Dehumanization and Resistance in Holocaust Literature
This essay examines the theme of dehumanization as depicted in Holocaust literature, drawing on works by Tadeusz Borowski, Bernard Gotfryd, and several Holocaust poets. It explores how the Nazi regime systematically stripped prisoners of their humanity through numbering, branding, segregation, starvation, and mass murder, while also analyzing how some prisoners became complicit in dehumanizing acts. The essay argues that true dehumanization is impossible: though victims endured extreme suffering, their capacity for empathy, self-sacrifice, and collective solidarity preserved their humanity. Survivor literature and poetry are presented as essential instruments of rehumanization and collective memory.
- Humanization and Its Opposite: Defining humanization and dehumanization through shared empathy
- The Mechanics of Dehumanization: In-group/out-group distinctions enabling Nazi ideology
- Prisoner Identity, Numbering, and In-Groups: Tattoos, numbers, and Hans Burger's story
- Complicity and Self-Dehumanization Among Prisoners: Prisoners' complicity and Borowski's guilt
- Physical Brutality and the Dehumanizing Conditions of the Camps: Herding, starvation, and systemic camp brutality
- Resilience, Solidarity, and Rehumanization: Survivors' solidarity and collective memory
- Conclusion: The Impossibility of True Dehumanization: Victims remained human despite Nazi atrocities
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay anchors its abstract argument in specific textual evidence, moving fluidly between prose narratives and Holocaust poetry to build a multi-source case for its central claim.
- It avoids a one-sided victim/perpetrator framework by acknowledging prisoner complicity, which adds analytical depth and intellectual honesty to the discussion of dehumanization.
- The paper's concluding inversion — that true dehumanization of victims is ultimately impossible — gives the argument a memorable philosophical payoff grounded in the evidence presented throughout.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative textual analysis across multiple primary sources, drawing connections between memoir, fiction, and poetry to construct a unified argument. Rather than summarizing each work in isolation, the writer synthesizes them around a single conceptual framework — the process and limits of dehumanization — demonstrating how literary evidence can support philosophical claims.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a visceral quotation that defines humanization, then pivots to dehumanization as its antithesis. Middle sections address escalating forms of dehumanization: ideological, bureaucratic, physical, and interpersonal. The final sections shift toward resilience and memory, culminating in the argument that victims could never truly be dehumanized. The Works Cited list follows MLA format with both full references and page-number footnote citations.
Humanization and Its Opposite
"The man dangled on the gallows, and suddenly the world around me was no longer the same. I felt a strange sensation in my throat as if I were choking. I could picture myself on the gallows…" What Gotfryd describes as a visceral reaction to an execution represents humanization: the ability to identify with strangers to the extent that empathy becomes shared emotions and sensations. To feel the sensation of choking while watching another person perish at the gallows means identifying so fully with that human being that there is no gap between the self and the other. All human beings are connected. All are one. Caring, empathy, sharing, and respect are part of the universal human experience.
Dehumanization entails the opposite. Dehumanization means detaching from humanity, becoming frozen, cold, unable to feel for the suffering endured by fellow human beings. The person who dehumanizes others has already dehumanized the self. By cutting oneself off from humanity, the individual denies that which binds human beings together. The process of dehumanization therefore begins with the dehumanization of the self.
Even Gotfryd is willing to humanize his captors, recognizing their gradual or partial detachment from the prisoners and acknowledging the Nazis' occasional "respect" — real or imagined — for rebellious prisoners. Gotfryd suggests that the process of dehumanization occurs gradually and incrementally; it can occur in degrees. In This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski illustrates the process and the effects of dehumanization. Prisoners themselves become perpetrators; in being dehumanized, they begin the process of dehumanizing others. Wishing for Nazis to die, or participating in the death of Nazis, are themselves dehumanizing acts: "I should like to slaughter one or two men, just to throw off the concentration camp mentality." Becoming deadened to suffering and numb to pain is one of the end results of being dehumanized.
The Mechanics of Dehumanization
Dehumanization occurs first when the dehumanizer detaches the self from the rest of humanity. That detachment depends on the creation of in-groups and out-groups. Rigid lines must be drawn between that which is human and that which is not, between "us" and "them," between captor and prisoner. Nazi ideology was based on sharp demarcations between groups, enabling dehumanization to a degree rarely witnessed in human history.
The Jews bore by far the greatest brunt of the dehumanization policy that underwrote Nazi ideology. Borowski notes, "Aryans had stopped being sent to the gas chambers — except for special cases. From then on only Jews were gassed en masse." Integral to the process and experience of dehumanization, therefore, is the development of a cognitive schema that allows for strict demarcations between valuable and disposable human beings. Jews were categorically dismissed, dehumanized, devalued, and deemed dead.
Prisoner Identity, Numbering, and In-Groups
Dehumanization also manifests in the substitution of prisoner identification numbers for names. Objects are numbered; people are named. A numbered person is therefore no longer a human being but an object or a piece of property. As the author of "The Girl from Auschwitz No. 74233" states plainly: "the main executioner of the camp, Tauber, came again. Girls, prisoners of long standing, tattooed numbers on our left hands. We were no longer people." The number, tattooed on skin like cattle branding, is a brutal reminder of the Nazi scourge. Dehumanization becomes etched onto the skin — forever a part of the prisoner's life.
The story of Hans Burger eerily combines the dehumanization of prisoner identification with the dehumanizing cognitive schemas that create in-groups and out-groups. Before being beaten by the guards, Burger believes himself to be in a category distinct from the other Jewish prisoners. He is German and served in World War One. He boasts about his service in the German army and displays his Iron Cross. He proudly states his prisoner identification number to the guards in an attempt to appease them. The other prisoners warn him that the Nazi captors will view him as categorically different because he is Jewish, but Burger is in denial of the extent to which Jews were being systematically and categorically dehumanized. Jews were dehumanized to a greater degree than their fellow prisoners, differentiated by visible markings such as identification badges and tattoos.
Burger ultimately does experience dehumanizing treatment from the SS officers. Gotfryd notes, "Several of us looked at one another in sympathy. This must have been the worst humiliation any man could endure, especially one who had thought of himself as special so recently." The Hans Burger #15252 story also illustrates the thread of humanity that connected all the prisoners through their shared plight. Their sympathy for Hans starkly contrasts with the way the SS treated him: the other prisoners humanize Burger in spite of his seeming arrogance. Gotfryd notes that Burger was in fact "masquerading as a Jew" to help his fellow prisoners and never took credit for his self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is the opposite of dehumanization. It proves the universal bond of humanity and consciously links disparate human beings through empathy and love-in-action.
Conclusion: The Impossibility of True Dehumanization
Borowski's explicit treatment of the Holocaust in This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen details the process of dehumanization and shows how it depends on segregating the self from the rest of the human race. Denying the unity of the human race and numbing oneself to the pain of others is the only way to dehumanize. On the contrary, sacrificing the self to save others is the ultimate affirmation of human love and survival.
When Gotfryd states, "I couldn't believe I was free again," he realizes fully that it is utterly impossible to be dehumanized. The Holocaust victims were tortured, but they remained human. It is only possible to dehumanize others. Living with fear and accepting torture while clinging to hope are signs of humanity. Dehumanization is an act — a crime. The victim never actually participates in his or her own dehumanization unless that person actively commits a dehumanizing act. The survivors' literature stands as enduring testimony to that irreducible humanity.
Works Cited
Borowski, Tadeusz, Barbara Vedder, Jan Kott, and Michael Kandel. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Penguin, 1976.
"The Girl from Auschwitz." From the Black Book. Eds. Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman. New York: Holocaust Library.
Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Execution," "Hans Burger: #15252," and "The Last Camp." Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust. Washington Square, 1990.
Hamburger, Michael. "Treblinka." In Schiff, Hilda, ed. Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
Fogel, Ephraim. "Shipment to Maidanek." In Schiff, Hilda, ed. Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
Schiff, Hilda. "Babii Yar." Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
Tsirolnitsky, M. "Twenty-Six Months in Auschwitz." The Black Book. Eds. Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman. New York: Holocaust Library.
Zyck, Adam. "Auschwitz, 1987." In Schiff, Hilda, ed. Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
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