In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel describes his horrific account of being a Nazi concentration camp prisoner in Auschwitz, Germany. German guards’ treatment of the Jewish people in Auschwitz was inhumane and degrading, individuals in the camp starved, beaten, forced to run around naked, killed, and demoralized. This Nazi guards’ deception was evident from the time that Elie first arrived at Auschwitz, the door plaque reading, “Work is Liberty” . That phrase was untrue, the prisoners treated like slaves, as they were worked to death and stripped of all freedom and human dignity. In order to deliver such cruel actions, the guards dehumanized and demoralized victims by using deception and confusion on prisoners.
“Within a few seconds, we had ceased to be men,” said Wiesel (34), referring to his treatment by the guards in Auschwitz. Indirectly, Wiesel was also referring to the insidious deception that “work is liberty.” The prisoners were not treated as free men. They were forced to run from barracks to barracks naked, holding their shoes and belts, some of them beaten. The barracks were dehumanizing. No liberty existed, but confusion did. Prisoners did not understand why they had to endure disinfectant, petrol, scalding showers, and severe punishment and abuse.
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Keeping the prisoners tired, overworked, and without sleep kept them confused and demoralized. Just when prisoners were at the point where they could not take anymore, they had to start running again, on little food and water. Eventually the individuals were provided with clothes that were thrown to them. After that incident, the prisoners were thrown into another barracks with no floor, just mud beneath their feet (Wiesel 34-35). Wiesel and the rest of the prisoners were treated more like cattle than real people, dehumanized by the Nazi guards.
Deception, in all forms, did not stop. The guards combined deceit with the sense that the prisoners deserved punishment, evident in the guards’ treatment of people at Auschwitz and the spoken words to the prisoners. Wiesel recounted what one of the men said when prisoners first arrived at Auschwitz, the Jewish people not yet knowing exactly where they were.
“You shut your trap, you filthy swine, or I’ll squash you right now! You’d have done better to have hanged yourselves where you were than come here. Didn’t you know what was in store for you at Auschwitz? Haven’t you heard about it? In 1944?” .
How could people have known about the horrors of what was going on? The guard is rationalizing the present and horrible treatment that the people will face by making it seem as if the prisoners should have killed themselves before they came to Auschwitz, as if they really had a choice in ending up at Auschwitz. By making it seem as if they had a choice in their impending fate, the Nazi guards are using more lies and deception. Any choice was ripped away by Hitler and the guards who forced people to leave their homes, innocent individuals deported to concentration camps. These guards knew that the prisoners had no clue about what their fate would be in Auschwitz. Making prisoners believe that they should have known is another lie.
Lies and deception can damage our spirit and psyche. As human beings, we naturally seek for truth and integrity. Deceit does not honor our truth; in essence, it makes our lives fake and meaningless. Any secure foundation that we possess just disintegrates under lies and deception. Using lies and deception is also another way to gain power over somebody, in this case, the prisoners. The guards also dehumanized them by referring to them as “filthy swine.” Calling somebody a name serves to separate and degrade. The prisoners were not filthy swine; this lie was used to put these prisoners further under the guard’s control, the degradation enduring throughout Adolph Hitler’s reign.
The guards kept degrading people with brutal words of “Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? Over there- that’s where you’re going to be taken. That’s your grave, over there. Haven’t you realized that? You dumb bastards, don’t you understand anything? You’re going to be burned. Frizzled away. Turned into ashes.” (Wiesel 28).
In the above words, the guard was able to both rationalize the genocide and dehumanize the Jewish people. By referring to them as “dumb bastards” who are ignorant, he is degrading them. However, the guard was lying to himself by saying that they are dumb, giving himself permission for their genocide, relegating them as imbeciles who deserve their fate. However, the other lie is that these prisoners did not deserve it. By convincing himself that the prisoners are “dumb bastards,” he is not recognizing them as contributors to society, but people with little value. He also dehumanizes the prisoners with the words “burning like ashes,” as if they were pieces of firewood just waiting to catch fire. This lie perpetuates the killing and bad treatment.
“Remember this. . . Remember it forever. Engrave it in your minds. You are at Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It’s a concentration camp. Here, you have got to work. If not, you will go straight to the furnace. To the crematory. Work or the crematory- the choice is in your hands” .
Those words symbolized the guards’ overall deception. Many people who worked still ended up being killed. However, the deceptions and lies kept people working, hopeful that they would stay alive. Yet, society knows the awful truth. Millions of Jewish people were killed during this time period, at the hands of Nazi guards. In order to deliver such cruel actions, the guards dehumanized and demoralized prisoners by using deception and confusion.
- Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1960. Print .
