In the Night written by the Elie Wiesel, the author describes his misery in the Holocaust. He uses the imagery to demonstrate the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the Nazi camp. These Jews were forced to survive deceitful conditions in the concentration camps. The incarcerated Jews were subjected to the most horrible forms of inhuman treatment. This made Jews lose their mentality and morality because they were pushed beyond their capability of dealing with oppressing brutality, starvation, exhaustion and diseases among others. The change of the character and morality can be attributed to the dehumanization that they experienced, but could not weaken their spirit. The flock of men clawing for food reflects the selfish, inhuman and the endurance of the fittest sanity, which took over their morality.
The Nazis who deliberately refused to give them adequate provisions motivated the change of Jewish morality, and consequently they were forced to act like beasts. The Jews who once embraced the importance of unity were forced to be selfish because it was every-man-for-himself situation. Their enthusiasm to achieve the needs, which they were denied, was extremely powerful to fight among themselves to death for survival. The young demonstrate this self-centered attitude when they opted to leave their father’s remnants without a tear because the father was growing feeble (Wiesel and Marion 87).
In additional, the Nazi’s cruelty made the Jewish spiritual struggle deteriorate not only in God but also in the fellow prisoners. They were unable to make sense of their world. For instance, Eliezer the protagonist not only experienced disappointing outcome from his horror experience with Nazi persecution, but also the cruelty he saw from fellow prisoners inflicting on each other. This made Eliezer be alert of the cruelty of which he was capable of doing. This is so because everything that he encountered in the war demonstrates how horrible people can treat each other.
Nazi subjected Jews into insensible cruelty, but they did not seem horrible in any way. However, the prisoners attitude toward them was distant but courteous. Therefore, several features of the holocaust are extremely unintelligible. However, the most difficult aspect to comprehend was how human beings would heartlessly murder innocent victims. The “night” describes this incomprehensible disaster by pulling the Nazis into focus as human beings and then brutal incidents that they committed. This indicates that cruelty breeds cruelty because rather than helping each other in the difficult time, the prisoners responded to their condition by turning against each other. This is also reflected by Jews who helped Nazi to carry out their mission and became cruel to prisoners in their charge. This reflects how the holocausts malice bred malice in its victims turning them against each other because self-preservation became the valuable virtue.
Similarly, the Nazi’s deception was mostly used to confuse and demoralize Jewish people. The gates at Auschwitz camp, which was decorated with an inscription, which read, “work make you free” (Wiesel 40), demonstrated deceit. The entire inscription reflected the deceit and harsh irony of the Nazi camps because the prisoners were aware that there was no way they could get out of the camp. Therefore, watching this inscription everyday demoralized prisoners and shattered their human spirit. To remove the irony, this inscription could rather read “work makes your miserable life longer.” This is so because their situation was hopeless and it was inhuman for Nazi to make their situation a fun.
Moreover, demoralization and dehumanization of Jews commenced with yellow stars and moving them into special places referred to as ghettos. In additional, eighty Jews were put into one cattle cars and transported to the congested camp. In the camp, Germany took their belonging, separated them from their families, undressed them and sent dozens to the crematorium. The ones who stayed alive wished to be dead because they were subjected into animalistic features to survive and were denied what made them human. This situation made their names be forgotten because they were forbidden in the Nazi camp. Similarly, the demoralization and dehumanization were also reflected in the deportation from Sighet to murder at Birkenau, which confused the prisoners.
The irony of the inscription used in the Nazi camps was obvious because the work that prisoners experienced would not make them free but push them over the brink of death. The prisoners knew that no matter how hard they worked, the Nazis would not set them free. This is so because Nazis were aware that the inscription was a fraud and freedom would not be given to the Jewish people. Therefore, this embodies the deceitfulness of the Nazis since they gave prisoners a sliver of hope, which was just an illusion of their imagination. Although Auschwitz had the most horrible reputation based on torture and work to be performed, no concentration camp ever given freedom in exchange for work. Therefore, the deceit inscription was meant to make prisoners work extremely hard by giving them hope of being freed.
Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. , 2011. Internet resource.
Wiesel, Elie. "SparkNotes: Night." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., 2002. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/night/>.
