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The Holocaust is the most horrifying crime against humanity of all times.
"Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all
mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be
eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a
systematic scheme." One of his main methods of "doing away" with these
"undesirable" was through the use of concentration camps. "In January 1941, in
a meeting with his top officials the 'final solution' was decided". Jews were
to be eliminated from the population. Auschwitz was the concentration camp
that carried out Hitler's "final solution" in greater numbers than any other.
In this paper I will discuss concentration camps with a detailed description
of the most well- known one, Auschwitz.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. In the early days of
Hitler, concentration camps were places that held people in protective
custody. Victims for protective custody included those who were both
physically and mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and
anyone against the Nazi regime. "Gypsies were classified as people with
atleast two gypsy great grandparents." By the end of 1933 there were atleast
fifty concentration camps throughout occupied Europe. "At first, the camps
were controlled by the Gestapo (police), but by 1934 the S.S. (Hitler's
personal security force) were ordered, by Hitler, to control the camps." Camps
were set up for different purposes. Some for forced labor, others for medical
experiments and, later on, for death/ extermination. Transition camps were set
up as holding places for death camps. "Henrick Himmler, chief of the German
police, the Gestapo, thought that the camps would provide an economic base for
the soldiers." This did not happen. The work force was poorly organized and
working conditions were inhumane. Therefore, productivity was minimal. Camps
were set up along railroad lines, so that the prisoners would be conveniently
close to their destination. As they were being transported, the soldiers kept
telling the Jews to have hope.
When the camps were finally opened, most of the families who were shipped out
together ended up being separated. Often, the transports were a sampling of
what went on in the camps, cruelty by the officers, near starvation of those
being transported, fetid and unsanitary conditions on the trains. "On the
trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Many people did not
survive the ride to arrive at the camp." Jews were forced to obey the guard's
orders from the moment they arrived at the camps. "If they didn't, they would
be beaten, put into solitary confinement or shot." The prisoners usually had
marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them.
The sanitary conditions of the camps were horrible. "There was only one
bathroom for four hundred people. They had to stand for hours in snow, rain,
heat, or cold for role-call, which was twice a day." Within the first few days
of being at the camps, thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and
disease. Other people died from the cruel punishments of the guards; beatings
and torture. "Typhus, a disease caused by germs carried by flies, was the main
disease that spread throughout the camps. Even when people were sick, they
still continued working because they did not see that sickness meant death."
In 1937, 7,000 Jews were in camps. By 1938, 10,000 more Jews were sent to
camps. "Jews were taken to camps if they expressed negative feelings about the
government, if they married a non-Jew, if they were sick (mentally or
physically), or if they had a police record."
When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that group were shot.
Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily hate Jews, but wanted to
preserve the Aryan race, seemed to enjoy making the Jews suffer. They also
felt that slavery was better than killing their prisoners. "Gold fillings,
wedding bands, jewelry, shoes and clothing were taken from the prisoners when
they first entered the camps and were sold." Surrounding some of the camps in
Poland was a forest, that the Jews who planned to escape would flee into.
Before the escaped prisoners got very far, they were killed. "When the Germans
caught a Jew planning a rebellion, and the Jew refused to name his/her
associates, the Germans would bring everyone from his/her barracks out and
force him/her to watch the Germans mutilate the others."
The people who could not run away from the camps dreamt about revolt. Special
areas of a camp were set aside for medical experiments. One doctor in a
medical unit performed an experiment in sterilization. "He injected a
substance into women's ovaries to sterilize them. The injection resulted in
temperature and inflammation of the ovaries." Joseph Mengels, one of the most
notorious Nazi doctors, hummed opera tunes when selecting among the new
arrivals the victims for the gas chambers or medical experiments. His women
victims for sterilization were usually 20-30 years of age. "Other experiments
included putting inmates into high pressure chambers to test the effects of
altitude on pilots. Some inmates were frozen to determine the best way to
revive frozen German soldiers."
DEATH CAMPS
"The first death camp, Chelmno, was set up in Poland on December 8, 1941. This
was five weeks before the Wannsee Conference at which time the 'final
solution' was planned out." Usually, the death camps were part of existing
camps, but some new ones were just set up for this purpose. When the prisoners
first arrived at the camps, those sent to the left were transferred to death
camps. When Jews entered the death camps, their suitcases, baby bottles,
shawls, and eyeglasses were taken and were sold. Once in the death camps the
prisoners were again divided.
Women were sent to one side to have their hair shaven and the men to the
other. "They were all sent to the showers, naked with a bar of soap, so as to
deceive them into believing that they were truly going into a shower. Most
people smelled the burning bodies and knew the truth. " There were six death
camps; Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwitz (Birkenau), Sobibor, Maidanek, and
Belzec. These camps used gas from the shower heads to murder their victims. A
seventh death camp, Mauthausen, used a method called "extermination through
labor".
AUSCHWITZ
Auschwitz, located in Poland, was Nazi Germany's largest concentration camp.
It was established by order of Himmler on April 27, 1940. At first, it was
small because it was a work camp for Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. It
became a death camp in 1941. "Auschwitz was divided into three areas:
Auschwitz 1 was the camp commander's headquarters and administrative offices.
Auschwitz 2 was called Birkenau and it was the death camp with forty gas
chambers. Auschwitz 3 was a slave labor camp." "On the gate of Auschwitz was a
sign in German which read, 'Arbeit macht frei', which means work makes you
free." Auschwitz included camp sites a few miles away from the main complex.
At these sites, slave labor was used to kill the people. The working
conditions were so poor that death was a sure result. " In March 26, 1942,
Auschwitz took women prisoners, but after August 16, 1942 the women were
housed in Birkenau." When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were met with
threats and promises. "If they didn't do exactly as they were told, they would
be beaten, deprived of food, or shot. From time to time, they would be assured
that things would get better." The daily meals in Auschwitz consisted of
watery soup, distributed once a day, with a small piece of bread. In addition,
they got extra allowance consisting of 3/4 ounce of margarine, a little piece
of cheese or a spoonful of watered jam. Everyone in the camp was so
malnourished that if a drop of soup spilled prisoners would rush from all
sides to see if they could get some of the soup. "Because of the bad sanitary
conditions, the inadequate diet, the hard labor and other torturous conditions
in Auschwitz, most people died after a few months of their arrival." The few
people who managed to stay alive for longer were the ones who were assigned
better jobs. "The prisoners slept on three shelves of wooden slabs with six of
these units to each tier. They had to stand for hours in the wet and mud
during role call, which was twice a day. Some people thought the reason
hundreds of people died, daily, was because when it rained they lay with wet
clothes in their bunks." In place of toilets, there were wooden boards with
round holes and underneath them concretes troughs. Two or three hundred people
could sit on them at once. While they were on these troughs they were watched
in order to assure that they did not stay too long.
"There was no toilet paper, so the prisoners used linings of jackets. If they
didn't have they might steal from someone else." The smells were horrible
because there wasn't enough water to clean the Latrine, the so called
bathrooms. When people were loaded onto trains to be taken to the gas
chambers, they were told that they were being "resettled" in labor camps. This
was one of the many lies told. It was impossible for the Jews to make out
which building was the gas chambers because they looked presentable from the
outside, just like any other building. Over the gas chambers were well kept
lawns with flowers bordering them. When the Jews were being taken to the gas
chambers, they thought they were being taken to the baths. "While people were
waiting for them 'baths', a group of women prisoners, dressed in navy skirts
and white shirts, played very delightful music." "In Auschwitz, Jews were
killed by something called Lykon B. It was hydrogen cyanide which was poured
through the ceiling of the gas chambers and turned into gas. The S.S.
commanders of Auschwitz preferred Lykon B. because it worked fast." At first,
there were five gas chambers in Auschwitz, the procedure for gassing was as
follows : "About 900 people were gassed at a time. First they undressed in a
nearby room. Then, they were told to go into another room to be deloused, They
filled the gas chambers like packed like sardines. After a few minutes of
horrible suffering, the victims died. The bodies were then transported to
ovens where they were burned." The gas chambers were not large enough to
execute great numbers at a time, so crematoria were built. The crematoria
would burn 2,000 bodies in less than 24 hours. An elevator would take them
from the dressing room to the crematoria. "It took 30 minutes to kill 2,500
victims, but close to 24 hours to burn the bodies." Many Jews and non - Jews
tried to escape from Auschwitz. Some succeeded. Of course they wanted to
inform the world of what was going on. Those who escaped wrote descriptions of
the horrors they suffered. Information spread to many countries, yet no
countries seemed to do anything to help the situation. In fact, as the war
progressed, the number of prisoners increased. "In total, between 1.5 and 3.5
million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz between the years 1940 and 1945."
Where were our brothers in America when millions of Jews died?
The Nazis, under Hitler, organized the destruction of the Jews. Why they did
it is unknown. Perhaps it was because of a history of tension between the
Christians and Jews, or perhaps, because Hitler needed a scapegoat for
Germany's problems. People throughout history have been murdered; but never as
many people as during the Holocaust in such a short period of time. 1/3 of all
the Jews in the world were eliminated. "The estimated total is somewhere
around six million. This number included Jews from all over Europe. There were
also 500,000 non- Jews murdered." Hitler's method of killing the jews and
other undesirable people was first by torture and then by plain murder. In the
early days of his leadership, he took away their rights as citizens and then
as people. They were treated like slaves and lived like animals. After 1942,
his goal was to exterminate all Jewish and "unpure" people. Many Jews were
killed before that date, but they were a small number compared to the mass
murdering of the Holocaust. " We Must Never Forget " are the words that every
Jew must remember. By not forgetting, we are preventing another holocaust from
occurring. We are also letting the entire world know and remember the millions
of loved ones lost in the horrible killing that we call the holocaust.
History Essays
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