One of the darkest times in world history was World War II, with millions of innocent lives lost through mass genocide and other atrocities. During this time the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau was a place no one wanted to be. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz was opened in 1940, and operated by Third Reich. Here more than 1 million people died from disease, starvation and execution in places such as gas chambers. The millions of people held in these camps during this time period went through unspeakable acts of cruel abuse, and the people who survived could never be the same again. The survivors although did a major part in helping arresting and prosecuting the people who committed crimes against them and with their testimony many saw justice come to those who had treated them like animals.
Adolf Hitler, was the leader of Germany and the Nazi party from 1933 to 1945. It was his vision that the world needed to be led and cleansed by Germany. Any person or group he felt to be unfit or undesirable would be sent to concentration camps. He ultimately wanted an Aryan world ran by Germany, which is why he eventually made the policy known as the “Final Solution.” This policy consisted of the extermination of Jews, homosexuals, educators, communists, artists, Gypsies, the physically and mentally handicapped and others regarded as unfit for survival in Nazi Germany. To carry out his “Final Solution” Hitler ordered death camps to be built, this would then today be known as the Holocaust. The Schutzstaffel better known a the “SS” were Hitlers personal body guards but also held a much bigger role in the Nazi party. Led by Hitlers right hand man Heinrich Himmler, the SS ran a number of operation...
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...that had passed. Many of the survivors testimonies lacked accurate dates and consistency because of blurred memories, while others were just too emotional and not factual enough to with stand trial. The witnesses in the end though helped the prosecution do what they needed to do in court to tie the defendants to the crimes they had committed.
Works Cited
Wagner, Julia. "The Truth About Auschwitz: Prosecuting Auschwitz Crimes With The Help Of Survivor Testimony." German History 28.3 (2010): 343-357. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 May 2014.
"Auschwitz." History.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 18 May 2014. .
Hackett, David A., and Frederick A. Praeger. The Buchenwald Report: / . Transl., Ed., and with an Introd. by David A. Hackett. Foreword by Frederick A. Praeger. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997. Print.
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.
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.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault onHumanity. Trans. Stuart Woolf. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1987.
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
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.
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.
The Schutzstaffel or SS was created in 1925 by the Nazi party to protect Adolf Hitler and other important Nazi leaders. Heinrich Himmler was appointed leader of the SS by Hitler in 1929. The SS were racial elites with profound loyalty to Hitler and the promotion of Germany. (SS, 2013) In order to become a member of the SS all candidates had to endure selections based on their racial ancestry and support of the Nazi party. In Nazi Germany the SS was responsible for security identification of ethnicity, settlement and population policy and intelligent collection and analysis. (SS, 2013) They also were responsible for the concentration camp system and police forces. In 1939 the SS assumed the responsibility for “solving” the Jewish Question. (SS And The Holocaust, 2013) In the imminent invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler ordered the SS implementation of settlement plans and population policy in conquered Soviet territories. Special SS Einsatzgrupp...
form of hard labor, for weeks or months. Auschwitz was the end of the line
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...
The holocaust was a horrific period of time where unbelievable criminal acts were carried out against the Jews, Gypsies, and other racial gatherings. These defenseless individuals were sent from unsanitary ghettos to death camps, one being Auschwitz. The Auschwitz death camp comprised of three camps, all in which are placed in Poland. Numerous forms of extermination came about overtime to speed up the killing process. Life at the death camps was cut short for those who weren’t fit to work; such as the elderly, women, the mentally disabled, and young children. The others were put work while being starved to death. Experiments were held on dwarfs, twins, and other misfits were carried out by Josef Mengele. These inhuman acts against the Jews were all held in secret from society by the Nazis until liberation day.
The main focus of the post war testimony of Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess, Commandant at Auschwitz from May 1940 until December, 1943, is the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. His signed affidavit had a profound impact at the Post-War trials of Major War Criminals held at Nuremburg from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946. His testimony is a primary source that details and describes his personal account of the timeline, who ordered Auschwitz to become a death camp, and the means used to execute and exterminate millions of Jews. Obtained while tortured nearly to death under British custody, the authenticity and reliability of this document is questioned due to arguable inconsistencies that exist. However, the events sworn to in his testimony have been recounted and corroborated by witnesses and thousands of survivors.
Edward Bond, a playwright who lived through WW2, says that, “Humanity has become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz” (BrainyQuote 1). This means that when humanity becomes a privilege to some and not a natural right to all, then things like Auschwitz and in turn the Holocaust happen. The Holocaust death camps were considered both mentally and physically inhumane; the total effect of them shows the true level of inhumanity they installed. The death camps were mentally inhumane to the prisoners especially during the first few days because most inmates had some to all of their family taken away and killed. The camps tore families apart and people watched as their loved ones were left to be killed.
Adolf Hitler was a Nazi German leader who attempted genocide and was part of one of the worst wars in history, WWII. Hitler took up the role of initiating the holocaust
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 ...