Dehumanization In Night Essay

In the book Night, Elie and his father are sent to a concentration camp called Auschwitz, and then Buna. At both of these camps, the Nazis were unfair to all of the Jews and treated them horribly. In other words, the Nazis "dehumanized" the Jews. Dehumanization is to treat people as if they are not human. To dehumanize a person is to be cruel to them until they no longer act human. In the book Night, the most disturbing form of dehumanization is that the Nazis barely fed the Jews.

One way that the Nazis dehumanized the Jews is that they were forced to wear only thin, torn rags, and old shoes, To the Jews, "this was the true equality: nakedness. Shivering with cold" (32). They were being dehumanized because the fact that they only had this very thin outfit to wear was making them weaker and weaker, They had to wear this outfit year-round, and never got a new one. They even went through the cold, hard winter wearing just these rags. They also only had one pair of old shoes, which were sometimes too thin to wear anyway. Many people just remained barefoot, even in the snow. Not only were they just allowed to wear rags, but they were also forced to work while wearing just these rags.

The Nazis made the Jews work hard, and treated them almost as slaves. The Nazis made them run a lot, as fast and as far as they could. They were also forced to march a lot, and were not allowed to stop even for a few seconds. The Nazis also put the Jews to work, and made them do some dreadful jobs. Some of them worked in warehouses, while some of them had to do even worse jobs. Some had to get rid of the dead bodies, which was probably disgusting and hard to watch. After working so hard all day, a few Jews were sometimes told that they were getting to take a "shower". This so-called "shower" was actually a gas chamber, where the Jews died a slow, painful death of suffocating. This was dehumanizing them because they thought that after doing their work they were finally getting rewarded, when they were really being killed.

The most disturbing form of dehumanization that the Nazis did to the Jews was giving them very little food. Each person was only given a little bit of soup each day, and it probably wasn't very good soup either. They also each got some bread, but only a little bit, which was stale and crusty. According to Elie, "Bread, soup - these were my whole life" (50). They lived mainly off of these two things, and sometimes even a little bit of water. They got so desperate for something to drink that they ate snow off each other's backs with spoons. This proves that they were becoming so weak, and would do even the most ridiculous things to survive.

Overall, the Nazis treated the Jews awfully, and dehumanized them in many different ways. They one way that was the most disturbing was that they almost never ate. This is because in order to survive, people need food and water. Instead of just starving them to death, the Nazis fed the Jews very little which made them suffer even more, and weakened them to almost nothing.