis. In time, dehumanization impacted the people in a greater way. They no longer saw themselves as humans either but creatures. The death of a man had no effect on any of them at all. For example, when being transferred from camp to camp, more men would die on the trains from malnutrition or another cause. The brutal SS Officers would “throw out all the dead . . . The living were glad. They would have more room . . . Then, two “gravediggers” grabbed him (a dead man) by the head and feet and threw him from the wagon, like a sack of flour.” (Wiesel, 99) This passage leaves the reader with a clear and grotesque image only to think how inhumane a person could be to even treat the dead like
Many of the survivors still have that number engraved in their skin and it remains there as a horrific memory of their past lives. The process: “. . . were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (Wiesel, 42) The numbers on the prisoners arms symbolized how insignificant a name had become to the Nazis. For a name didn’t matter, from then on, they were labeled with a number. By taking their name and individuality away, dehumanization was shown because the prisoners were as worthy as a number towards Hitler and the Nazis. In time, dehumanization impacted the people in a greater way. They no longer saw themselves as humans either but creatures. The death of a man had no effect on any of them at all. For example, when being transferred from camp to camp, more men would die on the trains from malnutrition or another cause. The brutal SS Officers would “throw out all the dead . . . The living were glad. They would have more room . . . Then, two “gravediggers” grabbed him (a dead man) by the head and feet and threw him from the wagon, like a sack of flour.” (Wiesel, 99) This passage leaves the reader with a clear and grotesque image only to think how inhumane a person could be to even treat the dead like