When the Germans arrived in Sighet and forced the Jews into ghettos, the Jews ignored their fear because some were fooled by the Germans. When explaining how the Germans acted toward some of the Jews the text states, “Their attitude toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house” (Wiesel 9-10). It’s easy to see how some were tricked because despite having their homes invaded, some of the Jews were being treated kindly and politely. Germany managed to keep the Jews of Sighet smiling which contributed to the denial of the evidence facing them.
Another possible reason some of the Jews suppressed their fear was that they realized there was nothing they could do at the time. The Jews did not want to portray weakness because they would have been taken advantage of or even killed. When the Jews were being forced outside to be moved to the camps Wiesel states, “The Hungarian police used their rifle butts, their clubs to indiscriminately strike old men and women, children and cripples” (Wiesel 16). Seeing helpless, innocent people being beat for no reason struck fear in all the others around them. After a short time, the Jews realized these people had total control and there was nothing to do but follow along with their demands. Mrs. Schächter was a 50-year-old woman on the same train to Auschwitz as Elie. Although she still had her 10-year-old son with her, she was separated from her husband and two eldest sons who had been put on the first transport by mistake. The separation had shattered her and caused her to start losing her mind.
After a few nights on the train, she would not stop screaming through the night. She screamed, “‘Jews, listen to me… I see a fire! I see huge flames, huge flames!’” (Wiesel 25). At first, people on the train felt sorry for her and believed she was hallucinating, but they soon lost patience with her. Instead of listening to what she was yelling about, the other passengers decided to force her to stop by beating her. She predicted how the Jews would be burned to death but no one at the time understood. Similarly to Mrs. Schächter, no one listened to Cassandra in Greek mythology. Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of the city Troy. When The God Apollo fell in love with Cassandra and she told him she didn’t love him back, it was believed that he cursed Cassandra so that no one would believe what she had to say and predicted.
Cassandra tried warning the people of Troy that if they brought the wooden horse into their city, the Greeks would destroy them, and that is what happened. Mrs. Schächter and Cassandra are both similar in ways which no one listened to what they had had to say and they both predicted the future. Furthermore, I was honestly surprised to read that the other Jews beat Mrs. Schächter. She was a middle-aged woman with a family and even though she was screaming so loud, in the end, she was trying to help. Even though no one realized she was warning them of danger, to just beat someone for being loud seems unjustified and horrifying. The Nazi’s systematically dehumanized the Jews in their first moments at Auschwitz to get them to lose sense of who they really were.
The Jews who underwent the process of being dehumanized lost their complete identity. Their physical appearances obviously changed, but what wasn’t obvious was what happened to them internally. These people legitimately didn’t know who they were anymore and all because of the Nazi’s. When reminiscing about what just happened to him and the people around him, Wiesel states, “All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded-and devoured-by a black flame. So many events had taken place in just a few hours that I had completely lost of notion of time” (Wiesel 37). To be treated in such horrid ways clearly had severe effects on the Jews. Physically losing sense of time not only demonstrates how shook they were, but it relates to how much more seriously it affected them. Being identified as letters and numbers instead of a real name is just disgraceful. Some of the Jews felt as if they had no purpose and were afraid to do anything because of the fear the Nazi’s struck on them. Elie even went as far as to describe his experience as surreal and thought it was just a terrible “dream”.
