Gross Rosen Concentration Camp

The Belzec concentration camp was established November 1941. Belzec was located in southeastern Poland between the cities of Zamosc and Lvov. Gypsies, Jews and other people were sent to Belzec. Belzec was supervised by an unknown SS officer known as Der Meister. The entire camp occupied a relatively small, almost square area.

The Auschwitz camp used its prisoners for forced labor. The Nazis treated the Jews poorly and as of they were nothing. Ushmm.org states “Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory”. Between the years 1940-45 out of 1.3 million Jews, 1.1 million died. All of those innocent people died only because their race was hated by one very powerful, but very convincing man. After a year of the camp existing, the SS and the police cleared about forty square meters for the camp. They had all of this cleared by forced labor from the Jews. The Nazis were very cruel to the Jews and for a certain amount of time this camp was used as a killing center. Those cold- hearted people killed men, women, and innocent

October of 1941 was when Auschwitz II was built, located just outside of Brzezinka, which later developed into a concentration and extermination camp. The camp included 300 prison barracks, 4 large “bathhouses” where prisons were gassed to death, corpse cellars where their bodies were held, and cremating ovens (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Auschwitz III was created in May of 1942, near the village of Dwory, a slave-labor camp supplying workers for nearby factories (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Those deemed fit to work were employed as slave labor in the production of munitions, synthetic rubber and other products considered essential to Germany’s efforts in World War II (Auschwitz, History.com). Auschwitz also became the nexus of 45 smaller slave labor sub-camps in the region (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Rudolf Franz Höss was the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps (Berenbaum,

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.

So many new prisoners kept arriving, many of them women. On January 1st, 1945, there were 8,730 women in Bergen-Belsen. By January 15, 1945, there were 16,475 women. Something had to be done. This is when the “Large Women's Camp” had formed. By March 1st, 1945 the “Large Women's Camp” held 26,723 women in it. On March 15, 1945, they had gained around 4,000-5,000 more women. On this day there were 30,387 women in the camp.

The prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 110,000 by the end of 1945.” (Jewish Virtual Library, pg. #1) To explain, Buchenwald was liberated the year of 1945 which was also when the Holocaust ended. Forced labor was one of the things that the Jews had to deal with, meaning they were either sent into factories and work for the SS or they were sent to go build sub-camps. All the prisoners that were forced to labor were all young and strong men. The living conditions of the camp were terrible. The prisoners lived in places called barracks, which were beds made out of wood. The barracks never had mattresses or anything to lie on besides the wood. There were about 3 prisoners that stayed on one barrack. Most of the time there were no room for prisoners to sleep so you would have to sleep on top of people in the

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 benefit of this camp was the area had transport connections, the camp was at a railway junction. It was easy to close off from the outside world. (Steinbacher 22). “The camp being easily closed off from the outside world made it easier for the people running the Holocaust to keep it hidden for so long from the outside world; other people in the world didn’t know what was going on along with security. This is why it went on for so long” (22). According to Robson “ In the camp’s first year of operation, only one escape was attempted.” (68). “Prisoners that tried to escape from the camps were usually shot” (Robson 68). “In 1941 seventeen other escape plans were hatched but did not succeed.” (Robson 68). “The security in these camps were very high and clearly made it hard for the prisoners to try to escape, so this is why there were very few prisoners that actually were successful at escaping” (Robson 68). The people in these camps were treated awful by the

As the Soviet Union made their way for the camp, the camp began to evacuate its three main camps and 44 subcamps. “SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.). Prisoners were transported to Germany concentration camps. The travels to these camps were unbearable, and many prisoners lost their lives during the travel or were killed if they could not keep up during the marches. These marches are often referred to as “The Death Marches.” “On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered [Auschwitz-Birkenau camps] and liberated around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.).

From July 22 to September 1942, the SS men carried out large deportations of people in the ghettos. Most Jews in the ghetto were taken to Treblinka. During this period of deportations, the SS men and the police deported 265,600. 35,000 Jews were killed during the deportation process or the traveling process. The SS men decided to start deporting them to concentration camps instead of death camps.("Warsaw")

The train ride was just the beginning of the horrific treatment that they would face ahead. They were packed into the train with little ability to move. The prisoners were in the train for days without food, water, or any place to go to the restroom except for a bucket or the floor that they were standing on. There were many different types of prisoners not just the Jews. The camp had many nationalities and religions. Such as czechoslovak people's, jehovah's Witness, Gypsies, People of mental, and physical incapabilities. Even a lot of Germans were put in this camp. Buchenwald was one of the worst camps to be at they were brutal. It wasn't considered a death camp but that was pretty much what it was. The S.S were just looking for a reason to kill. They liked it. The guards would kill without

I chose the concentration camp Treblinka, it was established in November of 1941. With the support of the SS and Police Leader for District Warsaw in “Generalgouvernement”, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews (Treblinka). Later on it became Treblinka I. In addition to it being a labor camp, it also served as a “Labor Education Camp” for non-Jewish Poles, who the Germans believed to have violated labor discipline. Jewish and Polish prisoners were put into separate compounds of the camp, and deployed at forced labor. The killing center known as Treblinka II was completed in July of 1942, about a mile from the Treblinka I, and a rail spur was added that led from Treblinka I to Treblinka II. The Treblinka camp

There really is no possible way to determine the exact number of people who suffered and lost their lives in the camps because not all people who arrived were registered as inmates. Instead, they were immediately sent to the Zyklon B gas chambers or killed (Auschwitz). These torture sites were established in the late 1940s and did not end until 1944-1945 (Auschwitz-Birkenau- “The).

In June, 1940, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened; this camp would later be the home and death place of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Jews, Poles, and Gypsies made up the large majority of prisoners in the camp. Life in Auschwitz included living in undesirable conditions, and being kept on a very strict schedule day in, day out.

     The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population. He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest