Krakow Research Paper

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.

The dictionary defines terror and genocide as ‘an extreme fear’ and ‘the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation” respectably. Within these parameters, it is suitable to state that the terrors the governments of Germany and Russia forced some of their citizens to endure are nothing less than acts of genocide. Between 1933 and 1949, over six million Jewish people from Germany and Europe perished in Nazi Concentration Camps during the Holocaust. In Stalin’s Russia, between four million and seventy million Russians departed from the Earth within the Soviet Gulags. Within these figures, there are over eighty million souls and eighty million individual experiences and stories that will never be told. Mikihal Bulgakov wrote, ‘manuscripts don’t burn,’ and following that, it could be said that ‘the voices of people do not die.’ Faint as they may be, the voices of the dead can be heard when one attempts to listen hard enough. Through the examination of memoirs of the survivors, it is possible to gain understanding into the lives of those who perished in these concentration camps. This essay will work to understand how in the moments before their murders, and disposal of their vessels within the Soviet Gulags and the Nazi Concentration Camps, lead to the dehumanization of the prisoners that perished within these camps.

The second worst concentration camp in WWII Treblinka. “Nazi occupied General Government of Poland and the zone was occupied by the Russians from September 1939 until the German invasion of Russia in June 1941”. Over 800,000 Jewish people killed here, Plus 850,000 men, women, and children murdered here so about 1,650,000 people murdered. (“Samuel Willenberg, the last of only 67 survivors of the Treblinka extermination camp.” )

Prisoners in the camp had to weave branches into the barbed wire fences, this served as camouflage. The camp was laid out in a trapezoid, it was 1,312 feet by 1,968 feet. Treblinka was divided into three sections: reception area, living area, and killing center. The reception area is where the prisoners first arrived. The living area was where the prisoners were held, Jews and Poles were held in separate compounds. The killing center, evidently, was where prisoners were killed (“Treblinka”).

<br>The Holocaust is the most horrifying crime against humanity of all times. "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." One of his main methods of "doing away" with these "undesirables" was through the use of concentration camps. "In January 1941, in a meeting with his top officials, the 'final solution' was decided". The Jewish population was to be eliminated. In this paper I will discuss concentration camps with a detailed description of the worst one prior to World War II, Buchenwald.

In only six years, two-thirds of an entire race, plus millions more, were shot, gassed, or starved to death. Anyone who was deemed “racially inferior or politically dangerous” was sent to one of many in the camps system. Among these groups were the physically or mentally handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war, and Communists (Berenbaum par. 1-2). Millions of innocent people were sent to camps where they were killed or forced to work for the German cause until they died.

Some tried to escape from the Germans. While inside the Warsaw concentration camp, some Jews were deported in 1940. "During 1940 approximately 11,000 Jews were sent to labour camps in Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow, some were faked to Belzec labour camps, building fortifications on the soviet border" ("The Warsaw Ghetto").

85 years ago, over a 12 year period, nearly six million Jews were killed in a genocide called The Holocaust. The Holocaust was led by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler was their leader. The mass murders took place at concentration camps throughout Europe. The majority of concentration camps resided in Poland and Germany. Many people believe there were only a few concentration camps. “However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945” (“How Many Camps,” n.d.). In this paper I will be discussing the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Poland was devastated when German forces invaded their country on September 1, 1939, marking the beginning of World War II. Still suffering from the turmoil of World War I, with Germany left in ruins, Hitler's government dreamt of an immense, new domain of "living space" in Eastern Europe; to acquire German dominance in Europe would call for war in the minds of German leaders (World War II in Europe). The Nazis believed the Germans were racially elite and found the Jews to be inferior to the German population. The Holocaust was the discrimination and the slaughter of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its associates (Introduction to the Holocaust). The Nazis instituted killing centers, also known as “extermination camps”

The Warsaw Ghetto held over 400,000 Jews, starving them and ravaging them with disease. After two years of persecuting and executing Jews, an uprising ended the reign of terror, killing hundreds of thousands of rebellious prisoners and leaving the rest to be sent to other death camps. The story of the Warsaw Ghetto gave many, many Jews hope that they could indeed fight back against Hitler and survive.

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")

By 1945, 6 million Jewish men, women, and children had died in Nazi death camps”(Foner, 915). Places he had overtaken such as France and Poland were ordered to force out every

Hundreds and thousands of people are shoved into a confined space, very few resources are granted to them. The little money that they have left can barely buy food for a week. The rations that are provided for several days barely can last one. These people are forced to perform backbreaking labor, and those who cannot work, do not get to eat and thus cannot survive. This is what the Jews of Europe experienced in the Ghettos. This stage of the Holocaust is not the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to this period of history. This part of the Jewish Holocaust narrative is arguably one of the most fascinating and beautiful shows of resistance against the Nazi murderers. The Jews lived in over-crowded, dilapidated apartments where sanitation was poor and diseases spread like wildfire. They were forced into labor, oppressed on the streets and starved by the establishment. Yet against all the odds, the Jews were able to cope with the dire situation that they were presented. They maintained a struggle against the Nazi regime. That struggle was the maintenance of some sort of humanity in the Ghettos. Whether it was the physical struggle, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, or cultural struggle through the arts, the Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter.

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

of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the