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Abby Forrester
Period:03
May 8, 2015
Night Essay
Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making
them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead
to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide
(Google.com). In the novel Night, Elie describes many examples of dehumanization,
such as numbering and being shoved into cattle cars. During the time of the horrible
Holocaust, dehumanization was used to commit crimes against Jews.
An example of dehumanization was when a Jew entered a camp, and got
assigned a number. When calling them during the selections or roll call, the Nazis would
call them by this number instead of their name. This number now represented them and
took the place of their identity; for Elie it was A-7713 (51). When given the number it
was burned into the skin on their forearm. Soon the Jews would have nothing left, not
even a name.The Nazis had taken away the one thing everyone, even after losing
everything is able to keep, but they had done it. Stripping the Jews of their identity
allowed the Nazis to treat them like things.They had dehumanized the Jews in almost
any way possible.
Another way of dehumanizing people was every once in awhile having a random
selection. A selection during this time was when the weak were picked out of groups
and put to death (71-72). One way to decide who was worthy to live was to have the
prisoners run down to the SS, and if a prisoner was not able to show that he could work,

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or take care of himself, his number, if they saw it was written down. Many died this way
because of the lack of energy they had from not eating for days, and the poor conditions
they were living in.This dehumanized the Jews because they were not giving them a
chance to live; the Nazis decided their fate.
The ghettos were a way of dehumanizing the Jews by separating them from the
Germans (20). The Ghettos were a similar act like when black people were separated
from all white people. Many Jews were shoved into small little neighborhoods with poor
conditions . When the Nazis separated the Jews from society, it dehumanised them
because they were forced from their homes, living in overcrowded, unhygienic
conditions.
Forcing the Jews into the cattle cars was dehumanizing them
because it was treating them like animals. The Nazis put Jews into cattle cars to
transfer them all at one time and quickly (22). When they first put of group of Jews into
the cars normally they fit about 80, but after a certain amount of time as they get thinner,
they can fit almost, or over 100. If someone had tried to escape the cattle cars, they
would get shot like dogs. By treating the Jews like animals and shoving them into cattle
cars, it was dehumanizing for them because they were not looked upon as human.
During the time of the Holocaust, dehumanization was used to commit crimes
against the Jews, by numbering them, selecting the weak, having ghettos, and forcing
them into cattle cars. But was there anything anyone could do to help the Jews, without
putting themselves in danger? Possibly asking the military, but who could do that when
no one could escape the camps to tell about it? There were a lot of people who did help
the Jews escape, but had no power to speak out, or to help more than the few they

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could protect. The Nazis did many terrible things to the Jews, but dehumanization was
one of the many crimes that the Nazis committed against the Jews .

Works Cited
"Dehumanization." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 19 May 2015.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dehumanization>.
Wiesel, Elie and Marion Wiesel. Night New York, NY: Hill and Wang,a Division of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.

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