What was Life in Auschwitz like? Essay

The quality of life on the Relief camps were horrible .Majority of the men working on these camps were broke and tired farm boys. These men were treated like salves. They would receive 20 cents a day for manual labor. A few of their tasks would include: widening a trail, putting in a culvert, or cutting and stacking wood. These jobs were very physically demanding and stressful on the body. The camps were run by the Department of National Defence, so the workers were under “army law”. So, the people in charge could say or do whatever they wanted. An 18 year-old who experienced a relief camp said “{We} were treated like dirt”. The only semi-positive thing about these relief camps were that they kept the workers well

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 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.

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 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

The first concentration camp was created in 1933, just a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. A total of twenty-two were created, and all together included 1,200 affiliated camps. The camps were found all over Germany. At first political opponents of Nazi policy were taken, and later Jews, gypsies, or criminals. Each camp consisted of barracks which were surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and guards. Imprisonment in the camp included inhuman force labor, hunger, disease, mistreatment, and random executions. Prisoners were forced to work twelve hours day, or even more. The sick, old or those who could not keep up were killed by either gas, or injections. Those who could endure

The sleeping conditions for jew were in terrible conditions. “Several hundred three-tier wooden bunk beds were installed in each building” (“Auschwitz…”) The barracks were highly populated with rats and other vermin. There were straw mattresses for people who had abdominal issues (“Auschwitz…”). To many who

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

The prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 110,000 by the end of 1945.” (Jewish Virtual Library, pg. #1) To explain, Buchenwald was liberated the year of 1945 which was also when the Holocaust ended. Forced labor was one of the things that the Jews had to deal with, meaning they were either sent into factories and work for the SS or they were sent to go build sub-camps. All the prisoners that were forced to labor were all young and strong men. The living conditions of the camp were terrible. The prisoners lived in places called barracks, which were beds made out of wood. The barracks never had mattresses or anything to lie on besides the wood. There were about 3 prisoners that stayed on one barrack. Most of the time there were no room for prisoners to sleep so you would have to sleep on top of people in the

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

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

People were usually sent to extermination camps if they were hiding Jews of if they did anything else disrespectful to the Germans. When they arrived at these camps, they were assigned to a barracks. The barracks were only supposed to fit three or four people, but the leaders crammed eight or nine people in there. There were three mattresses stacked like bunk-beds. All of the mattresses tended to have fleas or lice on them. The leaders of the camp only gave each barracks a few blankets so, the people would have

A further aspect of Survival in Auschwitz that reinforces the dehumanizing effect of the death camp on the Jewish prisoners is the constant presence of hunger and starvation among the prisoners. Food and its acquisition and consumption are a constant topic that Primo Levi discusses because it constantly occupied the minds of most prisoners. Levi states, "We have learnt the value of food; now we also diligently scrape the bottom of the bowl after the ration and we hold it under our chins when we eat bread so as not to lose the crumbs" (33). Bread and soup are the only things prisoners in the camp receive and whether you are served soup from the top or the bottom is of great importance. The prisoners would try to get soup from the bottom half of the vat because soup from the upper portion is mostly watery broth whereas soup from the bottom portion contains more vegetables pieces (33). The insatiable desire for food would lead prisoners to act in very animalistic ways. Upon waking up in the morning, prisoners would quickly make their beds and then run to the latrines urinating "while they run to save time, because within five minutes begins the

In the winter jews would get frostbite, colds, and pneumonia. Many people got sick because the camps were so crowded. Some illnesses that they suffered are, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, and meningitis. Some also got skin disease, rashes, and scabies that got infected. Starvation happened to most Jews because they didn’t get fed enough. They had tea or coffee for breakfast, watery soup for lunch, and a piece of black bread with a small piece of meat or cheese for supper. The bread they had for supper was meant to last for breakfast too. If the prisoners got too weak, they were sent to be

     These camps were set up along railroad lines so that the prisoners would be conveniently close to their destination. Unfortunately, many prisoners didn't even survive the train ride to the camps. Herded like cattle, exhaustion, disease, and starvation ended the long treacherous journey for many of the prisoners. On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Nearly 8% of the people did not even survive the ride to the camps. (Nyiszli, 37)