Of all of the death camps built by the Nazis during World War II, none was larger or more destructive than the terrifying Auschwitz camp. Auschwitz was built by the Nazis in 1940, in Oswiecim, Poland, and was composed of three main parts. Auschwitz I was built in June 1940 and was intended to hold and kill Polish political prisoners. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which opened October 1941, was larger and could contain over 100,000 inmates. Auschwitz III-Monowitz provided slave labor for a plant close by. In addition, there were many sub-camps. The most important camp at Auschwitz designed for the extermination of many people was Birkenau; numerous gas chambers and crematoria were established there, mainly to murder and incinerate Jews as …show more content…
The people sent to the gas chambers were unaware of their fates; they were falsely informed that though they were to be placed in a camp, they had to be disinfected and washed first. The people were led to a red brick building bearing the letters "Baden", which is German for "Baths". There, they were forced to remove their clothes and were handed a towel before entering the supposed shower room. When the assemblage of victims were herded inside the chamber, the doors were locked and a very effective poison gas, Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide), was released. After about 5 to 7 minutes, when the gas had finished its task, other prisoners were forced to remove the dead bodies, take any precious metals from the teeth or from jewelry, and cut off the women's hair. When the corpses were deprived of valuables, they were incinerated in pits, on pyres or in large crematoriums. Crematorium II, the biggest in Auschwitz, was capable of incinerating over 1,400 bodies a day. Altogether, the four crematoria could incinerate 4,416 people a day, and over 1,600,000 individuals were cremated per year. Though the gas chamber method of killing people was most destructive and very efficient, many other tactics were used to slaughter unfortunate prisoners. One Auschwitz survivor said, "One night we were awakened by terrifying cries... on the preceding day, the gas
Back in 1941, concentration camps main method of mass killing was shooting. Hoss wanted to find a way that was more efficient and less taxing on his workers (Laqueur and Tydor 35,36). On a day when Hoss was absent, his deputy, Karl Fritzch, poisoned a group of prisoners with hydrogen cyanide. After the success of the first try, another gassing was done while Hoss was present. The gassing was again successful (Laqueur and Tydor 36). Gassing became the standard death method for most concentration camps because it was almost painless for the prisoners and put less stress on the workers of the camp. In February 1942, the first gassing of the
During the Holocaust Hitler used guns but in time he included gas chambers because they were more efficient and had a quicker impact on killing the Jews. The rivers and streams ran red with blood where the shooting had taken place. The living conditions for the Jews, were unbelievable, Germans began transporting Jews and others to the concentration camps and death camps in Poland. The first gassing was on the 17 march 1942, the death of the people inside the chambers occurred just after a few minutes as the result of internal suffocation caused by the gas. In order to ensure that no one remained alive, the gas chamber was not opened until half an hour had elapsed. The concentration camps provided an ideal location for executions, The concentration camps were
Auschwitz was one of the largest and first concentration camp during WW2 and next to Auschwitz were two other death camps that were named Auschwitz ll and lll. At Auschwitz, there was a total of 8 gas chambers and 4 of them can hold up to 2,000 prisoners (Mostly Jews) at a time. There were 11 million people murdered in the Holocaust and it estimated that 6 million Jews were killed and one in six was killed at Auschwitz.
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
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
In 1940 Auschwitz was established in the suburbs of Oswiecim. Oswiecim is a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis. Auschwitz was established because there were too many Polish people in the local prisons. In 1942 Auschwitz became a death camp and it was the largest known. (http://auschwitz.org/, n.d.) The camp was expanded throughout its existence, this resulted in Auschwitz consisting of three camps. The three camps were Main Camp, Birkenau, and Monowitz. Main Camp was known as Auschwitz I, Birkenau was known as Auschwitz II, and Monowitz was known as Auschwitz III. (Preisler, n.d.) Auschwitz was liberated in 1945. “Historians and analysts estimate the number of people murdered at Auschwitz somewhere between 2.1 million
Auschwitz was one of the most well-known concentration camps, a camp which held many prisoners who were often judged by their looks, race, and religion and not by their actions. In concentration camps people were forced to work and not given basic human rights. Auschwitz was by far the largest concentration camp during World War Two. It quickly gained a reputation for torture and harsh treatment of the prisoners. Auschwitz has a history that can give a person the chills from the horror of the mistreatment of prisoners.
During the Holocaust, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau were two of the biggest death camps in all of Poland. Jews from all over Europe were sent to these two camps. In this article are sections about before Auschwitz became the camp, treatment, gas chambers, and the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Gas chambers were among the many horrific killing and torture methods used in Auschwitz that had been refined over time by the Nazis to exterminate as many people as they possibly could. The people taken to Auschwitz were often killed in gas chambers on the spot after being told they would get a shower. Most of the people who survived had to participate in hard labor and undergo selections often to see if they would get to live a bit longer. However, many of these people, became very emaciated and ill. These people were deprived of their needs until they were so disfigured that the Nazis sent them to the gas chambers and after that the crematoriums. Dr. Mengele also performed inhumane experiments on people of all ages and genders (Auschwitz, 1). On top of that, few managed to survive in Auschwitz,. As stated in Yad Vashem’s article, “ In Auschwitz-Birkenau, more than 1,100,000 Jews, 70,000 Poles, 25,000 Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) and some
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.
Auschwitz Birkenau was the largest death camp during the Holocaust. Auschwitz is located in a Poland city called Oswiecim. The Germans construction of Auschwitz Birkenau began in April 1940. 1.1 million people were sent to Auschwitz and 200,000 of those 1.1 million survived the Holocaust. The people who survived the Holocaust found a new life in modern day to day.
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps were the worst of The Holocaust. What happened at the camps is unimaginable and responsible for a large percentage of deaths that took place during The Holocaust. What started out as a death camp to persecute Poles, grew into the largest camp persecuting Jews. The gas chambers are what brought the large population of Jews to the camps in the first place and were the main strategy of the ‘Final Solution.’ Overall, Auschwitz-Birkenau made a huge impact in the history of The Holocaust and if it was never constructed, who knows what the history of The Holocaust would
It was divided into more than a dozen sections separated by electrified barbed-wire fences. The camp included sections for women, men, a family camp for people deported from Germany. It also contained the facilities for a killing center, it played a central role in the German plan to kill the Jews of Europe. During the summer and autumn of 1941, Zyklon B gas was introduced to the German concentration camp as a new way for murder. The success of these experiments of mass murder with the gas led to the consumption of Zyklon B for all the gas chambers of the three Auschwitz camps. They found these facilities to be inadequate for the amount of gassing they planned at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Four large cremation buildings were constructed between March and June 1943 and each had three areas to them: a disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. They continued gassing operations at Auschwitz-Birkenau until late
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
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