The holocaust was not only physical violence, but also psychological violence. Those who lived were forever imprinted with the deaths of those that they knew and loved. They were tortured day in and day out in various ways. Thus, by the end, those who survived were completely dehumanized. No matter how religious or full of spirit they were at the end, their ordeal attacked anything they held valuable. "Night" by Elie Wiesel's shows how he survived the holocaust and the dehumanizing effects it had on him.
The first thing that Wiesel loses is his faith. He began his life very faithful and very interested in religion. However, on Rosh Hashanah, he finds that he cannot pray to a God that lets such atrocities continue. In Night, he writes:
“This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without God and without man.”
After losing most of his family, the holocaust starts removing parts of him. His faith is the first thing he loses. Now he finds all who are still faithful ignorant and even foolish, and feels very alone.
As the Front moves nearer to Buna, the Nazis force the Jews to move to a different camp. However, the way this mass evacuation takes place is on foot, and running. They run for an inhumanly long time, which at the end kills some. During the last bit of the run Wiesel writes about the separation of the physical body and the soul:
“The commandant announced that we had already covered forty-two miles since we left. It was a long time since we had passed beyond the limits of fatigue. Our legs were moving mechanically, in spite of us, without us.”
He describes how they no longer ran because they willed themselves to, but rather because their body was doing it. The sheer monstrosity of covering forty-two feet on foot while running without stopping represents the next thing the Nazis stripped the Jews of: their connection between their physical body and their soul. They became somewhere else as they ran, almost without knowing.
After the liberation of Buchenwald, the surviving Jews remain a skeleton of their former selves. There was no though of revenge or sadness, only survival and recovery. The torture that was forced upon the Jews' bodies and minds turned them into much like a shell of what they used to be, reverting to the most basic human instincts (although not to say they were primitive, but rather that they could have no other thoughts than survival after their ordeal). Elie Wiesel demonstrates the final product of this dehumanization, which puts together the entirety of the atrocity forced upon the Jews.
"One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me. "
This shows the final stage of the Nazis dehumanization of the surviving Jews, stripping them of the things that they value. In Wiesel's case it starts with his family and faith and ends with his soul. These three quotes, however demonstrate how the holocaust affected not only the Jews who died, but those who survive.
