The Holocaust, one of the most devastating moments in history. Hitler’s mass genocide of Jews and other ethnicities had left a scar in the world that would never truly heal. During a time of death and destruction, one camp held the title for most fatalities. The Auschwitz concentration camp, one of the most infamous places during the Holocaust with its bloody history forever etched into the mind of its survivors and future generations to come. In 1939 during the month of September, the little town of Oswiecim and its surrounding villages transformed into the infamous concentration camp known as Auschwitz (“Auschwitz; Camp of Death,” n.d.). The camp had 3 sections, with the main section referred to as Auschwitz One. Originally, only German …show more content…
The damp and moist bunkers coupled with vermin scurrying about led to all sorts of diseases running rampant., Some common diseases included Noma and Typhus (“Josef Mengele: The Cruelest Doctor in the Holocaust,” n.d.). The prisoners at Auschwitz worked for a total of 11-12 hours a day (“Auschwitz: The Camp of Death,” n.d.). Long, tedious role calls took up the rest of the time. The authorities fed the prisoners, 3 meals every day at camp. Prisoners with more demanding tasks received 1,700 calories while prisoners with less demanding work received. 1,300 calories (“Auschwitz Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor, and Executions,” n.d.). This led to many people starving to death in addition to executions, a very common thing at Auschwitz. These would happen every day. Prisoners got executed by getting hung, shot, or gassed (“Auschwitz Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor, and Executions,” n.d). For gassing the prisoners, Nazi enforcers would send Jews into large gas chambers. Then, from the outside, soldiers would throw Zyklon B into the chambers (Bohr, Meyer, and Wiegrefe, 2014). This would spread in the gas chamber suffocating the people to death. However, some people had to deal with even worse …show more content…
While other doctors would often get themselves drunk in order to forget what they have done, Josef Mengele would walk into work with a smile (“Josef Mengele, The Cruelest Doctor in the Holocaust,” n.d.). Often known as “The Angel of Death” (“Nazi Experiments,” n.d.), Josef Mengele would often work with kids, and before he performed experiments on them, he would try to gain their trust. He would give them toys and play with them. Many kids there ended up calling him “Uncle Mengele” (“Josef Mengele,” n.d.). However, this relationship would not last for long. Soon he would start to perform his experiments. Josef Mengele had a fascination with twins. He thought experimenting with them would help cure several diseases. This led to him performing many controversial experiments. These included stitching twins together, dissecting them, and giving them blood transfusions. In addition to this, he would often inject chemicals into his victim's eyes in an attempt to change their eye color (“Josef Mengele: The Cruelest Doctor in the Holocaust,” n.d.). Because of his actions, Josef Mengele became the most infamous and feared person in
Thousands upon thousands of innocent Jews, men, women, and children tortured; over one million people brutally murdered; families ripped apart from the seams, all within Auschwitz, a 40 square kilometer sized concentration camp run by Nazi Germany. Auschwitz is one of the most notorious concentration camps during WWII, where Jews were tortured and killed. Auschwitz was the most extreme concentration camp during World War Two because innumerable amounts of inhumane acts were performed there, over one million people were inexorably massacred, and it was the largest concentration camp of over two thousand across Europe.
Other than prisoners being executed, what really happened in Auschwitz? Auschwitz was one of the most famous concentration camps in WWII. Upon arrival the Jews and many others were loaded on to “the ramp” and the selection process began. The ones who looked healthy enough were put in a line to the right. Those who appeared unworthy were put in a line to the left and marched to immediate death. Women and children were stripped of clothing, hair and tattooed. All Jews lost their names and were called by the serial number tattooed on them upon arrival. It is said that some women were put into prostitution. By the end of WWII, Auschwitz became known as the symbol of death, due to about 1.1 million people dying from hard labor, experimentation, starvation, diseases, and execution.
In June, 1940, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened; this camp would later be the home and death place of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Jews, Poles, and Gypsies made up the large majority of prisoners in the camp. Life in Auschwitz included living in undesirable conditions, and being kept on a very strict schedule day in, day out.
While being forced to live in Auschwitz they endured many cruel and harsh punishments. The main form of punishment was the gas chambers. These chambers were cells that were made underground and were able to be sealed. Zyklon-B was the poison used to gas and kill the Jewish people. “It takes about 10 minutes to kill 2,000 to 3,000 people in the gas chamber.” (Saldinger p.57) After gassing they would then be extracted from the chamber and taken to the crematorium where the bodies would be disposed of. Sometimes it wasn’t even the guards who would dispose of the bodies, most of the time it was the prisoners who were forced to extract their own people from the chambers. This was just one of the many forms of punishment; there were many more and some were just as bad.
To begin with, people were treated very poorly during the Holocaust. “Throughout existence of the camp, the authorities there treated Jews with the most ruthless, and often quite refined, cruelty. SS men regarded a Jewish life as the least valuable of all. To the greatest possible extent, Jews fell victim to starvation. People would get up to 200 calories a day. Hard labor, constant harassment and abuse, and various kinds of cyclical extermination operations.” People would get to eat soup each day in a camp with one slice of bread. In addition to that, “Prisoners were incarcerated without observation of the standard norms applying to arrest and custody; labor camps; prisoner of war camps; transit camps; and camps which served as killing centers, often called extermination camps or death camps.” “Prisoners were also made to kill other prisoners. They were forced by the Nazis to do it.” If prisoners were forced to do something and they didn't do it they would get tortured even more and some prisoners would even get killed. In conclusion, “Prisoners were required to wear color-coded triangles on their jackets so that the guards and officers of the camps could easily identify each person's background and pit the different groups against each other.”Also Prisoners were forced to sleep up to three people a bunk. You would get one blanket, one pair of shoes, and a shirt, and pants. No matter how cold or how warm it was that
Though the sands of time are ever shifting, there remain some events in human history that should never be forgotten. One such event is the Holocaust, and one of the most infamous objects to come out of the Holocaust was the death camp known as Auschwitz. Auschwitz open in 1940 and would become the largest concentration camp under the Third Reich. During World War II, more than 1 million people would lose their lives in that camp. The first Commandant of this horrible killing center would be Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss.
The Main Camp called Auschwitz I from 1943. Birkenau the Auschwitz II and Monowitz the Auschwitz III. Auschwitz from the very start Auschwitz functioned as an extermination camp. Living in terrible living conditions. In the first year of the camp’s existence most of the prisoners’ rooms had no beds or any other furniture. Prisoners lived in exceeding dampness and were greatly troubled by lice and rats. Sanitary conditions improved in 1943
According to the article “Treatment” on the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum prisoners were often starved, harassed, abused, and forced into hard labor, but the main purpose for these camps was to kill people that were not in line with Hitlers beliefs. In 1939 the Nazis began experimenting with the gas according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Auschwitz tested gassing with people that had disabilities and people that were ill. After they found it was effective, camps started using this method for a more efficient way to kill. At one point Auschwitz was killing about six thousand prisoners every day, according to the same source. In the same article it also mentions that gas vans started to be used because the Nazi soldiers complained about the battle fatigue and mental anguish from shooting women and children, it was also less costly. Gassing was just one of the main mistreatments towards the prisoners, there was also separation of families, hard labor, and little
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 ...
The Auschwitz camp included 3 main camps Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, and Auschwitz III alongside around 40 mini camps. Around 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz. AI contained gas chambers, crematoriums, and medical facilities. Doctors researched twins, dwarfs, and infants. The “Black Wall was a place where many prisoners were executed. AII also had an execution centre. AII had the largest prisoner population. There were camps for Jewish families, Gypsy families, Women, men, and children camps. Zyklon B was the gas mainly used in the gas chambers. Jews and people from Hungary, Poland, France, Netherlands, Greece, Belgium and other countries.
Concentration camps were the place where many people were imprisoned throughout World War II. Upon arrival to those camps, most prisoners were immediately led to the gas chambers which was a large building that would get filled with poison gas for up to thirty minutes. Some prisoners were experimented on, and those with injuries were drained of their blood to send to injured troops. They were
After experimenting with it, the Nazis expanded the camp to hide evidence of what they were doing. This led to the opening of the second camp of Auschwitz known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main killing camp for prisoners and jews. The Nazis in this camp killed “4,400 people everyday or 120,000 each month.”(Deem13) If you were sent here, you were automatically sent to your death. The last camp of Auschwitz was a slave and labor camp. Prisoners here were forced to make ¨rubber, munitions, and other items for war.¨(Deem15) Most prisoners died from exhaustion and starvation. Overall, Auschwitz was a horrific place to be sent to and no one should ever have to go through what millions of innocent people
Since Hitler discriminated Jews and the paraplegic people he made concentration camps. When the camps got filled the SS officers would line up the campers and they would get taken somewhere like the gas chamber or there was a long ditch dug so they would get lined up and they would shoot them one by one into the ditch. The SS officers and police killed 2,700,000 Jews. Almost all of the deports arrived at the camps were immediately put in the gas chamber and were killed. In 1943 Auschwitz-Birkenau had 4 gas chambers operation. At the height of the deportation up to 6,000 jews were gassed each day in Poland. Over the next year over 1 million jews were killed and tens of thousands of Roma, poles, and soviet prisoners of war were killed. The SS considered the killing centers top secret. To get rid of traces of gassing operations special prisoner units were forced to remove corpses from the chambers and cremate
Auschwitz was one of many concentration camps during the Holocaust; the only difference was that Auschwitz was the biggest and most brutal Nazi death camp that caused terror to millions of prisoners. Auschwitz was located near Oswiecim, Poland and stretched several miles long. Thousands of prisoners were held captive within Auschwitz and had no choice to obey the rules the SS men set for them. Those who did obey the rules were put to death instantly. Thousands of prisoners prayed that they would one day be set free; however, many prisoners spoke their last words within the barbed wires of Auschwitz.
Deprivation. Devastation. Horror. Those were a few of the things that people in concentration camps had to go through every day. “What actually is a concentration camp?” You may ask yourself, well, “Concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned, and in some cases killed, without legal proceedings.” is what Engel, David wrote in his article, “Concentration camp”. There were a lot of Nazi concentration camps, a few of them being Auschwitz, Dachau, and Majdanek.