Different forms of works dealing with Auschwitz are provided in documentaries or primary sources as well. The British Broadcasting Corporation filmed a six section documentary on the operation of Auschwitz. The documentary details the authoritative figures, the layout of the camps, and the Nazi’s Final Solution. Memoirs and diaries are immense from both survivors and those who kept diaries while being held captive at Auschwitz. These provide details of the emotional mutilation and the impact Auschwitz had on the human body and mind. Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, recalls his ten months being held as a prisoner in the death camp in his memoir Survival in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel provides a horrific autobiographical account of his time spent in the death camp in Night and writes historical fiction novels based on his experiences.
Situated in the midst of Polish territory captured by Hitler and the German army the year prior, Auschwitz was constructed in Upper Silesia. The location of Auschwitz was ideal for the SS because it was positioned on the main railway line connecting Vienna to Cracow. The railway lines could easily connect to the railway lines leading to Berlin, Breslau, and Warsaw. Auschwitz’s connection with the railway lines played a key role in the Final Solution. The ideal location allowed the camp to receive Jewish people from across Europe by using the trains.
Himmler’s initial vision for Auschwitz was to develop an agriculturally based camp and a research station for experimentation. In a sense this is exactly what Auschwitz would become, but it would simultaneously by known as the largest and most efficient killing center used during the Holocaust. The main camp at Auschwitz opened 14 June 1940 as...
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...vercrowding in the camps. Himmler was not present at Auschwitz at all times; Hoss was permanently located there to ensure the camps were functioning properly and to their fullest potential. Hoss may not have directly partaken in the executions or burnings, but he was responsible for overseeing all the horror that would occur at the Auschwitz camps.
As Camp Commandant a house was built on the edges of Birkenau’s property to house Hoss and his family. It was a nice brick house, with a large garden and a stone path led directly from the house to the camp. The house’s property was separated from the camp by electrically charged barbed wires. The electrically charged barbed wires were used throughout the entire camp to separate each of the sections and buildings: the barracks, the platform, the railroads, the Bunkers, the Crematoriums, and the Commandant’s house.
The tragedies of the Holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events of the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past.
“If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness.” (Quote from concentration) This quote was carved into the wall by a Jewish prisoner. Kaiserwald was one of many concentration camps used for the destruction of the Jewish race during the holocaust.
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
Elie Wiesel wrote in a mystical and existentialistic manner to depict his life as a victim of the holocaust in his many novels. Such selections as ‘Night’ and ‘The Trial of God’ reveal the horrors of the concentration camps and Wiesel's true thoughts of the years of hell that he encountered. This hell that Wiesel wrote about was released later in his life due to his shock, sadness, and disbelief. Elie Wiesel spoke in third person when writing his stories. Unlike other Holocaust stories, Wiesel gave not only the facts but also the horrific and realistic feelings of a victim in the camps. All of Elie Wiesel’s novels were based on his life.
The Third Reich sought the removal of the Jews from Germany and eventually from the world. This removal came in two forms, first through emigration, then through extermination. In David Engel’s The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews, he rationalizes that the annihilation of the Jews by the Germans was a result of how Jews were viewed by the leaders of the Third Reich-- as pathogens that threatened to destroy all humanity. By eliminating the existence of the Jews, the Third Reich believed that it would save the entire world from mortal danger. Through documents such as Franzi Epsteins’s, “Inside Auschwitz-A Memoir,” in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, one is able to see the struggle of the Jews from a first-hand account. Also, through Rudolf Hoess’s “Commandant of Auschwitz,” one is able to see the perspective of a commandant in Auschwitz. In Auschwitz: A History, Sybille Steinbacher effectively describes the concentration camp of Auschwitz, while Hermann Langbein’s People in Auschwitz reflects on Rudolf Hoess’s power and control in Auschwitz as commandant. Through these four texts, one is able to see the effects that the Third Reich’s Final Solution had on the Jews and the commandants.
The Auschwitz complex was located in Poland and was composed of three main camps (Auschwitz). Auschwitz I, the central camp, was constructed in 1940 and covered approximately 15 square miles (Auschwitz). Auschwitz II, Auschwitz- Birkenau, was constructed in 1941 and became the extermination camp of the Auschwitz complex. In 1943, four large crematorium buildings were constructed (Auschwitz). The Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoriums were the targets of the proposed bombings during WWII. . Auschwitz III was constructed in 1943 and was primarily a labor camp (Auschwitz). These camps composed the largest and most infamous Nazi death camp.
Commandant Hoess blamed his responsibility and pledge to Hitler that it was not up too him to determine whether the extermination of Jews was necessary or not. (Hoess, 144) Hoess claims that after the mass exterminations began to occur in Auschwitz he was no longer happy and dissatisfied with himself for his participation. (Hoess, 156) He was initially able to escape capture by the allies, but British police arrested Hoess on 11 March 1946. Two days prior his poison phial had broken preventing him from committing suicide. (Hoess, 173) He was then turned over to Polish authorities where he was tried for the murder of millions in Poland; Rudolf Hoess was executed 2 April 1947. (The History of Auschwitz, 2005) Hoess served three and half years as Commandant of Auschwitz and nine years in SS Camp Service. (Hoess, 157)
At first, the camps were controlled by the Gestapo (police), but by 1934 the S.S. (Hitler's personal security force) was ordered, by Hitler, to control the camps. (Feig, 20) These camps were set up for many different purposes: Some for forced labor, others for medical experiments and, later on, for the mass destruction of the Jews. (Feig, 21) However, there was never a clear idea from camp to camp as to the true purpose. Was it to extract labor or merely to kill? We do know that Auschwitz was designed for those three reasons stated. Its ultimate goal though was to exterminate as many people possible in the shortest amount of time.
The events experienced in Auschwitz by Wiesel would influence him to write about this moment. Though Wiesel had difficulty expressing the trial that he experienced, he discovered that formatting the event into ...
In the years of 1940-1945, at least 1,100,000 Jewish people were sent to Auschwitz; Elie Wiesel was one of them. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel details the horrors of Auschwitz, and his short stay at Buchenwald. Wiesel shares memories of trying to keep his father alive as well as himself, while slowly losing his faith in God. Throughout Night by Elie Wiesel, many conflicts are present such as man vs man, man vs self, and man vs nature, all of which I believe drastically bring out the horrors of Auschwitz.
The Nazis purpose in building the camps was to carry out the murder of European Jews as part of the final solution (Introduction to the Holocaust, “2016”). A standard method of extermination was carbon monoxide was released into steal rooms that the Nazis convinced Jews was a “shower”. It would release gas into the chambers and it would suffocate them. Towards the end, a very small percentage of those who arrived in transports to the remaining death camps were selected to dispatch to labor (“Nazi camp”, 2016). There were only four death camps. Auschwitz , Belzec, Bergan and
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
Auschwitz I was built in 1940, as a site for Polish political prisoners. This was the original camp and administrative center. The prisoners’ living conditions were inhumane in every respect, and the death rate was quite high. Auschwitz I was not meant ...
Auschwitz marked the first of several concentration camps Wiesel was exposed to that personified darkness and evil. It was on his first night there, he witnessed a furnace pit filled with burning babies. He was shocked and horrified at the inhumanity of Nazis. It was then he realized that he and the other prisoners were not at a labor camp but at a death camp. Dark, black smoke from the burning furnaces filled the air and sky, which made the atmosphere difficult for sunlight to penetrate and there was a permeating odor of burning human flesh. Darkness and gloom hung over the camp like a permanent nighttime. The men and boys were separated by work ability, the strong lived and the weak died. In these death camps, the prisoners were physically beaten and abused, starved and treated as inhuman. The acts of violence and horror we...
Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) [first published as If This Is a Man], p. 86.