The Concentration Camp During World War II

According to “I’m Telling the Story” by Magdalena Klein, the prisoners were not given proper clothing. She writes “In rags, soiled, infested with lice” (Klein, stanza 2) and “Unclad frail feet were trudging in the snow” (Klein, stanza 4). The Nazi’s not only neglect to give the prisoners proper clothing, they also force them to walk barefoot through the snow! This problem is still present in the world today, not with the Nazis, but tyrannical governments still do this. In short, Nazi prisoners were not treated with the respect that is due to every human being, and suffered greatly because of it.

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

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 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.

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

In the book Night written by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization is a large part of the lives of Jews in concentration camps. Night is a memoir capturing the memories of Eliezer Wiesel’s of his eight months of living in a concentration camp when he is fifteen years old. There, Wiesel along with the rest of the prisoners, are tortured everyday, being dehumanized physically, mentally, and spiritually until they are unrecognizable. Physically, inmates in concentration camps are brutalized like animals.

This torture began with stripping the prisoners of their clothes, shaving all the hair on their bodies, and giving them a tattoo on their forearm. The disgusting living quarters were also a part of this torturous treatment and was so bad even animals shouldn’t have been living that way, but not only were the living conditions bad, but the way the “prisoners” were inflicted with such maltreatment was terrible. All of this treatment happened because of one man named Adolf Hitler who was a Nazi and wanted power, and the more he could get, the better. “It is easier to tell kids about those who escaped (the survivors and their rescuers) than to focus on the millions who were victims and perpetrators and bystanders.”Rochman, Hazel. "The Holocaust Survivors." Booklist, 15 Sept. 1998, p. 216. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A55052619/GLS?u=j036903001&sid=GLS&xid=8a0341bf. Accessed 19 May 2018.Thousands of innocent people were killed in the cattle cars on the way to the camps because they were either killed by the Nazi’s or died from heat or malnutrition. Those who survived the trip and made it to the concentration camps were forced to work, and if they didn’t work “properly” or according to the Nazi’s standards, then they would be killed, whether it be from gas chambers also known as “showers”, being shot

Once they got to the camps, they were immediately sorted into two groups, death or slavery. Slavery meant they would have a slower death. Their jobs were to hammer rocks at the quarry. Some people would have to dig up mud, but they would dump it back just for them to work more. They were worked hard every single day, and barely fed. They did not end their work until they died. These were reason on how they enslaved them.

In the article, it states, “Inmates were always hungry.  Food consisted of watery soup made with rotten vegetables and meat, a few ounces of bread, a bit of margarine, tea, or a bitter drink resembling coffee.  Diarrhea was common.  People weakened by dehydration and hunger fell easy victim to the contagious diseases that spread throughout the camp”(17-18).  The Nazis built suffering into Auschwitz by giving their prisoners very little food, and starving them.  By starving, they purposely tortured the prisoners by making them starve and turn on each other, taking away their trust, and making them become very sick, and wish to be dead.  Lastly, the work given to the prisoners in Auschwitz Birkenau caused them to die from exhaustion and they would be worked until they died.  Many prisoners were worked to death and died of natural causes.  If any of them were too weak or ill to be working, then they would be murdered in the gas chambers.  In the article, it states, “Some inmates worked as forced laborers inside the camp, in the kitchen, or as barbers, for example.  Women often sorted the piles of shoes, clothes, and other prisoner belongings…  Those who were too ill or too weak to work were condemned to death in the gas

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

Have you ever wondered what it was like for the jews living in the camps? The daily life in the camps is a realistic clarification of how jews were treated and taken cared of in the concentration camps. People were taken out of their homes by the Nazis and were forced into concentration camps. The Nazis were a party of people that believed that their German race was better than any other race that is why jews and many others were forced out of their homes into the camps. The largest number of prisoners were jews but other individuals were arrested and locked up for many purposes such as, for nationality and for political joining. Prisoners were subjugated to unbelievable torture from the very moment they reported to the camps

Prisoner of War camps and concentration camps during the second world war were brutal, extreme, and deadly. Many POW soldiers, Jews, Gypsies, and more died within these camps of many causes. Sometimes as I’m learning about World War II, I wonder whether the Japanese prison camps were better, worse, or just as bad as Nazi concentration camps and why did Germans treat Americans better than the Japanese did? I chose this topic, because not many people look into the Japanese war camps as much as they did with the Nazi concentration camps. I thought about what happened in those camps that differed from German concentration camps and which was worse. That’s why I chose this topic to learn about.

Sentence 3: This shows that prisoners had to do hard work to help build the camp before it even officially opened. Sentence 4: “A WVHA decree of March 31, 1942 established a minimum working day of eleven hours in all concentration camps… Prisoners dug coal, produced armaments and chemicals, and built and expanded industrial plants” (“Auschwitz-Birkenau, Living Conditions, Labor, & Executions”). Sentence 5: This proves that the prisoners had to work a lot during the day and do a lot of physical labor such as building industrial plants. Sentence 6: Lastly, the prisoners at Auschwitz had to do a lot of forced labor and got fed more if they worked more.

Jews are constantly being punished in these concentration camps, whether not being present during roll-call to the harsh labor and the lack of nutrition provided. The soldiers take roll call very seriously, Abel emphasizes that judgement will be passed onto the folks lined up for those who disrupt roll call or can’t stand still for a duration of the time. Folks in these concentration camps are forced to work for long periods of time in a day. “whoever has a pair of wooden soles tied to his feet with a leather strap is rich” (13). Many Jews are without shoes and this can cause serious infections. Starvation is a major problem for the people in the camp since the German soldiers limit the amount of sustenance. Digestion is a major problem for

Husbands and wives were forced apart and rarely ever saw each other again. Prisoners were given thin, loose, rags to wear. They were stripped white and blue. The barracks or housing they lived in was modeled after horse stables. Usually, there were 800-1,000 prisoners in each row of barracks. “The prisoners slept ten to a bed sleeping sideways with mice, rats, lice, and other creatures and bed bugs” (qtd. in Beyers, Ann 288). This then led to every member of camp being forced to have their heads shaved completely off, most of the time using dull, broken scissors that would cut their heads. The plumbing, if there ever was any, was horrible. The prisoners were only allowed to use the bathroom for ten seconds, while being monitored, otherwise, the prisoners used buckets. Also when you arrived your name was forgotten and you were given a tattoo. This tattoo was a number or code and it was what you were known by. It was put on the arm in a very unclean way and sometimes led to infection and death, even in children. Even the water supply was very limited. People would go to such great lengths that they would kneel down and drink from the puddles of water and mud for a drink. Dying of dehydration was not uncommon. Only about 1% of areas had running water. When the Nazis would feed the prisoners, they would make sure that each only got or consumed around 200 calories a day. That was hardly enough to keep them