Examples Of Inhumanity In Night By Elie Wiesel

In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he was faced with inhumanity. In the story he tells us about it. “Over there. Do you see the chimney over there? Do you see it? And the flames, do you see them?(Yes, we saw the flames) Over there, that’s where they will take you. Over there will be your grave. You still don’t understand? Don’t you understand anything? You will be burned! Burned to a cinder! Turned into ashes!”(Wiesel 30). They were telling them that they were going to throw them in the fire so they could burn but they didn’t know that was going to happen. As the author describes his experience, many other examples of inhumanity are revealed. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book

In the text Night, written by Elie Wiesel, it is a horrific story about how the Nazi’s invaded Wiesel’s hometown of Sighet, Hungry and where taken under German control and sent to many concentration camps. During his time at the concentration camps, Elie and fallow Jews were in harsh and unforgettable conditions and treated severe from the Germans that no one could imagine. There is plenty of evidence which supports that even through many people turned and began to do dreadful things to one another; there were the very few people who stayed calm and gentle within all of the commotion.

The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln once stated “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power” (“Too Much Power Qoutes” AZ Quotes). Under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi Party tore away the basic rights of human beings based upon the belief of anti-semitism. People of Jewish faith were persecuted to unimaginable limits, and their normal everyday lives were changed for forever. Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (United Nations General Assembly). Throughout Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, Elie and his family are violated of this right as a Jewish family during the Holocaust.

Wiesel and his fellow jews first experience dehumanization when the Hungarian police burst into their homes in Sighet. They were not allowed to keep any items that had meaning to them “A Jew no longer had the right to keep in his house gold, jewels, or any objects of value” (Wiesel 8). The process of stripping them of their identities continues as they get to the concentration camps. When Eliezer becomes a member of Block 17, the first thing to go was his name. SS officers lined up prisoners and Eliezer says “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (Wiesel 31). Eliezer refers to himself as a number now rather than his name. As the Jews are stripped of their identity, they are constantly viewed as nothing.

Twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spends much time on Jewish mysticism. His instructor, Moshe the Beadle, returns from a near-death experience and warns that Nazi aggressors will soon threaten the serenity of their lives. Even when the family and Elie were pushed to ghettos they remained calm and compliant. In spring, authorities begin shipping trainloads of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. In a cattle car, eighty villagers can hardly move and have to survive on minimal food and water.

At the beginning of the memoir, Elie describes the extent of psychological abuse that he is subjected to, and already the reader can sense a theme of darkness. The atrocious cruelty showed by Nazi soldiers toward Jews, is beyond all realms of rationality. Through strategic verbal abuse, Nazi soldiers slowly deprive the Jews of their stimulus and ability to react. The author reveals, “Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog…The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us” (Wiesel 36). This daily psychological pressure is intended to extinguish any trace of humanity in Jews. The Nazi soldiers know that if they deprive the Jews of their innate nature and interests in life, it would be easier to instill fear and exponentially erase hope. The author affirms, “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would had dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast?” (39). In this section of the memoir, Elie underscores the Nazis’ success in creating a mental paralysis and an incapacity to react to injustice. The Nazis are using one of the most invasive forms of torture, the psychological abuse. They are progressing every day in their brutal plan, and consequently, the Jews’ anguish becomes more intense and precise. Caleb Lewis in

Inhumanity. The cruelest of people are responsible for this. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses imagery, tone, and characterization to show the effects of inhumane actions. Night is about a young boy and his father who get separated from the rest of their family during selection of the Holocaust. This story tells how Elie survived his times in the concentration camps, even with all of the inhumane actions of the Germans.

Cruelty surrounds the world constantly, and is used frequently in works of literature to reveal certain things about the theme. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, acts of cruelty are used to express the theme and enhance its message. One of the largest themes revealed by these acts is “man’s inhumanity to man,” which includes mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, the common people, and other Jews. Watching the large amounts of violence, abuse, and discrimination that occur in this memoir show us the horrors of the Holocaust and how it transformed the men and women who it experienced it, as well as those who caused it.

Elie, his father, and the prisoners had to run in the snow more than 40 miles to another concentration camp, deeper in Germany. When they stopped a man, Rabbi Eliahou, asked if Elie and his father if they had seen his son. Elie had and he realized that the Rabbi’s son had “wanted to get rid of his father…to free himself from an encumbrance” (Wiesel 87). They then got on cattle trains that took them to the next concentration camp, Buchenwald. They passed by villages and when people threw bread in, the prisoners began to fight to the death for it. One son began to attack his own father for a piece and killed him, only to be killed the next moment himself. Soon after they arrived in Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father was very weak and sick. A part of Elie felt that if he could get rid of his father he “could use all [his] strength to struggle for [his] own survival” (Wiesel 101). He was very ashamed, even more so when his father died and he felt “free at last” (Wiesel 105).

The quote “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn” is very relevant in the Holocaust texts Night by Elie Wiesel and The Last Days directed by James Moll because it really sums up the Holocaust. Both these texts give insight to what happened inside the camps and how the survivors were changed forever. These texts both show that in times of extreme inhumanity, one can lose his faith, which leads to a loss of innocence.

“ I shall never forgive the acts of the hungarian police” in which Elie spoke after witnessing the burned Jewish children in the ditch.

Elie Wiesel was a devout follower of the Jewish faith. At a young age, he developed a strong desire to grow in his faith by studying and following Jewish principles. Under the instruction of his mentor, Moishe the Beadle, Elie studied the Torah and the Cabbala. He described his first account of Jewish oppression when Moishe was deported for months and returned to Sighet to inform the remaining Jews of the deportees’ fate and to warn them of what was to come. He spoke of Jews being brutally abused and infants burned alive. No one seemed to heed Moishe’s warning. Soon after, German Nazis invaded Hungary and forced Elie and his family along with several other Jewish communities into small ghettos. This was only the beginning of the numerous accounts of brutality and suffering that he would face.

“Had he been able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee” (Wiesel 14). During the time of the Holocaust in 1941, a friend is coming to warn a young boy by the name of Elie Wiesel that human rights violations are occurring all over Europe lead by a man named Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler's goal was to keep the Aryan race alive and kill all others deemed not fit. There were many warning signs to the Jewish population that trouble was near. Many chose not to listen, or to ignore help from others, but in the end, this choice leads to the loss of things tangible and intangible.

The beginning of the Holocaust seems hopeful for Elie and his family, even though the Hurgarian police take away the foreign Jews that live in Sighet, Elie’s hometown, in cattle cars. Although nobody knows exactly what happens to them, the Jews in Sighet hear that they are in Galicia, working, and “content with their fate” (Wiesel 6). But that is not so, for Moishe, a

Have you ever seen a family member or friend die in front of your face? In the book, Night by Elie Wiesel, the Jewish police and the German soldiers took away Jews. German soldiers were killing Jews everyday by starvation, worked to death, or standing in the cold. First of all, Elie Wiesel's Night shows cruelty, suffering, and painful feelings. Elie Wiesel’s Night shows inhumanity and cruelty by taking Jews out of their homes, burning Jews, and beating Jews.