Great Depression Relief Camps

At the Siberian slave labor camps it was very harsh. Father Walter would work 15 hours straight shoveling coal onto a conveyer belt. He describes the pain he went through but yet still had to push on. They were also not given enough food for the amount of work that the men did. He explains how the barracks only provided enough shelter to make survival possible. He would say that his muscles felt like they were all strung out by the end of each day and how it was almost impossible to move each morning when they woke up at 5 A.M.

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.

In Yoshiko Uchida’s, Desert Exile, she claims, “ Each stall was now numbered, and ours was number 40. That the stalls should have been called “apartments” was a euphemism so ludicrous it was comical” (Uchida 248). Uchida explains her experience in an internment camp, the families were told they would be living in apartments, when, in fact, they would be leaving in old animal barns. Japanese Americans were shipped to the desert, herded into barns to live and forced to wait in lines to eat. Ultimately, these prisoners were treated less than human and more like animals. Although this treatment of the Japanese Americans in the Internment camps was horrible, the conditions in the concentration camps were unpleasant, in Warren’s book, she explains, “Rumors about the war, rumors about upcoming “selections,” when SS officers would weed out the weakest prisoners and ship them off somewhere” (Warren 73). In the same way the prisoners in the Internment camps were treated like animals, the prisoners in the Concentration camps had it way worse . They were so weak they would be picked off to be sent somewhere else, most likely to be killed. Similarly the prisoners in the Concentration camps had it really bad, they barely had a living place like the Japanese prisoners did. They acquire way less, sometimes no food in the Concentration camps but the Japanese people received dessert at one point. Both camps had their ways of being negligent and miserable than the other. All in all the Concentration camps were way worse than the Internment camps, and they both had very inhuman

All throughout history, Prison war camps Sorta became a thing of the norm . Whether it is in Nazi ,Germany during World War II or The United States during the civil war. Both packed and riddled with disease, both brutal, no doubt, but one more than the other.

Out of all ten internment camps in America, Manzanar is the most well-known. The harshness of this camp lead to constant news stories and televised programs displaying events that occurred there such as shootings, strikes, and a constant feeling of uneasiness and unrest throughout the community. There was no such thing as privacy in Manzanar; a luxury taken for granted in today’s society was unknown to those who had to survive in Manzanar. All men and women shared toilets as well as showers and lived in barracks with 200-400 other people in them. Each room had about four people and was furnished with nothing but an oil stove, light bulb, cots, blankets, and mattresses filled with straw. The living conditions were inhumane, with no privacy shacks that were so poorly constructed they could barely hold together. Because it was located in the desert, Manzanar was hot during the day and freezing at night. In order to receive food, prisoners had to wait in long lines in front of the mess hall and were constantly sick from eating spoiled food.

In concentration camps, they slept on concrete bunk beds as well as wooden bunk beds that were meant to hold 52 horses, they had no heat, the ceilings were damp and leaky, the prisoners only got 1,300 calories a day, that’s 500 less calories than what the average human should have, they had to work about 10 hours each day. In internment camps, they were located in areas where there's harsh weather, they had schools and medical care in the camps, the japanese were payed to work at the camps, but many people did die from the poor amount of health care or the intenses stress they were put under while being in the camps. They had there own animal stalls that was almost like their home. The prisoners i n the camps were almost treated as slaves, making FDR and Hitler feel like they had more power.

The camp became its own world. People seemed to forget the war and only think of the next task that had to be taken care of. They tried to create commonality and keep any anger under control.

The camps were animal stalls and other places not meant for living. These camps killed people all the while they thought they were protecting their citizens when in fact they were killing them. This is still seen as the most flagrant violations of civil liberties today. Regardless of loyalty and citizenship, they were forced out of the place they called their homes and anything that were theirs were taken to later be found destroyed and vandalized. All of these thing happened because of fear instead of finding a reasonable way of dealing with the situation. Another factor of the relocation was their dislike of immigrants, they were surrounded by barbed wire and nothing but what they could of carried to call their

,and the huts were absolutely terrible.Usually the camp was at a food shortage and the soldiers

In document C it gives out a list of someone describing everyone and it says poor food - cold weather - nasty clothes - i can't endure it - why are we sent here to starve and freeze. These right here are just some of the severe ones they listed. This will give you an idea of how bad it was for them. These all show how bad and it kind of has a tone behind it that shows a little bit of quitting behind it and doubtfulness how they are all just kind of done with it and giving up.

While in these camps, the prisoners were treated like dogs. They were punished harshly, sometimes without reason. Weisel uses imagery to help us imagine how brutal these beatings were. When Weisel saw his Kapo with a young Polish girl, he was whipped publicly twenty five times. The Kapo said, “An ordinary inmate does not have the right to mix into other people's affairs. One of you does not seem to have understood this point. I shall therefore try to make him understand clearly, once and for all." (Pg 57) This same Kapo also beat Weisel in order to release pent up aggression, seen when Weisel says, "One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood." (Pg 53) Along with having to deal with these cold hearted beatings, the prisoners were also malnourished and starving. Food was scarce, and what little food there was to be rationed was inadequate in the face of the hard labor they were forced to do. In one example, the prisoners were forced to run to an abandoned village, away from their camp and the approaching Russians. Anyone who fell behind or stopped running was either shot or simply trampled by the other prisoners. With these conditions, death seemed

The Great Depression was a time of hardship for many. People lost their jobs, home, money and almost half the population were under the poverty line. As the rising number of unemployed men and women grew, the states and private organizations took it into their own hands to provide aid for those who needed it. However, the rigorous efforts of these charities and government did not provide much “relief” in the long term. Many people had been taking advantage of these charity organizations and soon enough the question becomes evident, what really is the American dream now?

The working conditions were terrible they worked for hours with little to no rest under the hot sun. The food they received was also horrible and most workers were treated horrible and talk to disrespectful. “If you ask any questions to have them explain to you, they get very mad” (Lecture 15) Most of the workers were paid by checks at the camp. Sometimes the check would be less that what they had worked for but due to the English barrier nothing could be done but if the workers tried to speak about the problem than the men giving the money would get mad a sigh of the discrimination being done since most did not know English and did not know how to communicate leaving them with low minimum wage.

     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)