Camp Vught Informative Speech

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

Most of these camps were used for the elimination of the Jews. There were also camps that were mainly just for torture purposes and the Jews had to work until death. The Jews that were in these camps were also put into striped uniforms and had limited food like one piece of bread a day, these were awful living conditions.

Each part had a specific task for its prisoners. Buna, the main work camp supplied hundreds of workers for construction jobs as well as factory labor. Buna was the third and final camp that was built. The prisoners worked in the Petro-Chemical Corporation I.G. Farben factory. There they made synthetic rubber and fuel. Before the factory was built, the Nazis had the prisoners clear the land and make it suitable for the factory’s construction. The land prior to the clearing was an open marsh which later lead to many diseases being spread by the prisoners throughout the camp. This lead to very high casualties, especially the cold winter months. The second part of the concentration camp that was built was Birkenau. The intention of the Birkenau concentration camp was to be a prison. In Birkenau, the Nazis held prisoners of war from when they invaded the Soviet Union. Within the prison, the people staying there as prisoners were punished in numerous ways. They were tortured for data on the war, they were selected, if fit, to take part in painful medical experiments by Doctor Josef Mengele. The most infamous part of the Auschwitz compound was the kill camp, Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a repurposed Austro-Hungarian artillery barrack. All the camps had casualties, but Auschwitz main goal was to exterminate its population. Anyone unfit to work was sent to Auschwitz to be killed. These were usually the elderly, young children, and women not fit for working. They were killed in gas chambers designed and built by the Nazis. The chambers would kill by releasing Zyklon B into the air, which then suffocated and killed people in an average time of fifteen minutes. Zyklon B is an insecticide which means it is used to kill insects, but it is so potent that when oxidized it can even kill humans. Then to dispose of the

The French originally built these camps to receive Spanish refugees. (“Nazi Transit Camps: Drancy”). The camps were built for about 700 to stay, but approximately 7,000 people were held there, they were again faced with poor conditions. Of the 7,000 people there 3,000 died and the 4,000 remaining were shipped off to Auschwitz where they were sent to be killed. (“Nazi Transit Camps: Drancy”) Upon arriving at Drancy the Jews were subject to violent searches, and their heads were shaved. Everyone that went through the camps were all eventually sent to Auschwitz and murdered, there was approximately 1,000 people every 2/3 days murdered at Auschwitz. (“The

The jews would work usually very far from their camps.Every jew had it hard,especially if the other prisoners were stealing from you.Some jews would be assigned to take away valuables from other prisoners to help them

So, Germany had gotten a new leader who was Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler needed somebody to blame for losing World War 1 so he blamed the Jewish people and made them go into these camps called the “Concentration Camps” The concentration camps made the Jewish people work, starve, and do experiments to them. In a Scholastic Scope Magazine it briefly said on page 5 paragraph 2-4 “Many people were DESPERATE to save thousands of children from Germany and let them go into another place where it is safer. On one cold morning during the month April a girl was getting sent away her name was Lore, Lore didn't know why her parents said that she is getting sent away, but she knew that she was going to be

A lesser known camp, Westerbork, is located in the Netherlands. This concentration camp was known as a Transit camp, which meant it wasn’t the end of the line for the prisoners who arrived there. These camps were a temporary accommodation for the groups of prisoners that were being shipped throughout the country. Often these camps are where families were split up by German Nazi soldiers. Westerbork was used from October 1939 through April 1945. This camp was shut down by Canadian liberation. Westerbork still stands as a monument today (Concentration Camps).

This camp, I can’t explain to you the amount of people and sickness that is in Haftling Lager camp (Bergen-Belsen Holocaust). There are so many people dying every day of sickness and hunger, there is very little food and water (Bergen-Belsen Holocaust). There are bodies everywhere, just lying on the ground rotting, they didn’t even bother to bury them (Bergen-Belsen Eastern). There were so many dying in here that they moved some of us out to a new camp called Sternen Lager or “Star” camp as most people call it, (Bergen-Belsen Holocaust) it is better than the last camp I was at, there are about 4,100 Jews alone (Bergen-Belsen

You were probably wondering what they did at the death camps and what happened in the camps? There were six major death camps, Aishwitz, Birkenav, Chelmna, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Warsaw. Jews weren’t the only victims in the camps, there were also Gypsy people, and enemies. Only 7,650 jews survived when the camps closed, and hundreds of millions died a day. All of this took place in the death camps. Jews, Gypsy, and enemies went to suffer everyday. And

     Another camp called Treblinka was a pure killing center. This death camp opened in 1942, making it one of the last death camps to open. The whole purpose of this place was to kill Jews. They did this with 13 carbon-monoxide chambers. The people were sent to the camp by trains, unloaded, and sent into changing rooms. They were forced to give up their clothes and put new ones on. They were sent to either so called "showers", or a mass grave where they were shot. The carbon-monoxide chambers were disguised as the "showers." As soon as the Jews were in, they locked the doors and started pouring gas into them. This was the way they killed the prisoners. The Nazis killed about 50,000 people per month, making it the most efficient concentration camps ever made. This made Treblinka a pure killing center.

Even before arriving at a camp, the Jewish people were severely mistreated. Forced to wear patches identifying them as Jews, the oppression had begun. Everything they owned had been taken from them including homes and

The way that the jews would be transported to the camps was by either truck or train. However the trains were not comfortable at all. There wasn’t very much air so it was hard to breathe and there weren’t any toilets so they had to use buckets. Most of the jews had to stand up the entire way there. There was no food or water so they had to starve. With all of this going on a lot of the jews died on the way there. But you would be considered lucky if you did because you wouldn’t have to go through the torture that would be next. It was the same

On the 21st of April in 1941, the Nazis opened a concentration camp, Natzweiler. Natzweiler was a concentration camp in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace, southwest of Strasbourg, France. It was the central camp and the only concentration camp in France. Nearly 22,000 deportees died there. (Struthof) The camp also served as both a labor camp supporting the Nazi war industry, and as a research spot for Nazi professors from the Reich University of Strasbourg to do medical experiments. Although Natzweiler is not a well-known camp, it is one of the biggest contributors to the terrible hell known as the Holocaust. Despite all of the terrible events that happened in the course of World War II, the Concentration and Internment camps were by far the

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

     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)