Essay on The Pain and Horros of The Concentration Camps

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

It is estimated that Nazis established around fifteen thousand concentration camps throughout occupied countries. (Concentration Camp Listing, 2010) These camps, known as “DEATH CAMPS” spread throughout all of Europe under German ruling. It has been estimated to be around 15,000,000 concentration camps that were established from small to large ones. (Concentration Camp Listing, 2010) One of the most commonly known concentration camps was the one located in Auschwitz, this particular concentration camp was were diseases and epidemics prevailed due to poor living conditions. (living conditions, labor and executions) Examples of these

The words inscribed above the Auschwitz concentration camp read; "Arbeit Macht Frei,” meaning, “work brings freedom.” These deceiving words gave unsuspecting prisoners hope that they could get out of the most destructive concentration camp during the entire Holocaust. This concentration camp would kill over one million people. Auschwitz will be fully analyzed, starting with the early stages of Auschwitz, then the Jews and the horrors of Auschwitz, and finally the final days of Auschwitz. The events that took place at Auschwitz concentration camp were horrifying and led to the death of millions.

During the Holocaust Hitler used guns but in time he included gas chambers because they were more efficient and had a quicker impact on killing the Jews. The rivers and streams ran red with blood where the shooting had taken place. The living conditions for the Jews, were unbelievable, Germans began transporting Jews and others to the concentration camps and death camps in Poland. The first gassing was on the 17 march 1942, the death of the people inside the chambers occurred just after a few minutes as the result of internal suffocation caused by the gas. In order to ensure that no one remained alive, the gas chamber was not opened until half an hour had elapsed. The concentration camps provided an ideal location for executions, The concentration camps were

For example, they sometimes would hand the prisoners a bar of soap so they would think that were actually going to take a shower. Usually in this case they were just led to the gas chambers. In these gas chambers, a form of Zyklon B was dropped in there, and once it made contact with air it changed to the gas form. After this, the bodies of the dead were taken to the crematoriums. Jewish prisoners were given the jobs of transferring the deceased bodies to the crematoriums. Every day many died. Almost one million people were killed in Auschwitz alone.

The people sent to the gas chambers were unaware of their fates; they were falsely informed that though they were to be placed in a camp, they had to be disinfected and washed first. The people were led to a red brick building bearing the letters "Baden", which is German for "Baths". There, they were forced to remove their clothes and were handed a towel before entering the supposed shower room. When the assemblage of victims were herded inside the chamber, the doors were locked and a very effective poison gas, Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide), was released. After about 5 to 7 minutes, when the gas had finished its task, other prisoners were forced to remove the dead bodies, take any precious metals

“‘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.

They left them to starve with little food, to work in all terrible,deplorable, uncouth conditions all for them to feel and to be treated like vile animals. Prisoners even acted like animals fighting for food,water and clothing - anything to get them to live one more day. A lack of compassion for others can not change what they saw in the concentration camp ”bela katz- son of a big tradesman from our town-had arrived at Birkenau with the first transport, a week before us. When heard of our arrival, he managed to get word to us that, having been chosen for his strength, he had himself put his father’s own body into the crematoria oven “ (Wiesel 33) Having to put his own father into his own death bed is a harrowing experience and not being able to protest at the fear of his own death is an irrefutable memory that will never be forgotten. The nazis and their unvarnished mistreatment,ciless hostility that showed no compassion for the prisoners “ then came the march past the victims two men were no longer alive .their tongues were hanging out swollen and bluish . but the third rope was still moving; the child too light was still breathing ….. And so he remained for more than half an hour lingering between life and death,writhing before our eyes.and we were forced to look at him at close range he was still alive when i passed him .his tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished”(Wiesel 65) . death

They were told they were going to take a shower, but they took them to gas chambers. Little did they know is that they would never come out of there alive. There were labor camps where the prisoners worked day and night to keep themselves alive. If they didnt work, they wouldve been shot by the German officers. There was horrible medical treatment, if any for some of the prisoners. THe way they were treated was horrible and inhumain. This should be resisted in any way in the future.

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

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

Jews were taken there by train, and upon arrival they were forced to give up their possessions. They were then herded in to gas chambers, or "showers" as the Nazis called them to avoid panic, where poisonous gas was released until everyone had died.

Once Auschwitz was fully completed it held twenty eight, two-story blocks. Each block was made to house 700 prisoners, but when put to use, each block held around 1,200 prisoners. When the camp was first put to use, the rooms had no furniture; this meant that prisoners had to sleep on straw-stuffed mattresses. Eventually the rooms were stocked with wooden bunks, tables, stools, wardrobes, and a

Nazis put people in concentrations camps because Hitler hated certain types of people. A concentration camp is a small place where a large number of people are held where they have to work and they are murdered. This led to a big conflict and a mass murder. They lived in bad conditions like wooden stable barracks that were very uncomfortable and very crowded small areas. The Jews had very bad sleeping conditions too. At the concentration camps there were many sicknesses that killed people. They were starved and weak because they did not have enough to eat. Jewish people were killed in many different disgusting ways, if they didn’t die from sickness.

Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish people suffered in numerous and various ways. Jews suffered as a part of the Nazi plotted “Final Solution.” The Final Solution was a plan during World War II to systematically exterminate the Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe. This resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe. The leader of the Nazi regime was Adolf Hitler, who believed there was a perfect race, which was the Aryan race (Bohm 4). The Aryan race had blue eyes and blonde hair, although Hitler himself was not an Aryan. Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish people suffered physically, psychologically, and financially.