Concentration Camp Dachau

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

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

In the camps, prisoners had to endure beatings with whips with iron balls attached, incarceration, electric shocks, and public hangings which terrorized the Jews (Goldhagen 297).

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 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.

In the mid 1930s heading into the the mid 1940s, The Nazis created harsh living conditions for Jews living in Europe. The Nazis, lead by Adolf Hitler, were an right wing group that took control of Germany and eventually expanded to the other European countries around them including Poland and Austria. Using the Nuremberg laws in 1935, the Nazis began removing Jewish people from everyday society. Four years later in 1939, Jews were forced to live in Ghettos that were overcrowded and barely maintained. Not long after in 1945, The “final solution” was implemented. Innocent Jewish men, women and children were shipped in train cars to Concentration camps. The conditions in these train cars were brutal. Passengers would go days without water, food

Birkenau separated the prisoners being held there. There were sections for Gypsies, men, women, and families. Since Birkenau was a death camp it had many buildings used for gassing and burning (ushmm.org). Two former farmhouses in the area that were owned by the Polish people forced to evacuate were used as gassing chambers. They made large crematorium buildings for burning the bodies of the victims killed in the gassing chambers (ushmm.org).

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

being forced to ride in horse stalls like similar to slaves. Most families being torn apart and put into separate camps, thinking to never see them again. The prisoners could live there up to 4 years, including the children.

Those not sent to death camps were sent to something even more cruel: concentration camps. In the early days of the war, these camps were only used to house political prisoners of the war such as communists, previous criminals, prisoners of war, and extending even to tramps and beggars (“Concentration Camps” Gale, 127). In 1936, the concentration camp system extended greatly to include Jehovah’s witnesses, convicted prostitutes, Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals (“Concentration Camps” United States Holocaust Museum, par. 1). After 1936, the camps were built next to or near quarries or brickyards and factories where prisoners were forced to perform heavy labor until they were too weak to continue. (128). The program was known as “Vernichtung durch Arbeit”, or “Annihilation through Work” (par. 4). Upon arrival to the camps, lines were formed in front of SS medical officers who directed each prisoner to the left or the right. If you were directed to the right, then you were to live, but die a more drawn out than those who went left

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

Many were hanged if they misbehaved or if they were sick or too weak to work they were sent to the extermination camps. The extermination camp is where mass numbers of murderes took place. The Jews where put into a small rooms called gas chambers. The Jews were put together into these gas chamber and where burned to death while other where shot and hanged. The Nazis didn't just kill men but they also killed innocent children , and, women without any remorse.

Nazis put people in concentrations camps because Hitler hated certain types of people. A concentration camp is a small place where a large number of people are held where they have to work and they are murdered. This led to a big conflict and a mass murder. They lived in bad conditions like wooden stable barracks that were very uncomfortable and very crowded small areas. The Jews had very bad sleeping conditions too. At the concentration camps there were many sicknesses that killed people. They were starved and weak because they did not have enough to eat. Jewish people were killed in many different disgusting ways, if they didn’t die from sickness.

where the Jews were imprisoned and many times, sent to death camps or killed. There were three types of camps. There were normal concentration camps where they were held prisoner, there were camps where the Nazis did medical experiments on subjects (either prisoners of war or persecuted groups), and the last type of camp were death camps. These had gas chambers and many different ways of killing persecuted groups. The Nazis used these camps for the genocide of persecuted

     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)