Night Elie Wiesel Analysis

The cruel hands of the SS guards struck relentlessly on the dehumanized victims. The inhumane camp held the minorities captive for what seemed to be endless periods of time. The saddest aspect of the Holocaust was not how many lives were lost, but how how many souls were killed, tortured, and put through excruciating pain. By the end of Night the surviving prisoners were completely different people, people who could only think about the horrid, monstrous things in the world, people who were guilty for what they were forced to watch and do to their fellow prisoners, people who had very little humanity left in them. At these camps, Jews, and other “imperfect” humans, were deceived and lied to, forced to turned against each other, and turned …show more content…
So many aspects of the Holocaust are incomprehensible, but perhaps the most difficult to understand is how humans can so callously torture and kill so many innocent victims. While in the ghetto, he sees the Nazis for the first time. Elie recounts, “our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring... Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite” (Wiesel 23). Wiesel highlights this tragedy by first portraying them as ordinary humans. Furthermore, the memoir shifts to Auschwitz and shows the brutal atrocities they commit. Since the time they are shoved into the cattle cars Wiesel showed the sadistic intentions of the Germans. In their first moments at the camp, Elie describes, “Suddenly, the silence became more oppressive. An SS officer had come in and, with him, the smell of the Angel of Death. We stared at his fleshy lips. He harangued us from the center of the barrack” (Wiesel 38). Although, from the beginning of the book the reader knows the inevitable events soon to occur, Elie gives an ominous feeling about the guards after explaining their “polite” attitude earlier. The Nazis easily deceive their prisoners to herd them into the cattle cars, to the camps, and to their path of being …show more content…
Because the Nazis saw the Jews as “imperfect”, they made them inhuman, into objects they can control. When the prisoners arrive at Auschwitz, one of the first things the soldiers do is take away their identities, they shave their heads and take away their names, replacing it with a combination of numbers. Elie delineates, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). The Nazis abolish everything the victims possess, even their names. Also, the SS guards destroyed their dignity. After they spend days of torture while transporting to the camps, the exhausted prisoners were forced to run in the cold and the guards took away their clothes. Elie recounts, “After the hot shower, we stood shivering in the darkness. Our clothes had been left behind; we had been promised our clothes” (Wiesel 41). Throughout the transportation of the prisoners, they were put through immense humiliation. The Germans commit several inhumane actions such as shaving their heads, replacing their names with numbers, and diminishing their