The Holocaust is one of the greatest crimes ever committed against humanity. At first, the Nazi’s put pressure on the Jews by forcing them out of high statuses by boycotting their stores, and eventually by physically persecuting them. However, several Jews did emigrate, more so to North America. After the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Poland in 1939, Nazi control eventually spread to Holland, Norway, northern France, and Czechoslovakia; as the Nazi’s power spread, the more executions occurred. Those Jews, who wanted to flee, found it difficult, because several countries refused to take in massive amounts of Jews, including the United States. The Jews were without defenders, and when World War II was declared, they were trapped. Hitler then began to exterminate all European Jews.
Jews in countries under Nazi control, were identified, and forced to wear yellow stars in public, and eventually were deported to concentration camps. When the Jews arrived at these camps, the SS, or whoever was in charge at that camp divided them into two groups. One group consisted of those individuals who were strong enough to work, mainly men, in which either they had to help carry the bodies from the executions to the crematoria or they had to search the bodies of the deceased for any valuables. The second group included mainly women, children, the sick, and the elderly, who were immediately sent to be gassed, or shot in the camp hospital. Upon arriving at these camps in overcrowded trains, they were herded out by strong thuggish guards onto the arrival ramp, where German SS-men and Ukrainian guards forced them to hand over their belongings and their clothes. Most of the individuals thought that they were going to move to the east for bet...
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Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1976. Print.
As common knowledge, people normally recognize the term “concentration camp” and immediately refer to the prison camps the Jews were sent to during the Holocaust. In Corrie Tenboom’s famous collective story of her imprisonment, The Hiding Place, she writes in visual description of exactly how the Jews were treated in these camps. Women were forced to stand naked in front of Nazi guards for not much reason at all and made them feel less than human and animalistic. The people were beaten and killed on a regular day basis. One of the worst parts of these camps were the barbaric gas chambers. Men, women, and children would be fooled and dragged into chambers in groups to stand and be slaughtered by the dozen. Concentration camps are what can be known as the cruelest and most barbaric part of World War II history.
"Jewish Uprising in Ghettos and Camps, 1941-1944". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial
A large portion of the people who were eliminated were normally dispatched to one of the twelve concentration camps. Families would be separated, then divided into two groups the healthy and strong men and occasionally
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. London: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Holocaust concentration camps were located around Central or Eastern Europe (around Germany and Poland). Many of these camps were death camps that were created solely to murder in...
Martin; Hilberg, Raul; and Yahil Leni. "Introduction to the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 10 June 2010. Web. 14 Nov 2013http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143
“Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
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Soon after Germany separated from Austria in March 1938, the Nazi soldiers arrested and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps all over Germany. Only eight months after annexation, the violent anti-jew Kristallnacht , also known as Night of the Broken Glass, pogroms took place. The Nazi soldiers arrested masses of male adult Jews and held them captive in camps for short periods of time. A death camp is a concentration camp designed with the intention of mass murder, using strategies such as gas chambers. Six death concentration camps exis...
South Florida, University of. “Holocaust Timeline: The Camps.” Holocaust Timeline: The Camps. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2005. Web. 17 May 2014
They had anywhere from 70 to 100 people in one car. They were so closely packed, there was no room to sit down, or even move. They were locked in the darkness, with absolutely no sense of where they were going or what would happen to them. An officer would throw in a bucket the Jews were supposed to use as a container for human waste. They would travel like this for days at a time. They were left hungry, thirsty, and suffocating. When they reached the camps, they were unloaded from the cattle tracks. They were separated into men, and women, with the children staying with their mothers. After being “registered”, the dehumanization process began. Each individual was to strip naked, and shave off all their hair. They had their own clothes taken away from them, and were put into striped uniforms. This process was to ensure the Jews’ dignity, and personal identity was taken away. If you were being entered into the Auschwitz camp, it was likely for you to be branded with a tattoo of a serial number. These tattoos were only issued to prisoners that were going to be working. The people heading straight for extermination, didn’t need to be kept track
"Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 05 May 2014.
"Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .