Auschwitz

Imagine leaving your family, your house, your possessions, and your life behind. You do not know where you’re going, or how long it will take to get there. You are cramped into a small space with around a hundred other people; some dead, some dying, some hoping for death to come. It’s hard to stay positive in a situation like this. You are on your way to the most famous – and most deadly – Nazi concentration camp. Its name is Auschwitz, and you are a Jew in Nazi Germany during World War II. Your future is beginning to look bleak. The thought of ever leaving this place is the only hope that you and those around you really have, and the chance of that is slim. As you finally arrive at your destination after two full days of travelling without food or water, you and the other people in the car are herded into two lines. One line consists of women and children, while the other is for the men. Women and men cry and take their last embraces, never knowing when they will see one another again. Mothers clutch their children close to them, whispering to them to behave, and trying to no avail to shield them from this place. Everyone is thirsty, hungry and tired, but most of all, afraid. A deep seeded fear begins to plant itself inside of everyone present at the sight of tall smokestacks billowing a putrid, indescribable smoke that seems to hang over everything around you. Upon walking a short distance, you are confronted by a large iron gate, with the words “Arbeit macht frei” or “Work makes you free” on it. Little does anyone know, what awaits them here will do anything but that.

Auschwitz, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is the best known of all Nazi death camps, though Auschwitz was just one of six extermination camps. It was also a labor camp, extracting prisoners’ value from them in the form of hard labor. This camp was the end of the line for millions of Jews, gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, and other innocents. Since I was young, World War II, and the stories surrounding it have fascinated me. I have read innumerable books on the subject, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Although, throughout all my research and broad understanding I have gained from this reading, I am still interested to know more about Auschwitz and the people that were imprisoned there. For example, what was daily life like for the prisoners? How d...

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...e size of the bodies, up to three corpses could be put into one oven at the same time. The time required for cremation...took twenty minutes" (Freidman, 32).

Zyklon B became a favorite of the Nazis because of its potential to kill so many in so little time. It was an efficient mechanism for murder, and thus became the most famous method of concentration camp extermination.

Writing this paper has really taught me a lot about Auschwitz (and World War II in general) that I did not already know. I got some valuable information that I had never even thought of beforehand. Although this is a very sobering and even depressing subject, I have always found it very interesting. A few questions that I have though, will never be answered. Like, How? and Why? The entire Holocaust is often something that people don’t want to think about, because of its depressing nature, but I believe that it is important to be educated on this subject to avoid something like this ever happening again. As Yoda says in Episode One of “Star Wars”, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to death.” I hope that the fear that the Nazis felt never returns.