Dehumanization of the Jews

The Holocaust was Hitler’s overall plan to exterminate all Jews, gays, Gypsies, etc. (mostly Jews). Everyone he planned on killing was sent to a concentration camp and forced to either work or die (unless they were weak, then they couldn’t even choose work). Around 13 million people were moved to camps and suffered. 11 million of those died, including 6 million Jews. This greatly dehumanized the Jews during the Holocaust; deaths, hospitality, and cruelty.

It is really amazing how many people can die from just one person, put into power by a country with a broken ego. There were about 6 million Jews that died, and around 600 thousand that survived. That means that if you were a Jew in the Holocaust, you would have a 10% chance of survival. It also means that the average survivor had to witness at least 9 deaths. In one part of Night, 100 people were put in a train car and only 12 came out of it alive. This shows how the number of deaths and the number of survivors affected the Jews’ dehumanization.

Another thing that dehumanized the Jews was the Germans’ hospitality for the Jews. They were given a small crust of bread every day and a small bowl of soup. People sometimes fought each other for extra rations and later on during the Holocaust, killed each other. The Jews were also barely clothed, and their shoes were taken away from them. They were forced to work all day with no breaks and were beaten if they stopped. In Section 6 of the book Night, during the death march, Elie says, “The idea of dying…I felt I could touch it.” This quote shows how he was dehumanized and hopeless. All of the hospitality and the way the Jews were treated led up to the Jews (some) not believing in their religion or God anymore. They figured, if God was so great, then why did he let so many people die? Why would he kill us if we worshipped Him so much? They’re kind of right to believe that, too. Though, like everything previously listed, it helped to dehumanize the Jews.

The last thing that dehumanized the Jews was the cruelty of the Nazis. The torture these people went through was so unbearable, I can’t describe it. I can only tell you what happened that dehumanized him. First off, people were burned alive, and their ashes were thrown away disrespectfully. Second, they were stripped of all possessions (shoes, watches, gold crowns). They were beaten and put through selection (where the stronger lived and the weaker were burned). Also, there was the occasional death march, in which many people were shot, trampled, or froze to death if they couldn’t keep up. Finally if the people misbehaved in the camps, they were either beaten, got their rations taken away, whipped, or sometimes hung. As you can see, this definitely would have contributed to the Jews’ dehumanization.

In conclusion, Hitler and the Nazis dehumanized and inhumanely tortured the Jews. Although the Allied Powers (America, Russia, and Great Britain) still beat them eventually. In the end, Hitler’s plan (“Final Solution”) failed.