Auschwitz Concentration Camp Essay

”Feet sank into a sticky bog at every step. There was hardly any water for washing. The prisoners slept, six in a bed, on wooden planks placed in three tiers. Most of the beds were without straw pallets. The roll call held twice daily meant standing for hours in wet and cold weather with mire underfoot...no wonder that several hundred died everyday,” said Pery Broad, a soldier from the famous concentration camp Auschwitz.
Auschwitz is a well known concentration camp where prisoners were in constant fear and forced into cruel work and torture.
Auschwitz is a well known, sadistic concentration camp. The first prisoner arrived June 14, 1990 and closed 5 years later. Auschwitz was the most lethal camp of all Nazi concentration camps and came to be known as the perfect example of the “final solution”, Hitler’s plan. In the course of time in between its opening and closing, 1.1-1.5 million prisoners died there, Ninety percent of them being Jews. At Auschwitz’s peak, they killed 8,000 daily at only one of

the sub-camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were three main sub-camps, the prison camp Auschwitz 1, the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the labor camp Auschwitz Buna-Monowitz.
The prisoners held in the camps were forced into back-breaking work and excruciating punishments.

By 1944, more than forty thousand prisoners were working at Buna-Monowitz for various industries. One of the work camps forced the prisoners to make synthetic rubber and many war different supplies for long hours. They hardly ever were given breaks. A group of prisoners, war officers, were shot randomly throughout their work as a way to entertain the soldiers. When they were not working, the were being experimented on, especially the women. The women were used in many inhumane trials of sterilization techniques including taking risky and unhealthy medication that, therefore, made them sick multiple times each day. In addition to the women, the men were included in the experimentation as well. They had different poisonous items put on them to see how they would react. Furthermore, they were introduced to high levels of radiation to see how it affects a person in high

doses.
Right from the beginning, the people kept there were in a constant state of fear. To get there, ninety people would be shoved into a cattle car fit for 8 horses. They trip could last several days with people dying each day from starvation, disease, heat, or thirst due to the terrible conditions. Once they got there, they would have their hair shaved off and be forced into an old, dirty uniform. Next, they would be lined up for a life or death choice. The old, young, weak, sick, and pregnant were picked out of the line and immediately sent to death. If they were not sent to death immediately, they were sent off to the camps to work under terrible conditions where they, eventually, died of starvation, disease, or beatings and assassinations from the guards watching them. A few prisoners were sent to an area nicknamed, “family camp.” The people there were used as propaganda for the army to make the camps seem safe. Women did not get their hair shaved and they wore normal clothes. It was still not a good environment, many women were raped by the soldiers.
Auschwitz was the largest camp with the largest number of deaths. When it closed many of the buildings were destroyed and the prisoners either moved or killed. Prisoners there lived in constant fear and forced into terrible work and torture at this horrific concentration camp. This place with forever be a reminder of how terrible a human can be given the right circumstances and the wrong idea.