The Holocaust was a horrific time for many Jewish families in Eastern Europe. It was a time period during which the German Nazi Party exterminated 6 millions Jews from Europe by using concentration camps. The biggest camp was Auschwitz, which was located in Southern Poland. It was responsible for approximately 1.1 million Jewish casualties. In recent scientific studies, the researchers claimed that about 1.6 million Jews were imported and registered throughout all of the Auschwitz camps. The working conditions were awful, as the prisoners were both starved and overworked. Auschwitz was considered to be one of the most brutal concentration camps in the Holocaust because of its awful working condition, limited ‘food’, and countless tactics to …show more content…
Now with two ‘meals’ in them, they would work tirelessly for the next bunch of hours until about 7 o’clock. This would be rewarded with a meal black bread weighing 300 grams, with a tiny piece of sausage, or margarine, marmalade or cheese. Many would even ration their food out to save it for the morning or to sell. The common day of a Jew in Auschwitz would include suffering from starvation while having to complete excruciating work for many hours. An overview of their food was, “The midday meal consisted of one portion of soup measuring about three quarters of a litre, with a value of 350 –400 calories. The soup was foul tasting and watery, with ‘meat’ four times a week and the rest with vegetables.” Being served such little ‘food’, if one will call it that, will result in starvation. On top of that, the little food they are given is barely even food., as watery soup, ‘meat’ and vegetables every day is not a great meal. Thus meaning, these people were both starved and overworked at the same time. With the food being so gross, the occasional good meal was highly valued. People would hide the food and even use it to buy things in the camp. One Holocaust survivor gave some insight on it, "In the morning, sixty percent
...mane scientific ways, over one million, sixty thousand people were killed by Nazi Officials in the most disturbing ways imaginable, and because Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp, covering fifteen square miles, it was able to harbor an immense group of Jews and other outcast members of European society, preparing them like pigs for slaughter. The Nazis brutally massacred and entire race of people for no reason except for the fact that the Nazis refused to tolerate or agree with the Jewish religion and the way they lived their life; Auschwitz existed because Nazis wanted to exterminate a vast group of people, all because of a difference in opinion.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One is considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself.
Imagine the worst torture possible. Now imagine the same thing only ten times worse; In Auschwitz that is exactly what it was like. During the time of the Holocaust thousands of Jewish people were sent to this very concentration camp which consisted of three camps put into one. Here they had one camp; Auschwitz I; the main camp, Auschwitz II; Birkenau, and last is Auschwitz III; Monowitz. Each camp was responsible for a different part but all were after the same thing; elimination of the Jewish race. In these camps they had cruel punishments, harsh housing, and they had Nazi guards watching them and killing them on a daily basis.
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 Europeans had bad concentration camps. They would barely feed the prisoners, and would work them to the bone. “Before being sent to a camp, a captured prisoner of
Auschwitz Concentration Camp “Get off the train!”. Hounds barking loud and the sound of scared people, thousands of people. The “Now!”. I am a shaman. All sorts of officers yelling from every angle.
Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz is a vivid and eloquent memoir of a Holocaust survivor from the largest concentration camp under German control in World War II. The original title in Italian is Se questo e un uomo, which translate to If This is A Man, alluding to the theme of humanity. The overall tone is calm and observational; rather than to pursue the reader, it is “to furnish documentation for a quiet study if certain aspects of the human mind” (Levi 10). The memoir is a testimony of Levi and the other prisoners’ survival at the Nazis’ systematic destruction attempts at the prisoners’ humanity. It was a personal struggle for prisoners, for individual survival, and struggle to maintain their humanity.
Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945. It has been estimated that nearly half of the total number of concentration camp deaths between 1933 and 1945 occurred during the last year of the war” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in the world’s history.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
After World War II the world began to here accounts of the atrocities and crimes committed by the Nazi’s to the Jews and other enemies of the Nazis. The international community wanted answers and called for the persecution of the criminals that participated in the murder of millions throughout Europe. The SS was responsible for playing a leading role in the Holocaust for the involvement in the death of millions of innocent lives. Throughout, Europe concentration camps were established to detain Jews, political prisoners, POW’s and enemies of the Third Reich. The largest camp during World War II was Auschwitz under the command of SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess; Auschwitz emerged as the site for the largest mass murder in the history of the world. (The, 2005)
But all of that was about to change. The meal programs at Auschwitz-Birkenau included bland food and small rations compared to the harsh work they were doing ("Meals" 1). “Meal times were the most important event of each day,” ("Meals" 1) and meal times were set for morning, mid-afternoon, and evening. After attendance check, the Jews were given “imitation coffee or herbal ‘tea’” ("Meals" 1). For mid- afternoon meal, or lunch, the prisoners were given watered down soup, and “if they were lucky, they might find a piece of turnip or potato peel” ("Meals" 1). The evening meal ranged anywhere from a piece of bread, cheese, marmalade or even a small piece of sausage ("Meals" 1). Elie's dad would often sacrifice his own rations of food to give to his son, causing him to face starvation as well (Wiesel, 83). With the amount, length, and difficulty of the work, this small ration of food was not nearly enough. Starvation of a very large issue in Auschwitz-Birkenau, leading to many
During the Holocaust there were different types of concentration camps where innocent Jews went to suffer and die. There were death camps, huge prisons and killing centers. During the Holocaust, the most famous concentration camp was located at Auschwitz. Systemic gassing of Jews began at Auschwitz in March of 1942. (2) It is unimaginable to the human mind that these death camps existed. Not only did they exist and operate like well-oiled machines, the amount of concentration camps is mind numbing which shows the determination of Germany’s destruction of Jews. The variety of camps which included: labor, death, cold experiments, and work related, to name a few, totaled 10,005. “There were 52 main concentration camps, which had a total of 1,202 satellite camps. Auschwitz, by itself, with its 50 satellite camps, had 7,000 guards among...
Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish society.
...throughout Europe as they did in Auschwitz and Majdanek. These horror stories are only a few out of the hundreds of camps that the Nazis built during World War Two. The Holocaust was a devastating event for the Jewish population as well as many other minorities in Europe. The Holocaust was the largest genocide that has ever occurred. Horrific things went on in Auschwitz and Majdenek that wiped out approximately 1,378,000 people combined. This death toll is extremely high compared to smaller camps. These camps were some of the largest concentration/death camps that existed during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a tragic time where millions of people considered undesirable to the Nazis were detained, forced to work in the harshest of conditions, starved to death, or brutally murdered.“The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.” –Stephen Ambrose
Anne Sexton’s poem, “After Auschwitz,” struck me as a piece of writing that was, at first, difficult to interpret. There is no evident rhyming scheme, or sentences that clearly express what the poem is about. However, Sexton does incorporate the use of metaphorical and repetitive language.