Trujillo - Dehumanization

Bunks in Auschwitz

There is a rational explanation... isn't there? The Final Solution was, well, a solution to something was it not? There definitely has to be a reason for the murder of so many people.

Or maybe, on a cold January day in 1942, The Final Solution was the answer to a madman's rantings. Total elimination. Total Annihilation. No true reason at all.

Elie Wiesel's account on what happened to him and his family during this time is incredibly moving. You can see clearly how the dehumanization process began, stripping a promising and intelligent young man of his home, his friends, his family and finally, his God.

I was surprised at Wiesel's calm voice in the beginning of the book. Questions such as 'Isn't he worried?' 'Aren't they coming for him?' and 'Why aren't they moving!?' flitted through my mind as I turned the pages. When Moishe, a bard-like character, and Wiesel's mentor, comes back to his hometown to warn his people about all he had witnessed and all he had had to endure, they scoffed at him, believing he was crazy.

Now, many years later and many history classes later, now that we know what happened in those years, we're screaming at Wiesel, thinking him and the other villagers fools, begging them to heed Moishe's advice, to listen to all that has happened to him, to believe the survivor! But, alas, aren't we all blind to bad news? Preferring not to believe it, preferring even, to remain in our versions of perfection.

Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz.[from The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, ed. Yitzhak Arad. New York: Macmillan, 1990]

These were my thoughts as the story progressed, as Wiesel and his people were removed from their homes and placed in ghettos (dehumanization begins). But, life in the ghettos wasn't that bad was it? I mean, they were a midst their own with no gestapo or other foreigners around. They still handled their affairs within their communities, appointing different jobs to different people. But I was screaming at them, telling them to leave, to run, to save themselves and everything that had grown dear to them. 'You don't know! You don't know and you don't see!' and sadness grew inside of me.

And now, fear. People say that fear is the unknown, or an extreme negative sensation that comes from pain or the feeling of a threat. And we all know that that's where we're headed.

Day by day the Wiesel family saw more and more of their friends and family leave them, going towards the unknown, praying. Finally, it was their turn and they were ushered, as they had seen many people before them, into cattle compartments. Here, after days of suffering, they were greeted with the lie 'Work will set you free' and the smell of burning flesh in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Then comes the separation of family, the death of the mother and sisters, the small acts of kindness that restore at least a bit of faith in humanity and then the cruel reality which rips it away again in an instant. I can't stress it enough. Dehumanization.

That was what was looked for and needed in order to make the killing of so many human beings possible. The less someone resembles a human, the less someone is treated like a human... well, the easier it is to see them as animals.

And I can bet that is what many of the people who sat down together on January 1942 to eat, drink and plan out one of the most horrible moments in this planet's history thought.