Belzec Slave Labor Camp

One of the many reasons why the jewish called them “DEATH CAMPS”. (living conditions, labor and executions)

The conditions of the camp were unbearable. The prisoners were barely fed, mainly bread and water, and were cramped in small sleeping arrangements. "Hundreds slept in triple-tiered rows of bunks (Adler 51)." In the quarters that they stayed, there were no adequate cleaning facilities or restrooms for the prisoners. They rarely were able to change clothes which meant the "clothes were always infested with lice (Swiebocka 18)." Those were sick went to the infirmary where also there were eventually killed in the gas chambers or a lethal injection. The Germans did not want to have anyone not capable of hard work to live. Prisoners were also harshly punished for small things such as taking food or "relieving themselves during work hours (Swiebocka 19)." The biggest punishment was execution. The most common punishment was to receive lashings with a whip.

The camp was a somewhat segregated place. There happened to be five specific “camps” for

Auschwitz concentration camp, also known as Auschwitz- Birkenau, was Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). The camp was created because Hitler became “convinced that his “Jewish problem” would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany” (Auschwitz, History.com). Auschwitz was located in southern Poland near the industrial town of Oswiecim (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Hitler’s team was known as the Secret Service (SS), which included soldiers who patrolled the streets and the men who ran the camps (Uwe Boll, Auschwitz). Auschwitz consisted of

Nazi extermination camp in eastern Poland. About 550,000 Jews were murdered there in 1942 and 1943.

The Holocaust had many injustices throughout this time. One of those injustice acts was the cruel Holocaust Death Camps which occurred from 1941 to 1945 a total of 4 years. “The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March

This description might be overwhelming, but the truth is that this is a factual description of millions of people that suffered in concentration camps located all over Europe during World War II;

85 years ago, over a 12 year period, nearly six million Jews were killed in a genocide called The Holocaust. The Holocaust was led by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler was their leader. The mass murders took place at concentration camps throughout Europe. The majority of concentration camps resided in Poland and Germany. Many people believe there were only a few concentration camps. “However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945” (“How Many Camps,” n.d.). In this paper I will be discussing the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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

     The prisoners are further degraded because they simply do not have enough to eat. They become very haggardly and often have difficulty in judging each other?s age. Acquisition of a sufficient amount of food becomes a daily struggle, and for those who do not rise to the occasion ultimately parish. After a certain time period, it is impossible to survive unless you become an ?Organisator, Kombinator, or a Prominent? (Levi, 89). Levi writes, ?We have learnt the value of food; now we also diligently scrape the bottom of the bowl after the ration and we hold it under our chins when we eat bread so as not to lose the crumbs? (Levi, 33). A prisoner could only survive on a normal ration for around 3 months at best. Starving to death was not the main reason to acquire an adequate amount of food. The selections had to be avoided. If a prisoner was too weak to work, he was destined for the gas chambers.

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

A further aspect of Survival in Auschwitz that reinforces the dehumanizing effect of the death camp on the Jewish prisoners is the constant presence of hunger and starvation among the prisoners. Food and its acquisition and consumption are a constant topic that Primo Levi discusses because it constantly occupied the minds of most prisoners. Levi states, "We have learnt the value of food; now we also diligently scrape the bottom of the bowl after the ration and we hold it under our chins when we eat bread so as not to lose the crumbs" (33). Bread and soup are the only things prisoners in the camp receive and whether you are served soup from the top or the bottom is of great importance. The prisoners would try to get soup from the bottom half of the vat because soup from the upper portion is mostly watery broth whereas soup from the bottom portion contains more vegetables pieces (33). The insatiable desire for food would lead prisoners to act in very animalistic ways. Upon waking up in the morning, prisoners would quickly make their beds and then run to the latrines urinating "while they run to save time, because within five minutes begins the

In the winter jews would get frostbite, colds, and pneumonia. Many people got sick because the camps were so crowded. Some illnesses that they suffered are, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, and meningitis. Some also got skin disease, rashes, and scabies that got infected. Starvation happened to most Jews because they didn’t get fed enough. They had tea or coffee for breakfast, watery soup for lunch, and a piece of black bread with a small piece of meat or cheese for supper. The bread they had for supper was meant to last for breakfast too. If the prisoners got too weak, they were sent to be

The record of death of Jew of the camp and labor . Estimated death is 500-600,000 death . It done by six gas chambers. It also done by 'the tube'. Belzec camp make a lot

     The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest