Ebensee's Concentration Camps

The first concentration camp was created in 1933, just a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. A total of twenty-two were created, and all together included 1,200 affiliated camps. The camps were found all over Germany. At first political opponents of Nazi policy were taken, and later Jews, gypsies, or criminals. Each camp consisted of barracks which were surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and guards. Imprisonment in the camp included inhuman force labor, hunger, disease, mistreatment, and random executions. Prisoners were forced to work twelve hours day, or even more. The sick, old or those who could not keep up were killed by either gas, or injections. Those who could endure

He marked the passage into the camp with promise “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Soon after the commandant of Auschwitz had been given a big construction budget of two millions of marks to adapt the camp, nevertheless materials for this construction was impossible to find. In the summer of 1940 the newly established construction office in the camp, led by August Schlachter and Walther Urbancyk reported that without materials constructions of the new buildings was impossible. Later, the SS had identified the concentration camp as a central instrument to actualize its programs in Upper Silesia. Originally a camp for prisoners that, “because of its industrial value, could not be deported and a transit camp for those arrested who where then shipped west to perform slave labor.” (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 171) Auschwitz was put on the map of the SS financial empire by Pohl. He ordered Höss to double the capacity of prisoners. Auschwitz was going to be converted into a production site (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 168-71). Auschwitz was converted in an industry of building materials; this new task of Auschwitz created the first sub camp of many. The expansion of Auschwitz I was the first brick to complete the construction of a massive concentration camp. The industry of building materials was a great financial success for the SS; however, conditions in the camp did not improve even though the labor of the inmates became important to

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

The guards were responsible for medical help and starvation. The survival time span in less than two months. They were forced to work on hitler's underground. They didn't feed the prisoners during the winter.

The events that took place at Death camps were horrific and very hard to understand. “At these camps, Jews and other inferiors were herded like cattle, told to take off their clothes and go to the shower.” These “showers” were not actually showers like the prisioners thought, they were gas chambers. In the gas chambers, they lined people up and sent them into the large chambers with many others where toxic gas was was spread into the air and the prisioners were forced to stay in and breathe the air until the died. This was a very easy way to murder a large amount as fast as possible, just as the Nazis wanted. The gas chambers were just one way that the prisioners were killed. A different method of murder they used was lining everyone up and shooting them. When they died, they fell into the trench behind them and were either buried in the trenth or taken to the crematorium. (Hitler’s

While there were many death camps that opened during the Jewish Holocaust, none of them compare to the opening of Birkenau in 1941. Birkenau opened and before it was liberated “the camp killed about 1.3 million people” (“Auschwitz”). Birkenau was a factory of death. This place was a monstrosity for all of the prisoners. They slept in a bunk with two or three other people and a blanket per person. Once the prisoners were there, they learned that life would not be easy. Waking up at six o’clock and working 12-14 hour days with minimal food. “The soup was unappetizing, and newly arrived prisoners were often unable to eat it, Supper consisted of about 300 grams of black bread, served with about 25 grams of sausage, or margarine, or a tablespoon

Now around 1934 there were at least over fifty-five concentration camps, but every camp had a different purpose, one purpose could be could be how they transport them to others camps to do forced labor and other would trap them into a little cave where they made sure there everything was in its right order. You had camps that were alongside the railroad, then you had some that were in the middle of nowhere. The condition were so traumatizing that the Nazis kept telling the Jews to have hope. The Nazis enjoy making them suffers. One of the largest concentration camp was the Auschwitz, it came about on April 27, 1940. It was a death camp. They were giving little food and would get a whipping if they didn’t follow orders. You have people who

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

People were usually sent to extermination camps if they were hiding Jews of if they did anything else disrespectful to the Germans. When they arrived at these camps, they were assigned to a barracks. The barracks were only supposed to fit three or four people, but the leaders crammed eight or nine people in there. There were three mattresses stacked like bunk-beds. All of the mattresses tended to have fleas or lice on them. The leaders of the camp only gave each barracks a few blankets so, the people would have

There were many concentration camps all over Germany. Prisoners could be sent to another camp to survive or for other various reasons. The concentration camps were unstable and unsanitary. The main epidemics or diseases that was within the camps was dysentery (diarrhea) and typhoid. The Prisoners had little to no food and had little clothing. At certain times a SS officer could call for selection meaning he or she will pick the prisoners of best fit that can continue to work. If you ended up on the right, you were safe and if you ended up on the left, you were in danger of being killed, later or on the spot. When enemies or invaders were coming near the camps, the camp officials would call for evacuation or “Death March.” Not many prisoners would survive because they were already starving and would have to run in the cold nonstop. Officials and the guards ran with the prisoners but they eventually got a break by switching with another official or guard. If you stopped while running, you were shot and killed on the spot.

INTRO: The Auschwitz Concentration camp was the largest active camp run by the Nazis during World War II. Built in 1940, on the ground of former Polish towns and neighborhoods. The Nazis bulldozed the houses and built the camp. Most of the camp consisted of Slave labor and execution facilities. The camp had gas chambers, medical facilities, and a crematorium. The camp consisted of three sub camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, and Auschwitz III. It also had many minicamps that were used to hold extra prisoners. The Nazis committed atrocities at all their concentration camps, but Auschwitz was the worst. The Holocaust was one of the worst acts of murder and cruelty from one group of humans to another.

The Concentration camps had very bad living conditions. The prisoners would wear the same pair of clothing for week or months on end. The clothing could not protect them from the weather during the roll call or work. When it was time for the prisoners to eat the Kapo would sometimes drop there bread in the mud and give it to them anyways. The bread they got in the morning was the only

They lived in barracks that could house around 700 people, and slept on brick or wooden bunk beds. Often times, prisoners would sleep on possessions they snuck in to prevent them from being stolen or confiscated. They also slept in dirty clothes that were not changed for months. Sometimes, the prisoners woke up to find a few of their bedmates dead due to the previous day’s hard labor and small food portions. As uncomfortable as it was, inmates endured these horrible living conditions to survive in Auschwitz (Jewish Virtual Library

Prisoners were given very little food. The food that they were given was inadequate for the amount of work that they had to do. The average workday was about eleven to twelve hours, and there were a minimum amount of breaks during the day. Some prisoners were worked to death, and others were close to it. The ones who were overworked and couldn’t work any longer were taken to be gassed. The Nazi guards had very strict guidelines and quotas for the prisoners to meet during the day (Encyclopedia Britannica,

Auschwitz 1 was the smallest part and the main base of the camp. It held the headquarters, the “death block”, the first crematorium and gas chamber. It was surrounded by electric fences and doubled barbed wire with nine watchtowers. When you first enter the camp, there was a sign that stated “Arbeit Macht Frei” which means work will give you freedom. This gave the prisoners false hope that there would be a bright future to look forward to if they worked hard enough.