When The World Was Ours

Dehumanization is a process that does not happen overnight; instead, it is a gradual progression that may seem innocuous until it eventually escalates into full-blown genocide. As the novel portrays, the growing power of the Nazi regime before and during World War II stands as the most well-known example of this process. While reflecting upon the various examples of dehumanization that beset her and her family, Elsa points out “how rapidly something unthinkable can become commonplace. How easily we let the inconceivable become a new normal. How quickly we learn to stop questioning these things” (215-16). The first signs of this dehumanization manifest in Mr. Fischer’s rants about Jews and his cruel treatment of Leo and his father. Soon, the Anschluss occurs, and new laws are instated that separate Jews from the rest of the population. When Leo loses Max almost instantly and becomes burdened with a sudden sense of shame just for being who he is, he reflects, “As I stood there, in front of the whole school, being told I was an inferior being and feeling all the other children’s eyes on me, I realized I had never known the real meaning of shame till this moment” (70). He walks the streets with his head hung—a sight that can be seen on the prisoners in the concentration camps as well. His internal trauma is compounded when he sees his father scrubbing the concrete and being abused by men who used to be his friends. Even when he eventually escapes to England, the Nazi ideology—which encourages others to shame Jews and requires Jews to acquiesce to this shame—is something that Leo cannot escape because it becomes ingrained in him. It takes years for Leo to adjust and realize that he does not need to be ashamed of being Jewish.

Immersed in his father’s hatred for Jewish people, Max falls prey to the Nazi ideology and begins a slow process of dehumanizing all Jewish people, including his own friends. Whenever he thinks of them or wonders whether his father might be wrong about them, he forces those thoughts out of his mind, telling himself that “[t]hose thoughts had no place in his world” and blocking them from his mind “with an imaginary gate as big, as hard, and as cold as the one at the entrance to Dachau” (175). His father accelerates this process by making Max yell insults about Jews and encouraging him to join the Hitler Youth. When Max later encounters Leo’s father at Dachau, his mind cannot connect the person he knew to the diminished person he sees in front of him, and the incident makes him deeply uncomfortable. Rather than speaking out against the injustices, Max plays along and pretends that he agrees with the Nazis’ hatred, but internally, he knows that he would never want to be a Jew in this situation; this secret admission implies that he still has some empathy for them. When it comes time for him to kill someone as a Nazi rite of passage, Max cannot bring himself to do it, particularly because the Jew standing before him is the first person he ever loved: Elsa.

Because she is subject to the deepest forms of trauma, oppression, and atrocities that the Nazi party inflicts, Elsa and her family experience the greatest extent of dehumanization. They are moved to a ghetto, starved, denied employment, and isolated from society. Later, they are transported in a crowded train to a concentration camp, where they are further abused and starved. Elsa’s life is constantly uprooted, she is left with few possessions, and she can no longer contact Leo or Max. What started out as a full life becomes more and more bereft of the basic things that make her human. Eventually, Elsa is left without her hair, her name, or her family and friends, and it is at that point that she finally gives up. Throughout the novel, the author makes it a point to depict the effects of dehumanization from three distinct perspectives. Leo represents the Jewish people who managed to escape the worst of the Holocaust, Elsa represents those who were subjected to the horrors of the concentration camps, and Max represents those who found themselves helpless to do anything other than accept and perpetuate the growing atrocities that surrounded them.

Although the novel’s primary goal is to highlight the many injustices and outright atrocities of this time period, the resurgence of hope and resilience remains a constant theme as the three friends struggle to endure their individual fates. Significantly, the story itself begins with a pure and hopeful moment as the three friends enjoy riding a Ferris wheel and imagining their future lives. When the war begins, hope remains, but it soon transforms into an increasingly forlorn hope that the war will end and life will once again be right and fair for Jewish people. This hope keeps people alive as they are separated, starved, imprisoned, and abused.

Similarly, Leo’s hope allows him and his mother to escape Austria and find safety in England. While his mother starts to lose faith in the possibility that Papa will one day rejoin the family, Leo constantly reassures her and helps her to remain hopeful for the future. He also urges his mother to keep trying to appease the authorities in order to meet the stringent requirements to be able to leave the country, and his persistence eventually pays off. As Leo imagines telling his father, “I did what you told me, Papa. […] I got Mama to safety” (164). Papa does come back when the war ends, and Leo’s family is reunited.

Even Elsa and her family, who endure the very worst aspects of the Holocaust, find reason to hope amidst a hopeless situation. Elsa’s brother Otto hopes that the war will end and hangs onto the belief that eventually they will no longer have to hide or live in poverty. While the family endures the concentration camp, hope keeps Elsa alive, and she and Greta base their friendship on their mutual hope for an improvement in their circumstances, however unrealistic it may be. As Elsa states, “We still dream. We still pretend to plan a life after this. We still smile. We smile sometimes” (242). Elsa and Greta made a plan to escape, but they are ultimately caught and sentenced to death for even considering it. Elsa bitterly admits, “This is Auschwitz and we are not allowed hope. The mere suggestion of it is enough for punishment” (290). At this point, Elsa knows that she is going to die, but she still holds onto one shred of hope, just in case a reason to live presents itself again. In the end, this reason comes in the form of Max, and Elsa’s hope flares up one last time in her desire to prevent him from killing another human being. Elsa’s final piece of hope leaves her when Max is killed in front of her, and she surrenders to her death after surviving for years where many others have died.