Joseph Stalin Prison Camps Essay

While the attack on Pearl Harbor was a devastating time in United States history and the attack being conducted by the Japanese government, it didn’t not justify Japanese Americans being put into internment camps. The fear of a Japanese attack on mainland United States soil prompted the United States government to create these internment camps. Such fear lead to innocent Japanese Americans to live in a way that could be considered inhuman. Of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in the internment camps half of them were children. The conditions of the camps where no way of life and Japanese Americans were forced to live in an undignified life that

In the early 1930s, the residents of the picturesque city of Dachau, Germany, were completely unaware of the horrific events about to unfold that would overshadow their city still today. The citizens of Dachau were oblivious that their city was going to become the origin of concentration camps and of the Holocaust, the mass murder committed by the Nazi s in World War II. Dachau Concentration Camp, which would soon be placed on the edge of their community, would serve as a model for all Nazi extermination camps. This perfect prototype of a Nazi killing machine has come to represent the start of the horror-filled Holocaust and the Nazi's determination to achieve a perfect society during World War II.

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

Birkenau was supposed to be able to hold over 125,000 prisoners, and was also the site where most of the executions took place. Inmates were used for most of the manual labor. Later on in that year the Soviet prisoners arrived as 3,000 were sent to be executed, another 12,000 died from other causes, and only 1,000 remained and were to do forced labor (Laqueur and Tydor 34,35).

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.

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

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

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

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

Throughout historical times, the rule of Josef Stalin has been questioned due to his position as being one of the most popular and contentious leaders. Through the evaluation of his ruling within the Soviet Union, he can be seen as both a positive and negative ruler. His methods of changing the country following World War I were sudden, causing a complete change in societal ways of life in controversial ways. While his changes created one of the most powerful countries the world had ever seen at its’ time, they also caused for massive discontent within the citizens of Soviet Russia.

The move to the internment camps was a difficult journey for many Japanese-Americans. Many of them were taken from their homes and were allowed only to bring a few belongings. Okubo colorfully illustrates the dramatic adjustment of lifestyle that Japanese-Americans had to make during the war. Authentic sketches accompany each description of the conditions that were faced and hardships that were overcome. The illustrations were drawn at the time each event described throughout the story took place. Each hand drawn picture seems to freeze time, capturing the feelings and intense anxiety many felt during the war. The pictures assist the author's first person narration and assist the reader in creating an accurate

prisoners would work up to 14 hours a day doing extremely hard labor, in very bad conditions, and extreme climates. Some prisoners cut down trees with hand-saws and axes. Some dug frozen ground with pickaxes. Some mined coal and copper. Prisoners barely had enough food to deal with the extreme labor they were being put through. In 20 months, prisoners of the Gulag built the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal. Over 100,000 prisoners dug out a 141 mile long canal with just simple tools. Many prisoners died during that construction, and in the end it was too shallow to carry most ships. To the guards the prisoners had no value, they could replace them with another person. Kolyma was said to be the worst of all of Gulag. It was the coldest, and most isolated camp. Women also had to work, and suffered greatly. They would get raped by guards, camp employees, and other male prisoners. They would get "camp husbands" to protect them, and for companionship. Most pregnancies ended with the babies being taken to an orphanage.

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 Gulags of the Soviet Union have been compared to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, but in reality they were worse. The Gulags were isolated prison camps peppered across Siberia. Death, torture, and disease raged within their walls, while endless work went on outside. Gulag personnel were cruel and unfeeling, using terrible punishment methods and playing senseless games that cost prisoners their lives. Political enemies of the Bolshevik party made up a significant portion of the prisoner population, with most sent to the infamous camp system Kolyma. Liberation was painfully slow, but by 1960, all of the Gulags were gone.

     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)