1. Critical Stance:
a) Dehumanization means to deprive of human qualities or attributes; divest of individuality.
b) With living in the concentration camps for so long and witnessing inhumane acts from left to right, many prisoners doubted God's plan for them. After believing in His judgement for their entire lives they only began to question why certain things happened the way they did. For example, why crematories, gallows, or concentration camps even existed. Many lost the reason to ask God for guidance in time of need and just settled with whatever comes their way.
c) Eliezer was once a strong believer of God. The time he spent in the concentration camps have transformed his mindset towards life. He lost faith in God after experiencing the crematories and the gallows. All these inhuman acts he witnesses soon begins to mean nothing to him. He would simply take a glance and turn away as if nothing happened; as if he had become immune to it.
2. "I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept quiet. In fact I was thinking of how to get farther away so that I would not be hit myself. What is more, any anger I felt at that moment was directed, not against the Kapo, but against my father. I was angry with him, for not knowing how to avoid Idek's outbreak. That is what concentration camp life had made of me. " Pg. 52
"Blessed be the Name of the Eternal!"
"Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because he had thousands of children burned in His pits?Because he kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days?"...."How could i say to Him: "Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory? Praised be The Holy Name, Thou Who hast chosen us to be butchered on Thine altar?" Pg. 64
"But these men here, whom You have betrayed, whom You have allowed to be tortured, butchered, gassed, burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise your name!" Pg. 64
"He would recite whole pages of the Talmud from memory, argue with himself, ask himself questions and answer himself. And one day he said to me: "It's the end. God is no longer with us." Pg 73
"The thousands who had dies daily at Auschwitz and at Birkenau in the crematory ovens no longer troubled me. " Pg. 59
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