human behavior Under Extreme Conditions
Have you ever wondered how you would act in certain situations that tested your own character, morals, and humanity? Would you be able to hold your sanity, or become uncontrollable in your efforts to survive? Unfortunately, many prisoners in the concentration camps during the Holocaust had lost all normal human behavior and had become totally different individuals. At the same time, how could the Nazi guards deal out such cruel acts to those prisoners? Did they not have any kind of conscious at all? Under extreme situations, like the Holocaust, human behavior and individual character can take drastic and sudden changes throughout periods of time.
Towards the beginning of the book Night by Elie Wiesel, you get the first sight of changed human behavior when the people are boarded into the cars. Confined and cramped in a small place with no food, water, or sanitation, the people start to have no respect for the others around them. In one instance, a woman starts to hysterically scream about a fire that is nowhere to be seen and the people bound, gag, and even beat her in hopes of silencing her (Wiesel p. 26).
Their treatment towards the woman would definitely have been different under normal circumstances and not that harsh.
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Another, yet more intense, example of change in behavior was when a son had actually beaten his own father to death for just a scrap of bread (Wiesel p. 101).
For the Jews in the concentration camps, survival for oneself was soon to be priority number one. The prisoners were forced to adapt to the “camp life” and was denied their humanity and were treated as less than humans and more like animals. This treatment led them to behave in “crude, brutal, and uncivilized ways” regardless of who they were (“Night Summary and Analysis” 1).
Wiesel mentions in his book about a different situation where the son knowingly left his father behind as they were running, in hopes to rid him self of the burden he felt his father was on him. Wiesel was afraid that he would be just like that and lose his sense of kindness and filial responsibility, despite his brief thoughts about how it would be much easier if he did not have to worry about his father:
If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself… Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever (Wiesel 106).
To all the prisoners in the camp, survival becomes the only concern, and human emotions and even family ties become irrelevant.
What about the behaviors of all those who were in authority over the prisoners? How can one be able to commit the most heinous crimes against a human being without any conscious at all? Wiesel tells of a time when he witnesses a young pipel being hanged in front of everyone and shares what happened:
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished (Wiesel 65).
Not only did they murder an innocent child, they also forced everyone to pass by and watch him die slowly, unable to do anything to help. The German guards, because given the power to basically do what they want with the prisoners without punishment, went from normal people to sadistic individuals who, despite their earlier morals and beliefs, committed cruel acts on the prisoners. This was the “extreme situation” that changed their behaviors for the worse.
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There was a time in the book that a Dutchman’s young pipel, had actually beat his father for making his bed wrong and had even threatened to stop bringing him bread (Wiesel 63).
This is a great example of what Bruno Bettelheim talked about in Individual and Mass Behaviour in Extreme Situations. He mentions that the prisoners have stages of adaption in the camps and in the final stage, the prisoner reaches the point where his personality is changed and he “accepts as his own the values of the Gestapo” (Bettelheim 1).
This means the prisoners believe that behaving like the authorities that were over them, would mean survival. Survival was all they thought about.
In an experiment in 1971 by Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo, a group of young men were chosen to act as guards and prisoners in a simulated prison. After just a short period, the “guards” had turned, apparently on their own, sadistic and started to treat the “prisoners” terribly and abusive. Can given power really do this to people? Yes, it can and as one scientist of the experiment put it was “human nature transformed in a very rapid way in the face of a very powerful situation” (Stanley 1).
It is sad to hear about sons turning on their fathers, neighbors turning on neighbors, and Jews turning on Jews in the concentration camps as a means to survive. The Germans attempt to dehumanize these people were successful. It goes to show that through extreme situations, for prisoners and the German Nazis, human behavior can take a large turn for the worse.
Works Cited
Bettelheim, Bruno. “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations.” INDIVIDUAL AND MASS BEHAVIOUR IN EXTREME SITUATIONS. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2012.
“Night Summary and Analysis.” Night Study Guide: Summary and Analysis of Chapter 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2012.
Shaumann, Caroline. “Survival: Was Survival for Jews during the Holocaust Purely a Matter of Chance?” History in Dispute. Ed. Tandy McConnell. Vol. 11: The Holocaust, 1933-1945. Detroit: St. James Press, 2003. 217-225. Global Issues In Context. Web. 3 Oct. 2012.
Stanley, Alessandra. “‘The Human Behavior Experiments’: What Can Be Done in the Name of Obedience.” The New York Times 1 June 2006: n. pag. The New York Times. 1 June 2006. Web. 1 Oct. 2012.
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Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.
