Camp Dachau: The Holocaust

The command area surrounded the prisoner camp. Nine guard towers, ditches, tall concrete walls, and electrified barbed wire encircled the whole camp. A maintenance building and living quarters for 200 SS trainees and 200 camp guards were positioned near to the camps

Nine years after Dachau opened, the crematorium area was located beside the main camp. The old crematorium and the new crematorium was included. There was also a gas chamber, however there isn’t any credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings. The gas chambers were actually for something called “selection”. Selection was when all of the Jews at the camp would go to the gas chambers to be evaluated. If a Jew was marked down as not strong enough to do work or too sick then they were sent to the Hartheim "euthanasia" killing center near Linz, Austria. Many Jewish people were killed this way. The crematoria are was also where the SS camp guards would kill prisoners; they would also kill the prisoners at the firing range. Another way that the Jewish People and prisoners were killed at Dachau was when German physicians would do medical experiment on the prisoners “including high-altitude experiments using a decompression chamber, malaria and tuberculosis experiments, hypothermia experiments, and experiments testing new medications. Prisoners were also forced to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding” ("Dachau"). During this process there were hundreds of prisoners left dead, or with permanent disabilities. During World War II all of the Jews were forced to do work “Prisoners were forced to do this work, starting with the

The Holocaust was the murder and persecution of approximately 6 million Jews and many others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January of 1933. The Nazis thought that the “inferior” Jews were a threat to the “racially superior” German racial community. The death camps were operated from 1941 to 1945, and many people lost their lives or were forced to work in concentration camps during these years. The story leading up to the Holocaust, how the terrible event affected people’s lives, and how it came to and end are all topics that make this historic event worth learning about.

In 1933, while Hitler was creating his master race and totalitarian government, Dachau was built for government officials that were against Hitler. This facility, the first of its kind to be constructed, would eventually be turned into a death camp for Jews, the physically and mentally unstable, gypsies, and homosexuals. I have always wondered why the Nazis singled out the Jews and killed so many of them. Why the Jews? For a number of reasons. First, because the Jews were considered one of the “undesirable” groups because their genetic and cultural make-up did not meet Nazi standards, that is, they were not of the Aryan race. Second, Hitler and the Nazis had a very backward view of history, believing that all history was a struggle for racial superiority. Third, the Nazis, in their great ignorance, believed that the Jews had a natural drive, even a genetic impulse, to take over the world, and that the Aryan race would be dominated and enslaved by the Jews if they weren’t exterminated. Fourth, Hitler was brought up in Vienna, where Jews played an important role in the city's political and

At one point in the novel, the reader is introduced to Max. He is a Jew. Jewish people were the Nazis main target and the scapegoat for the loss of World War I. Max would have been sent to a labor camp to die if he was caught in public, so he hid in a dark room for two years. According to The Book Thief, “A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING To your left, perhaps you're right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please—try not to look away.” Max may have survived Dachau and World War II altogether, but so many other Jews -and people of different religions, sexualities, races, etc- died because of the Nazis. Only

Throughout the life at Dachau concentration camp, isolation was a huge deal. Once the prisoners arrived at the camp, they were separated boys and girls and their personal belongs were taken from them. The younger kids and their mom, and the older people were sent straight to the gas chamber because they believed that they were not able to do any labor. There were numerous amounts detention buildings in Dachau. Shunt room and bunkers were two that they used often. Bunkers isolated rebellious and defiant prisoners, which there were harsher prison conditions, torture and murder. Now the shunt room was admission for the prisoners, it was brutal and was meant for the prisoners loss of rights, liberty, and human autonomy. For jews they had a different

Max was Jewish and he had no power to do anything, he was unable to walk down a street without being noticed as ‘Jewish filth’ or ‘Jude’. Living in Nazi Germany and being a Jew was like wearing a flashing sign that said ‘Jew’ in neon letters. His life had started out with many difficulties. When he was just a baby, his father passed away in World

Auschwitz Birkenau located in Oswiecim Poland, The holocaust began in May 26, 1940. Over 1.1 million people had died at birkenau many people had died because of hunger, disease, horrible conditions, and the gas chambers. The holocaust began shortly after world war 2 began, hitler and the nazi party rose to power due to political power circumstances. Germans could not believe the defeat that had happened at world war 1, the government in germany so bad with money they needed somebody that could help them out and fix germany.

They had some mass graves to put the bodies in, but most were just lying around. The most famous person from this camp was Anne Frank. Her diary lead today’s generation to fully understand this period of time. When the camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, the British found 10,000 unburied bodies, and 40,000 sick, starving, or wounded. Thus proves this camp was one of the most horrifying camps of the Holocaust.

To begin with, the first ever concentration camp out of many was Dachau, it opened March 20, 1933 (Holocaust Facts). The Nazis built six camps: Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and lastly Majdanek (Holocaust Facts). Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp and extermination camp built. Extermination camps were meant for killing large groups of people quickly and smoothly (Holocaust Facts). Each one of the camps killed at least 60,000-80,000 people and much more (Extermination Camps).

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp began construction in October 1941. The camp was originally meant to house 50,000 prisoners of war, but the camp was expanded to house as many as 200,000 inmates.

Doctors would conduct these high altitude experiments on prisoners at Dachau. The Dachau concentration camp was one of the first Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany. It mostly held political prisoners or victims who spoke up against Nazi Germany. They would place inmates in low-pressure chambers. This would simulate altitudes as high as 68,000 feet and monitored their physiological response as they died.

Auschwitz was Established in 1940 by Germans (Memorial and Museum). There were 3 main camps located 37 miles west of Krakow. They were all open for the soul purpose of killing. Auschwitz I opened in April 1940. Auschwitz II was opened October 1941 and one year

Ever since we started talking about the Holocaust, I have been interested in learning more about Dachau concentration camp. I have actually been to Dachau and I knew a small amount of information about it but now I know way more. The most surprising thing I learned about Dachau was that is was the first camp ever built, but it was not to brutally beat the prisoners but eventually turned into a prison like that. Also that if someone tried to escape, the whole prison was punished. Why learning about this matters because the Holocaust was the most tragic event to ever happen in history. Also this event is something that everyone should be educated on and know what it was like back then and what people had to go through. The part I enjoyed most

One last beautiful thing about Max is that despite everything that he went through, in the parade of Jews and the concentration camp, he still came back to see Liesel. He could have run away to a place where he could forget about everything, but he didn’t. Instead he decided to return to