The Deprivation of Body Autonomy in Elie Wiesel's Night (Essay Sample)

“I couldn't help thinking that there were two of us: my body and I. And I hated that body,” (pg. 85). During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were put in concentration camps, and roughly seven million were murdered. The quote above from the novel Night written by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, demonstrates the true horror that occurred in these prison camps. In the book, Wiesel continually mentions how the prisoners were brought down to less than humans. Although Elie and other Jews were living, breathing human beings, they were separated from their human form by Nazi officers. Some key examples of this dehumanization during the Holocaust mentioned in Night are the starvation of prisoners, the number assigned to each inmate, and the forced uniformness of the Jewish people.

Wiesel reported numerous times that he and his fellow prisoners were not given any food or water. On page 47, Elie recalls, “One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest,” (pg. 100). After not eating for days, everyone was starving and desperate for even just one singular crumb of stale bread. This quote highlights how the abuse and deprivation changed the prisoners for the worst. The starvation of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps is one of the many ways they were dehumanized.

Another example of dehumanization mentioned in the novel Night is the assigning of numbers. On page 42, Wiesel says, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” Once Elie entered the concentration camp, he was given a number tattooed on his wrist to be his identification in the prison camp. All guards and officers referred to the prisoners by their number and completely disregarded their actual names. Without even a first name, the prisoners began to feel more like machines or objects and less like human beings. 

In the concentration camps and ghettos run by Nazi officers, all the Jewish people were made to stand out as Jewish. Wiesel observed, “There no longer was any distinction between rich and poor, notables and the others; we were all people condemned to the same fate-still unknown,” (pg. 21). At this point in the book, Elie and his community were waiting outside to move to an internment camp. When they arrived at the camp, all prisoners were stripped of their clothes and their hair was shaved off, and everyone was made to wear what was given to them, regardless of size or quality. Even before leaving their homes, every Jewish person had to wear a yellow star on their clothing so the Nazis could pinpoint the Jews. Being forced into uniformness took away the individuality and outward personality of all those affected, making them lose their personal expression as a human.

The Nazis took away the Jew’s sense of self-worth and dehumanized them by assigning them numbers, restraining meals, and making the prisoners look identical and identifiable. Without food or water, the prisoners did not feel like themselves and even made them act differently because of their desperation for food. The officers reduced all inmates to objects by referring to them as numbers. When under the control of the Nazi officers, every person was forced to let go of their distinctive identity and conform to the uniforms and haircuts required by the concentration camp officers. During the Holocaust, all Jews were taken apart from their human selves and put into the body of an object or animal.