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Essay on Nazi Concentration Camps

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The Holocaust was one of the world’s worst genocides; concentration camps were the worst place to be if you were a captive. Adolf Hitler, a Nazi, convinced many that certain groups of people needed to be exterminated. He started concentration camps to terrorize his enemies. The first concentration camps started in 1933, six years before World War Two began. There were several concentration camps. These concentration camps consisted of European Jews, P.O.W.’s (Prisoners of War), political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, and gypsies, the mentally ill and other groups. The first concentration camp was called Dachau, located in Munich, Germany. It was opened March 22, 1933. Within five years of Dachau opening, the number of …show more content…

If a child was born in a concentration camp, they would be killed on the spot. Most children and elders were killed as soon as they got to the concentration camps if they looked too weak to be useful to work. Some were used for drug and surgery experiments. To save the amount of poison gas and ammunition used to kill people, some children would be thrown into ovens or put into open fire pits. These prisoners were also beaten, put in pressure chambers, or frozen to death. The Nazis were brutal and didn’t care who they killed. There were many escape attempts, though only 802 attempts on record. Only 144 made it out but most of them were caught and killed, or taken back to camp and starved to death. If someone successfully made it out of the camp, random people in their prisoner block would be starved. One of the most successful escapes was when a few prisoners dressed as guards, stole a car and drove out the front gate, they were never caught. The most successful escape was when Oscar Schindler got 300 women out of Auschwitz. Oscar pretended to be one of the people in charge of the camp. Before the freight car full of people got to the camp, he told them to send them back. When they got back, he took them to a safe house and looked after them. The concentration camps were all shut down on May 7, 1945 when World War Two ended. It was estimated that 7,991,460 people lost their lives in the concentration camps. When the

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