Auschwitz Death March Research Paper

Auschwitz was one of the most infamous and largest concentration camp known during World War II. It was located in the southwestern part of Poland commanded by Rudolf Höss. Auschwitz was first opened on June 14, 1940, much later than most of the other camps. It was in Auschwitz that the lives of so many were taken by methods of the gas chamber, crematoriums, and even from starvation and disease. These methods took "several hundreds and sometimes more than a thousand" lives a day. The majority of the lives killed were those of Jews although Gypsies, Yugoslavs, Poles, and many others of different ethnic backgrounds as well. The things most known about Auschwitz are the process people went through when entering the camp and

The lack of resistance and ignorance of the ordinary German population cost many million Jewish lives. The Nazi party’s desire for popularity and support meant that if there was a protest, actions would be taken to keep the public happy, or quiet, with minimal loss of reputation and status. In other words, it meant that the people could win. One successful attempt of protest proved that this theory would have worked. The Rosenstrasse Protest that occurred on the 27th of February 1943 led to the release of several hundred Jewish men from a Gestapo headquarters. This symbolic protest highlighted the fact that if the public were to protest, the execution of Jews could have been slowed or even halted. Despite this, the Rosenstrasse Protest remained the only large protest against the Holocaust throughout its entire duration. This means that the German population continued to ignore and become passive bystanders of the genocide happening around

Marches were dreadfully common in World War II. All people incarcerated in concentration camps were ordered to be evacuated toward the inner part of Germany according to Heinrich Himmler. There were three main reasons for this. The first reason was that the SS would not allow the enemies to get to the prisoners alive to tell their stories. The SS also thought the prisoners were necessary to maintain production of military supplies. The final reason was that some SS leaders believed camp prisoners could be used as hostages to bargain. Marches started on trains and ships but as time ran out and the Allied troops pressed on, many marches were on foot. If prisoners could not walk anymore, guards obeyed their orders to immediately kill them. The prisoners were murderously mistreated and thousands died of starvation, exposure, and exhaustion. Liesel notes in The Book Thief how “hunger ate them as they continued forward” (Zusak 3920. Some

Thousands of prisoners died from disease, hunger, brutality, and neglection. Victims would walk for multiple days without food or water. “Bodies of the dead were left on the side of the road” (Levine). Nazi’s would taunt the prisoners by stopping by a river, drinking as much as they possibly could, never allowing the Jews to even sip from the river. If anyone tried to, the Nazi party would let their attack dogs loose and open fire. The conditions during the death marches were oppressive, with little to no food and

One reason that there were death marches was that authorities did not want the Jews to fall into the enemy's hands and be able to tell them what had happened to them. Also the SS authorities believed that they needed slave workers wherever they went to maintain production of armaments. Some leaders of the camps thought that they could use the prisoners as hostages and use them as a peace offering in the west (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Jewish prisoners were forced to walk hundreds of kilometers, for up to a month, in freezing cold temperatures by the Nazis of Germany during the Holocaust. The prisoners were forced to go through weeks of suffering, even though they were walking away from their liberators. It is important to remember why death marches were initiated, the suffering the prisoners had to go through, and the major death marches with the most deaths. Death marches were initiated in 1944, and the SS guards called them “evakuierung,” a euphemism meaning evacuation. Most of the time, prisoners were given one loaf of bread for the whole march, and a few rags to keep warm. If they couldn’t keep up, the prisoners were shot. Death marches were an easy and convenient way to evacuate camps and kill off many Jews. There were many different reasons for initiating death marches, the Jews went through a lot of suffering, there were many different major marches, and the prisoners died for many different reasons.

Although it was not the only concentration camp it was a place where they did experiments with a lot of the prisoners. For example they tried out medication to see the reactions, to see if salt water was drinkable. They also used gas chambers which they crowded as many inmates as they could fit in there tricking them they were going to be free as soon as they took a shower, but what it really did was intoxicate them with Zyklon-B and they died. Afterward there was not many to speak of what had happened so the rest really believed that they were going to become free. So many orders from a solder at one point a man jumped onto the electric fence to take away his life instead letting the solder humiliate him. When it had started to know what was happening in the camps they stopped it immediately the US liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945 . They sent some death trains, Dachau had 141 trains that held 3,000 dead

Two who survived this terrible death march are here with us to talk about this experience, brothers Jakob and Chaim Frenkiel. “We were running for miles with no rest while the people next to us were being shot and put out of their misery,” Jakob shared with reporters. “People who were too slow or who sat down or even people who just looked at an officer were shot and killed instantly. It was as if their lives didn’t even exist in the world because people would just keep running without even a glimpse in their direction” he added.

It is estimated that around 1.5 million German troops died in Allied controlled concentration camps after the war had already ended. In peace, more German soldiers died than that of which were killed during all the battles that were fought in the western front. During the time of the second World War, most of the world’s attention was focused on the atrocities that were being committed by the Nazi party, but little was said about the heinous acts that were perpetrated by the Allied troops and command and not many people were willing to speak out against the Allied party especially after the Allied troops claimed victory over the 3rd Reich in 1945. Even today, to

As the Soviet Union made their way for the camp, the camp began to evacuate its three main camps and 44 subcamps. “SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.). Prisoners were transported to Germany concentration camps. The travels to these camps were unbearable, and many prisoners lost their lives during the travel or were killed if they could not keep up during the marches. These marches are often referred to as “The Death Marches.” “On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered [Auschwitz-Birkenau camps] and liberated around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.).

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

On October 8, 1941 Adolf Hitler opened the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. Hitler's main goal was to exterminate every Jew, artist, educator, Gypsy, communist, homosexual, mentally and physically handicapped person, and everyone else that is seen as not good enough for Nazi Germany. There were many other concentration camps during the Holocaust, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau was the harshest one of all. Inside Auschwitz-Birkenau there were different sections that were used for different things. One section was used for labor, another used as gas chambers, and another used as a crematory.

There really is no possible way to determine the exact number of people who suffered and lost their lives in the camps because not all people who arrived were registered as inmates. Instead, they were immediately sent to the Zyklon B gas chambers or killed (Auschwitz). These torture sites were established in the late 1940s and did not end until 1944-1945 (Auschwitz-Birkenau- “The).

The Death Marches occurred when the enemy of the Germans were close to the camps. Thousands of Jews were killed in camps before the Death Marches started. The Jews had to run from camp to camp on foot in snow, rain, and all kinds of conditions, with little or no food, water, or rest. They were even transported in cattle trains. On a six day march, if you were unable to keep up, you were shot. On a different ten days march from Stutthof Camp prisoners were marched to the Baltic Sea. 700 prisoners

     These camps were set up along railroad lines so that the prisoners would be conveniently close to their destination. Unfortunately, many prisoners didn't even survive the train ride to the camps. Herded like cattle, exhaustion, disease, and starvation ended the long treacherous journey for many of the prisoners. On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Nearly 8% of the people did not even survive the ride to the camps. (Nyiszli, 37)