Occupation In Auschwitz

There has been many stories on how cruel the victims of the Holocaust were treated, especially in the concentration camps. The Auschwitz concentration camps, out of many other camps is where this all occurred.The victims were abused and put through forced labor, it was physically and mentally hard for them to live in the camps knowing in the matter of days they will die. The prisoners in the camps were forced to work, the sick and disabled prisoners were killed as they were seen as “useless” since they were not capable of working. The labor consisted of digging ditches, leveling the ground, laying roads, and constructing new blocks and buildings for a tough 11-14 hours a day. During the tiring and inevitable hours of working, the prisoners had small rations of food.The meals were

The conditions that the Jews and other were put through were super horrible. They were forced into boxcars that didn’t have anything in them and they wondered where they were and where they were going. They stood in the boxcars for days with no food or water to keep them alive. (Joseph)(Source 3) Along their way to the concentration camps they were exposed to harsh weather. In the summer it was scorching hot and in the winter it was freezing cold. Since they were shoved amongst each other they suffered from suffocation. Along their journey many young and old died along the way (“The Holocaust”)(Source 2). Inside the boxcars there was no windows or anyway to breath. It was also very unsanitary because of the abundance of people in them and they didn’t have any water to at least wash themselves with. All they could do was stand there in the dark and wait (Joseph) (Source

Having only the memories of loved ones that you will never see again. Being stripped of all your pride and dignity and the only person you have is yourself. Feeling like you are losing yourself in the process, these are the feelings of being in Buna concentration camp. Auschwitz survivor stated “Today in our times, hell must be like this."

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.

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

Secondly, the Nazis treated the Jews like animals rather than humans at the concentration camps. To start, they were herded around from place to place just like animals are. The book said that the prisoners from the different blocks were forced to fall into ranks and were forced to march and run to another concentration camp, and the SS (Schutzstaffel) made sure they kept going and sustained the pace. If they failed to do that, someone from the SS shot them (Wiesel 84-85). The Jews were basically herded to another concentration camp, just like animals are herded from one pasture to another. Next, the prisoners were also treated like animals because they got little food and did what they need to in order to survive. The text states, “In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves

“…Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same

Once the Jews got to the camp, the Nazis took their belongings and gave them very thin clothing. They were separated into groups based on strengths and who could work. The babies and handicapped were immediately killed. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, prisoners were provided rations of food ("Auschwitz-Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor and Executions"). Jews were given three meals every day; one in the morning, noon and at night ("Auschwitz-Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor and Executions"). Prisoners who did little work received 1,300 calories and those who did handfuls received 1,700 calories of what was served ("Auschwitz-Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor and Executions"). They worked tediously for ten or more hours daily. If not at work, their time was prioritized in roll call assemblies, getting in line for food or removing dirt/pests from their own clothing ("Auschwitz-Birkenau: Living Conditions, Labor and

It wasn’t just the fact that you had to work and go through harsh conditions but sometimes you wouldn’t be fed either. During a ten year decade, more than 40,000 concentration camps were built for all the poor jews and persons Hitler hated too. When people would first go there, they didn’t know what was going on ; they just knew something bad and scary was going to occur in the following days. Then the families would get separated into females or males so it would be easier to sort through them. The group of household would be terrified because the fact that they didn’t have their own blooded people around them scared them. Little kids would be sent to a different camp because Nazis found them useless and didn’t serve a purpose either. Some kids wouldn’t even make it a day through out the caps, they would just be separated and be sent straight to the crematory. Some moms were pregnant when they got to the concentration camps and those would be forced to abort and be instantly killed when they were born since they didn’t have much space to put a ton of useless kids. The age that made you survive alittle more was about 15 because they could actually put you to work. For example, younger kids would work in labors and machinery to teach them young and for them to learn for when they were older. Kids between the ages of 10 and 14 who were developed but not enough for the them would be tested on to see how they would react towards the chemicals to see how they would kill future people in the concentration camps. Testing on these kids would prove if either they were using were effective or not ;however, sometimes the chemicals wouldn’t work and would only damage the kids lungs which made them only suffer. Adults who were in group range between 18 and 45 were the ones they taked more care of since they were the most helpful. These adults had to be male howeverr because females

Both adults and young children were sent to work, after doing extensive research Gottfried said, “All these children were worked to the point of exhaustion, and almost all eventually were killed” (Gottfried). This was horrific, children should have the chance to grow up without having to live a life of fear in a concentration camp, knowing that they were going to die. Soldiers separated the children from their parents right when they arrived at the camp to make the process faster. Soldiers instantly sent them to work, to the point of death. Soldiers didn’t care that children should have a life, instead they wanted them for work so they can win the war. They were also sent to work or die for what they believed in or for their ethnic group. Thousands of young kids, not old enough to work, were killed on the spot. Older ones, were sent to factories to work long laborious days and usually died on the job from working in horrible conditions and with severe punishments. If the children did not die from working non stop, then they were killed by the officers the second they thought the child was too weak to continue. There was a slim chance of any child surviving in a camp because they were malnourished and were not used to this tortuous life. Victim’s lives changed in a blink of an eye, being brought to a camp was one of the scariest things to happen the, “Prisoners were mistreated, underfed, and forced to work long, hard hours”(Saari and Maurice 339). This shows that the people of the Holocaust were in the worst conditions imaginable. Working for hours nonstop, kills the body and on top of that not having enough food or sleep destroys the body in so many ways and can make anyone go crazy and will kill someone. At this point, many people did not want to live because of what was happening to them. They threw their goals and dreams down the drain feeling as though, there

The ones over the age of forty and under the age of fifteen were sent to the gas chambers. The Nazis didn't care about the little kids dying. Jews older than 40 and younger than 15 had to work. Most of them got mistreated badly if they didn't do their job and were threatened by death.

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 prisoners held in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp went through an abundance of physical challenges, pain and suffering that no human being should ever have to endure. What happened during the three years and four months that the camp was running has brought countries together to realize just how unjust the entire Holocaust was to minorities. SS officers would greet the Jews and Polish political prisoners, which included elderly and children, by numbering them and sorting them for the torture they were yet to go through. Prisoners either followed their orders or rebelled in hopes of it making a difference. Families were torn apart, friendships were seemingly broken, and soon they were

When the Jews arrived at the camp all abled men were ordered to step to the left and women and children were ordered to step to right. After all the prisoners were separated, they shaved the hair from each person and took away all their clothes. Then they were ordered to lineup and they tattooed them with pen and ink. If anyone were to cried they were beaten. They were no longer a person they were a number. Prisoners who were unfit for labor were sent straight to the gas chamber, which was disguised as a shower to trick the victims. All the prisoners were used for forced labor and spent more than 10 hours each day working. The rest of the time was time was taken up by roll-call assemblies, lines for food or for washroom to remove all the dirt and pests from their