Life In Concentration Camps During The Holocaust: Survival Of The Fittest

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

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

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.

The SS officers would put everyone through selection and only the grown and strong would survive. Truckloads of children “Babies! Yes...children thrown into the pit of flames”(Wiesel 32) and grown men hung for all to see, their bodies waving in the wind like a flag. For those who did survive selection, they lost their names and were tattooed with their new titles “‘A-7713?’ ‘That’s me.’”(Wiesel 51) The Jews were consistently treated like animals by the Nazi’s and if that was not enough, they were also told how worthless they were.

Since the Nazi soldiers were male, they treated men and women prisoners in their camps with a significant amount of difference. Prisoners were forced to do pointless yet challenging labour for an indefinite time before they were sentenced to death. Upon arrival at the camps, Jews were divided into two different groups; one would group would live and the other would be sent to the gas chambers immediately. The labour intensive tasks proved to be quite brutal for women since they were not accustomed to such duties. Even pregnant women were not spared and many women miscarried because the hard labour had killed their unborn child. Those babies who were born were almost inevitably taken immediately and killed. There was no privacy in these camps and the women were continually being eyed by the lonely, watching soldiers. Some women were beaten or sexually harassed while in the camps and could do nothing to stop the horror. Their husbands, brothers and fathers were either dead or in a different part of the

Over six million people died in the Holocaust. Family, friends, and other people with the same ethnicity that they didn't even know were killed left and right. From the crematory to getting hung. Was it best for them to help each other or was it to protect themselves and not care about anyone else? (Prompt 5)

Everyone who has taken a history course that goes through the 20th century knows about the atrocities performed in Nazi Germany; 11 million people exterminated and countless others put into concentration camps with unimaginable conditions. But most people do not try to explain how the German soldiers could do these things to other human beings. Primo Levi in his book Survival in Auschwitz attempts to answer this question. He begins by explaining the physical and psychological transformation of the prisoners and how that enabled the Germans to see the prisoners as inhuman and therefore oppress-able. Levi believes that the Germans treated the Jewish prisoners horrendously because of the prisoner’s

During the Holocaust, when Jews were taking masse to concentration camps, the sole focus within the camps was the utility of members. Healthy Jews were to be used routinely for labor. Sickly ones were far more likely to be executed on the spot. Jews were hanged in the center of the camp and left there for days. Others including their family members and lifelong friends would be forced to walk past their bodies again and again. During this tragic time many

They were ordered around until they were nearly dead, then given a bit of food and rest to “repair” them and so on. The SS officers commanded them whenever, however and as much as

With essentially nothing to live for and no reason to go on, many of the prisoners gave up

Before the Jews got moved into labor camps, they were told of the jobs they could not have and the certain things they could not do. They were even “banned from working as veterinarians” (“Anti-Jewish Laws” 15). Most of them got a different job than they had when they entered the camp. For example, if a Jew was a watchmaker and got put in the camp, they could make them be a shoe repair man instead (Boyne 126). If a person was sent to a camp and looked like they were unable to work, that person was sent to their death (“Forced Labor” 10). The people that were sent to their death the most were the elderly and the young children that were barely able to walk, the

The selection process had the purpose of selecting which of the prisoners could be useful for the Nazis, whether through forced labor or medical experimentation. (“Auschwitz II - Birkenau” 2) The Nazis considered themselves to

The doctors who examined the incoming prisoners and sorted them also worked in these hospitals performing medical research on the ill. This medical research was mostly placing the Jewish prisoners in ice water baths then monitoring them until they died. This research was mostly used to prevent hypothermia if German Pilots ever ended up being stranded in the ocean. Some of the experiments performed by doctors often had no research purpose at all, such as experiments involving eye color changing using chemical droppers and the surgical sewing of children together to create siamese twins. Auschwitz was the largest death camp with 20,000 Jews being killed a day and 39 subcamps.

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

In the Auschwitz documentary Kitty Hart-Moxon gave an explanation of what had occurred during the Holocaust; selection and explains how to survive. Kitty Hart-Moxon stated, “When you arrived on the train, women and children and the elderly were sent directly to their death in the gas chambers. You could hear people suffocating for about twenty minutes, and then it was over” (Documentary: A Day In Auschwitz). If you weren't fit and didn't pass the selection test you were considered weak, and got put to your death. In the Auschwitz documentary Kitty Hart Moxon explains if you passed the selection “You were stripped down of your clothes and valuables, your hair was shaved off….and you would be tattooed with a number.” (Documentary: A Day In Auschwitz). Now, comparing the Auschwitz documentary to the excerpt Night, Elie Wiesel focused on one subject: selection. “ We knew what it meant. An SS would examine us.. to see if we were fit enough.” (Wiesel 308). The victims and prisoners went through a selection process. Men were separated from women along with children. A Nazi, usually an SS physician, looked quickly at each person to decide if he or she was strong and healthy enough for forced labor. The SS officer then selected the weak; victims did not know that individuals were being selected to live or die. Carefully examining both of the mediums subjects, the Auschwitz documentary had a wide