Elie Wiesel’s Night Book Analysis
2.7 million people died in the concentration camps that were run and organized by the Nazis. Only a tiny amount of people lived to tell the tale about what happened. Elie Wiesel’s book Night was about his life in the concentration camps and how many Jewish people were treated during these harsh times. The Jews were dehumanized and stripped of their identities over and over. They were deported to Auschwitz. Because of this, they didn’t know what would happen or what to expect. These traumatizing events made Elie Wiesel a different person when he left.
The Nazis dehumanized the Jews when the Nazis robbed them of the things that made up their identity. The Nazis started to slowly take over the Jews’ lives one step at a time. They started making laws that limited the Jewish people. One of the laws was that the “Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death” (Wiesel 10). The SS officers locked the jews in their homes and wouldn’t let them leave during specific periods. If they were to leave their homes, they risked being killed by the SS police. It didn’t matter if they had jobs or functions to organize; none of that mattered because they were Jewish. The Nazis soon realized that they wouldn’t be able to tell who was Jewish or not, so “Every Jew had to wear the yellow star” (Wiesel 11). Them wearing the stars placed a target on their backs because people would know that they were Jewish. Once they deported the Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, they shaved their hair, took their clothes, and gave them tattoos of their new names.
At last, they had to roll up their left sleeves, and other “veteran” prisoners tatted their new identities on them “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name” (Wiesel 42). The SS tattooed the Jews to keep track of them. They no longer called the Jews by their names; they only called them numbers. They treated them like cattle; they killed them whenever they wanted, fed them whenever they wanted, and made them do harsh labor no matter their conditions.
When the Jews were stripped of their identities over and over, it left them with no hope. They couldn’t understand why all of these terrible things were happening to them, and no one seemed to care. None of the other countries thought any of this was wrong. It wasn’t till one year later the Americans liberated the prisoners. The Jews were happy that they were free, but everything they were living for had already been taken from them. They had little to no family, no home to return to, and no one to care for them.
It is essential to look back on what happened in the concentration camps and never forget the people who lost their lives while they were there. It is vital that today’s society never lets anything that cruel happen again and stand up for others when they are being differentiated against because of their beliefs.
