Dehumanization is a common factor in all genocides, dehumanization usually takes place when a group of people expressed their views that are unlike different religiously or ethnically and some people who do not alike with these differences decide that those who chose to people are not the same and should not be treated as equal, it also deprives human quality and/or personality. During genocides, many things are lost like loss of humanity. In all genocides there are losses of humanity, the definition of genocide is the killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. During Hotel Rwanda and Night, it showed loss of humanity, people were taking charge of killings and treating people as if they weren’t living breathing humans, they were tortured, killed and teased.
Although Loss of Humanity is lost in Night, Night is about the story of dehumanizing Jews during the Holocaust. Jews were being stripped of all belongings such as clothes, hair, their possessions, and their names. When a person has completely lost everything and is left with absolutely nothing, they are weak. When a person is weak others will view them not as a person but more of an animal. When a person sees another person as powerless it becomes very simple and easy to mistreat and abuse them because of their vulnerability and the person’s point of view. the perfect thing to hit when angry, they would be treated like they were absolutely nothing and just an animal. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, everyone stood in front of everyone’s tents while Kapos appeared pointing and selecting men who seemed to be the strongest of the bunch.
Kapos didn’t care what would happen to those who are weak not even those who are strong and may survive, the Kapos wanted to just use the strongest of the prisoners and use them to their benefit besides whatever happens to them. ¨´You…you…you…´They pointed their fingers, the way one might choose cattle, or merchandise¨ (Wiesel 49). This quote displays how the prisoners at the camps began to see one another as everything but humans. In order to survive the prisoners needed to forget about their values before they were treated humanely and even use each other to benefit themselves. While the Kapos were selecting the prisoners, they were looking for people that would survive the longest and be able to work longer than the ones who are the complete opposite of them.
127 our experts are availableright now
In a normal humane society, this would not be acceptable to treat people in this certain manner. Another example of Dehumanization would be Hotel Rwanda, before the Hutus exterminated the Tutsis they had conflict way before it happened, In 1925, Belgium colonized the area calling it Ruanda-Urundi. The Belgians placed the Tutsi in charge. Starting in the year 1957, the Hutus began to rebel against their treatment and were no longer being treated the way they were. This specific genocide was set to be by the death of Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana, on April 6th, 1994, Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by a missile and the genocide began on April 7th, It went on for about 100 days. During these killings, the Hutus treated the Tutsis horribly, over 800,000 people from the Tutsi tribe were killed.
Most of these people were tortured and killed in atrocious manners. The Hutu used machetes, clubs, and knives, which resulted in a painful gruesome death. After the victims were killed, they were thrown into mass graves or left to rot. In the movie Hotel Rwanda Paul Rusesabagina and his staff member Gregoire both drove out to see George Rutaganda to get more supplies for the refugees in his hotel, while arriving there Paul saw that there were Tutsis people in cages and being treated horribly, the Hutus were throwing things at them and yelling, the Tutsis were caged in like animals and naked, the Tutsis were not only humiliated but also taken from their valuability, they were left with nothing. George did give them the supplies but he also told him he knew the supplies were for the Tutsis refugees at his hotel as well as to take a different way back to the hotel, telling Paul the way he told them to go was “clear”, but doing so the path that George told him to go was not as it seems, the path was foggy and surprisingly very bumpy, Paul thought his staff member driving was going off the road told him to stop, he did so however once Paul stepped out of the vehicle to see what path they were on he fell out of the vehicle only to fall upon extreme amounts of bodies, Paul was appalled when he finally stood up and saw how much more there were actually, a large number of bodies were killed and just left there to rot, most of those bodies were Tutsis, there were even children killed. The Hutus do not care whether or not it is a Tutsis child, Tutsis men or women, they are all considered as “cockroaches” and they must be exterminated.
These human beings that were killed for being not alike were robbed of their lives all because of what ethnic they were, they were not treated as fellow people but were treated like animals who did not deserve to be treated like the rest of them. The Hutus killed Tutsis with many things but a common weapon used was a machete, many Tutsis who died from Hutus using machetes were dying very painfully. Lastly, another example of Dehumanization is the Great Leap Forward. In 1958 the Great Leap Forward began, Mao Zedong was a communist meaning……..
He wanted to turn China from a farming society into an industrial society but in order to do this Mao Zedong started a political campaign called the Great Leap Forward, his first step to go through with this revolution was to seize all privately owned property but if you were to reuse in giving up your property you would die. people were also starving, so Zedong forced all farmers to share their crops or else they would die, and if you didn’t want to or you kept some to yourself, you would die. According to The Washington Post, “both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people… ‘10’s of millions of people died of starvation…between 2-3 million victims were tortured to death or just simply killed”(King 1). another finding in The New York Times was “In Liling county, 120 people were beaten during meetings that inaugurated a political campaign, with 20 seriously wounded or dying, more than 20 types of tortured were employed…including hanging people”. Mao Zedong even had slang to beat people.
Going back to The New York Times “to double cook meant repeated beatings, to tie up firewood meant to beat a bounded victim and to white up and black down meant to haul a naked person onto a stage and continued beating him until he as discolored.” Mao Zedong did not care about whatever happened to his people all he cared about was to make his country great again and make it an industrial communism, many people died through the process of the Great Leap Forward due to starvation, torture and simply just killing in general. Zedong just wanted his country to grow and go back to its old ways, people were dying, there were bodies on the floors of where these people lived, if not in favor of Zedong’s choices you would die.
Elie Wiesel once said that ‘indifference can be tempting…It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair.’ some people say that unless one learns from one’s mistakes, history will certainly repeats itself for the great or good. Genocide itself is a real threat to groups in our world. We, as a caring society, need to fight against it and help.
