Ravensbrcen Research Paper

The feeding of the prisoners was a major issue in the concentration camps during the holocaust. The jewish prisoners were fed three times a day in the concentration camps, those three times were morning, noon, and evening. (living conditions, labor and executions) It wasn’t the amount of food given a day that was an issue the nutritional value that the Nazis had for the concentration camps. (living conditions, labor and executions) When the Nazis would feed the prisoners they gave the less physically demanding workers one thousand three hundred calories per day and gave the ones who engaged in hard labor one thousand seven hundred calories per day. (living conditions, labor and executions) This was an issue because after several weeks on such starvation in the camps, most prisoners began to experience what is called organic deterioration that led to the well known “Muzulman” state. (living conditions, labor and executions) This was when the prisoners ended being so tiny, extreme physical exhaustion, and soon ended up in death. (living conditions, labor and executions) In march 31, 1942 the WVHA established a minimum working day of 11 hour in all concentration camps. Labor in some concentration camps was the way of destroying prisoners, they worked them until they died. (living conditions, labor and executions) The prisoners usually labored in various sectors of

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.

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

A meal time was one of the most important times of the day, for a prisoner. In the morning, a prisoner would be fed coffee or herbal tea. The Holocaust Explained states “For lunch prisoners would be given a litre of watery soup. If they were lucky, they might find a piece of turnip or potato peel.” (The Holocaust Explained.org 2014). For dinner, black bread, a tiny piece of sausage, and cheese. The black bread was supposed to be able to last prisoners throughout the night, and into the morning. Because of the bread’s durability, many prisoners secretly hid and stashed amounts of black bread to eat. In camps like Belzec, food was placed on a high value within the life of the prisoners, making reason for them to smuggle and steal it. But because of the constant work, brutality, and small portions of food that were given to the prisoners, many died and suffered from sickness caused by hunger. Through this, weight and muscle tissue were barely left on the bodies of the prisoners, with the lack of food and

In the morning we got metal cups and spoons. We were each given two slices of bread and sometimes a pat of margarine or a little bit of marmalade. The coffee was toasted acorns ground up. It tasted terrible. The midday meal was potato soup with maybe a li ttle bit of meat. Potatoes were the main ingredient and the kind of beets you normally feed to cattle. We were already hungry in the Theresienstadt ghetto because we did not get enough to eat. In Auschwitz we were beginning to starve. In the evening we go t another slice of bread, some coffee, no marmalade, no butter, no nothing.

People were treated as if they were animals right away. Such as being herded onto train cars like cattle with eighty people per train wagon, no one being able to get on or off without being killed. Then once at the camp, they are fed just enough food to

During the Holocaust, Ravensbruck was the largest all-female concentration camp. It is estimated that 50,000 women died at Ravensbruck, either from harsh living conditions, slave labor or were put to death. The soviets liberated the camp on April 29-30,1945 and found approximately 3,500 extremely ill prisoners living at the camp.The Nazis sent the rest on a death march.The Holocaust was awful, many women died, and only some survived.

They were sent to these camps because they were thought to be a disloyal after Pearl Harbor. Some of the housing had no toilet,no sinks,no stoves, and no insulation and they were built in very hot areas. Some of the housing had armed guards that watch the people constantly and barbed wire fences. They were fake they were fat rice and beans. They were fed rice rice or pork and beans and beans so they had to adapt to this new diet and was never good it was always too soft or too

Only about 10% of the Ravensbruck population was made up of Jewish women. There were also social outcasts, gypsies, political dissenters, foreign resisters, and the disabled and other “ ‘inferior’ beings” (Sebba 3). About 130,000 women of 20 different nationalities passed through and 30,000 to 50,000 were killed there. The camp was only designed to hold 5,000 women, but was holding six times that number. Only 15,000 survived from the terrible environment of the camp. There were also women being trained here for becoming Nazi guards. Many women were sent here not knowing what it

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

One of the first things to happen in the camp was an inspection. They asked the normal

Within a few hours we became brutally aware of reality: the forced labor, the experimental operations on young girls, the transport noirs, individual and mass executions, the ill being, “put out of their misery,”, the dogs, the beatings, and the gas chambers (Tillion p.5). Ravensbruck was torture and misery for every living soul in the camp, no matter which nationality or religion. The labor concentration camp was a living nightmare for the females that were kept there to be used as slaves or guinea pigs.

The concentration camp system was established well before World War II and the “Final Solution.” The camps had commonly been constructed in desolate places, free from German jurisdiction. Thus, allowing murder in both large and small amounts to be carried out surreptitiously. Some, if not most, of these murders being cursorily reported. As

     The Holocaust is one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity. "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." (Bauer, 58) One of his main methods of exterminating these ‘undesirables' was through the use of concentration and death camps. In January of 1941, Adolf Hitler and his top officials decided to make their 'final solution' a reality. Their goal was to eliminate the Jews and the ‘unpure' from the entire population. Auschwitz was the largest

Margaret Buber-Neumann had the personally tragic, but historically remarkable, experience of being interned in the two most infamous prison camp systems of the 20th century. Her book Under Two Dictators recounts her tenures at Soviet and Nazi prison camps, providing an insightful side-by-side comparison of the two camp systems as experienced by the same person. The conditions of the two camp systems were similarly depraved and treatment of prisoners was sadistic under both systems. In Under Two Dictators there are many documented strategies utilized by prisoners for their survival in such conditions. While there are many strategies used, the strategies which benefited mental health and gave prisoners something to live for are prominent in the