Lodz Ghetto Thesis

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

The first phase began when the Nuremburg Laws were passed in 1935. These laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, property, and jobs. Jews were required to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing to make it easy for Nazis to identify them. The

Since million Jews lived in pre-war Poland most camps were located in the area of General Government in occupied Poland. This location allowed the Nazis to quickly remove the German Jews within Germany proper. Concentration camps were also located in different places. The Nazis arrested German and Austrian Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps all located in Germany. Also if you’re wondering where the Holocaust museum is located it’s in Washington, DC.

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

February 14, 1940, leaders of the Nazis called for reopening the killing center at Chelmno. The SS and police previously attending in the operation were assembled. The Germans then constructed two reception barracks and two open air ovens. On June 23, 1944, the killing process is resumed with the deportations of Jews from the Lodz ghetto. Innocent people were killed either by shooting or asphyxiation. On July 14, 1944, transportations of Jews to Chelmno are halted and changed to Auschwitz camp instead. In less than a month from June to July 1944, the SS and police killed more than 7,000 Jews at Chelmno. (1941 - 1945 Timeline)

The Warsaw Ghetto By the middle of 1942, Jews in the ghettos realized that all their former residents were being murdered, not sent to labor camps. In the Warsaw Ghetto

was a World War II ghetto established by the Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews

Little has been published on Chelmno due to its significance as the first extermination camp to become operational death camp. Chelmno concentration camp was established in November 1941 and was exclusively used for the executions of Soviet prisoners and Jews, most of whom were Polish. The extermination camp at Chelmno demands special attention, because during the German occupation only a very few people in Poland ever knew of its existence and the hundreds of thousands of its victims. Chelmno introduced the most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Its victims were from 36 communities in western Poland, along with 88 children from Czech town whose population was decimated as a collective reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in May of 1942. The facilities at Chelmno included three gas vans and two crematoria. Gassing at Chelmno began on December 8, 1941 just hours before Pearl Harbor was struck by Japanese planes. By June of 1942, Chelmno has produced 20 gas chambers from

Hitler's first plan was to demean the Jews' reputation. The Jews, who in 1933 numbered 500,000 in Germany which was less than one percent of the population ( The Holocaust), were blamed for economic depression and Germany's defeat in World War I. New laws were created that forced Jews to give their civil service jobs, university and law positions, and other aspects of the public life. Jewish businesses were boycotted in April 1933 ( The Holocaust). Also that year, the first concentration camps opened to begin in the destruction of the Jews, and they were expected to wear a symbol to differentiate themselves, a yellow Star of David. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws took all personal identity from the Jews and defined them by their religion and heritage alone.

70 years ago (Ochayon) a new Ghetto was established. The Germans built Ghetto’s to hold Jews before they could take them out to a camp. They could be taken to a Death camp, Work camp, or a concentration camp. All the camps had a different reasons for different Jews. The Ghetto was located in Warsaw, Poland and became the largest Ghetto in Europe. It was opened in September, 1939 (“Ghetto”). The German soldiers created it in Warsaw for a certain reason. Usually people think that the Germans build Ghetto’s to take up space in a town. Because Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe pre World War II (Ochayon), they held Jews throughout Poland (“Ghetto”).

Even with such massive extermination the German leaders were unsatisfied and demanded a more efficient and permanent answer to the problem. The directive to exterminate all the Jews in Europe was issued on July 31, 1941. In December of that year, a law banning Jews from leaving any German territories was put into effect. Then finally, on January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich came up with what was termed "the final solution to the of the Jewish question." He proposed a plan to erect six camps built for killing large numbers of people. The Germans built six such camps in the two years to follow, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, and Chelmno. Chelmno was the first of the camps to be built. It used large trucks into which they crammed as many Jews as possible who choked on the trucks own exhaust fumes. Most of the other camps had permanent gas chambers, which killed by the fumes of a stationary engine. Although Auschwitz used Zyklon B, a type of hydrogen cyanide. These venues of death were host to over 3 million Jews who lost their lives. (Wyman)

The concentration camp called Chelmno, also known as Kulmhof, is a well known death camp from World War 2. This camp was first used on December 8, 1941. The Chelmno camp was very popular for the Nazi’s at that time mainly because of its location. This camp was located in Central Poland approximately 31 miles from the city of Lodz- a very heavily populated town of Jews. Being surrounded by water made it very difficult for prisoners to successfully escape. In fact, it is only known that three jewish people escaped alive.

In the month of March 1933, one of the first camps, Dachau, was opened. Dachau was a concentration camp, or a prison camp maintained by the Third Reich, [the name for Germany when the government was controlled by Adolf Hitler]. Aside these concentration camps was two other types of camps; labor camps, and death camps. A main concentration camp was Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt was located in what is now known as the Czech Republic. More than 150,000 were kept there for months until being sent to their deaths in Treblinka and Auschwitz death camps. The people in

The annihilation camp Chelmno was the first operational camp in central Poland on December 8, 1941. Chelmno was the first camp that used gas to kill jews on a mass scale. This concentration camp was on of the worst concentration camps that were made. It was brutal, misleading, and it had a good location. In all Chelmno killed three hundred twenty thousand people from the Lodz Ghetto and the area around it.

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