Essay on The Horrors of Auschwitz

Auschwitz was one of the most infamous and largest concentration camp known during World War II. It was located in the southwestern part of Poland commanded by Rudolf Höss. Auschwitz was first opened on June 14, 1940, much later than most of the other camps. It was in Auschwitz that the lives of so many were taken by methods of the gas chamber, crematoriums, and even from starvation and disease. These methods took "several hundreds and sometimes more than a thousand" lives a day. The majority of the lives killed were those of Jews although Gypsies, Yugoslavs, Poles, and many others of different ethnic backgrounds as well. The things most known about Auschwitz are the process people went through when entering the camp and

October of 1941 was when Auschwitz II was built, located just outside of Brzezinka, which later developed into a concentration and extermination camp. The camp included 300 prison barracks, 4 large “bathhouses” where prisons were gassed to death, corpse cellars where their bodies were held, and cremating ovens (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Auschwitz III was created in May of 1942, near the village of Dwory, a slave-labor camp supplying workers for nearby factories (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Those deemed fit to work were employed as slave labor in the production of munitions, synthetic rubber and other products considered essential to Germany’s efforts in World War II (Auschwitz, History.com). Auschwitz also became the nexus of 45 smaller slave labor sub-camps in the region (Berenbaum, Auschwitz). Rudolf Franz Höss was the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps (Berenbaum,

Of all of the death camps built by the Nazis during World War II, none was larger or more destructive than the terrifying Auschwitz camp. Auschwitz was built by the Nazis in 1940, in Oswiecim, Poland, and was composed of three main parts. Auschwitz I was built in June 1940 and was intended to hold and kill Polish political prisoners. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which opened October 1941, was larger and could contain over 100,000 inmates. Auschwitz III-Monowitz provided slave labor for a plant close by. In addition, there were many sub-camps. The most important camp at Auschwitz designed for the extermination of many people was Birkenau; numerous gas chambers and crematoria were established there, mainly to murder and incinerate Jews as

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

At first, the Nazis were only killing political opponents like Communists and/or Social Democrats, for which their harshest persecution was used. Many of the first prisoners sent to Dachau (The first official concentration camp opened near Munich in March of 1933) were communists. By July, the concentration camps run by the Germans held around 27,000 people in what they called “protective custody.” The Nazis had huge rallies and acts of symbolism such as burning of books by Jews. During the years of 1933 to 1939, the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany got out quickly, but many were left behind, and they lived their lives in a constant state of uncertainty and fear. During the fall of 1939, Hitler started the so-called Euthanasia Program. The Euthanasia Program allowed Nazi officials to select around 70,000 German citizens institutionalized for mental illnesses or disabilities. These Germans were to be gassed to death. After prominent German

Birkenau separated the prisoners being held there. There were sections for Gypsies, men, women, and families. Since Birkenau was a death camp it had many buildings used for gassing and burning (ushmm.org). Two former farmhouses in the area that were owned by the Polish people forced to evacuate were used as gassing chambers. They made large crematorium buildings for burning the bodies of the victims killed in the gassing chambers (ushmm.org).

“‘Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions’” (Quotes About Holocaust, 1). The Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz was the brutal murder site of millions of innocent Jews and other perceived enemies of Germany. Here, death and suffering was the norm and there was no escape from the wicked acts of the Nazis until the prisoners’ long awaited liberation. However, Auschwitz changed the victims’ lives forever.

The Holocaust was a gruesome time for the world. When Hitler and the Nazi army seized control of Germany in 1933 and persuaded the Germans that the Jews were the problem, there were 566,000 Jews currently living in Germany. In 1933 the First concentration camps are built, and in 1934 Hitler becomes the Der Fuherer and receives a ninety percent approval rating from the people. Auschwitz was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Construction began in April 1940 in an abandoned Polish army barracks in a suburb of the city. SS authorities continuously used prisoners for forced labor to expand the camp. This camp will act as one of the biggest bridges between the two books.

85 years ago, over a 12 year period, nearly six million Jews were killed in a genocide called The Holocaust. The Holocaust was led by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler was their leader. The mass murders took place at concentration camps throughout Europe. The majority of concentration camps resided in Poland and Germany. Many people believe there were only a few concentration camps. “However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945” (“How Many Camps,” n.d.). In this paper I will be discussing the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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

When Soviet forces approached threateningly closer in 1945, evacuation of Auschwitz began. These unwilling marches to safer territory resulted in even more deaths as the SS tried to escape unscathed with their labor force (Gale). In total, the amount of people killed in Auschwitz is unbelievable. One and a half million Jewish people are predicted to be murdered in the gas chambers alone, which means that just about one-quarter of Jewish people executed amid World War II were killed in Auschwitz (Encyclopedia 117). At the expense of over a million Jewish people, Auschwitz was a central part of the Nazis’ prejudiced and greedy killing

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

In June, 1940, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened; this camp would later be the home and death place of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Jews, Poles, and Gypsies made up the large majority of prisoners in the camp. Life in Auschwitz included living in undesirable conditions, and being kept on a very strict schedule day in, day out.

     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

At the time Jews accounted for only a small percentage of the inmate population.We do know that in the subsequent year approximately 80% of newly arrived Jews died. This high mortality rate was due to the fact that the SS authorities directed Jewish prisoners straight to the penal unit. There they died very quickly, usually murdered by Kapos with shovels or poles, or shot by the SS guards. Only later, once the inhuman living conditions, hunger, and work beyond physical means began to affect other prisoners did mortality among the Poles approach the level of mortality among Jews. In the second half of 1941 some of the sick and exhausted prisoners, Poles and Jews, started being killed with phenol injections straight into the heart; then in 1942 they also started being killed in the gas chambers. Auschwitz-Birkenau was notorious for the gas chamber extermination