Every war has its statistics and in WWII the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen was no different. In the first few months that Bergen-Belsen was established 35,000 prisoners died. At the end of July 1944 there were 7,300, December 1944 15,000, February 1945 22,000 and by April more than 60,000 prisoners. In the Bergen-Belsen Special Camp 2,400 people here were transferred to Auschwitz and immediately shot, gassed and killed, while 350 more suffered in similar ways. Also in the Hungarian camp- Ungarnlager 1,000 sick prisoners came from the Dora camp and after liberation only 57 of the original prisoners had survived. March of 1945 was a devastating month, in which 18,168 people perished. From January to April 1945 35,000 deaths occurred. At the time of liberation 60,000 prisoners were rescued but all 60,000 were in critical condition. There were thousands of bodies scattered across the camp; bare bodies, starved to death, laying in …show more content…
Sanitary conditions were non-existent, there was not enough food to feed everyone, and even the water was not acceptable for drinking. People were starving and trying to find a way to survive hoping that liberation was coming soon. They almost gave up and many just sat in the barracks waiting to die, because they didn’t have any hope left in them. At the time of liberation the camp prisoners had been without food and water for three to five days. There were few bathrooms and faucets in the camp and they were packed very tightly together in the barracks. The terrible shelter conditions led to an outbreak of many diseases including; typhus, tuberculosis, and dysentery. After liberation the British Army troops burned down the camp Bergen-Belsen to prevent the spread of typhus. Prisoners got weaker every day with nothing to eat, poor sanitary conditions, and no hope for life. Bergen-Belsen was a terrible place to be and prisoners were treated improperly with the terrible
The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org). Eventually, the “camp had eight sections: detention camp, two camps for women, a special camp, neutrals camp, ‘star camp’, Hungarian Camp, and a tent camp.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, p.165) It also held prisoners who were too ill/weak to work at the “convalescent camp” (Bauer, Yehuda, p.359)
Kaiserwald, unlike Auschwitz, didn’t have gas chambers instead they forced the Jewish to work in German factories. Auschwitz had a huge death toll around 1.1 million Jewish deaths. Kaiserwald ranked lower with around 10 thousand Jewish deaths. (The Holocaust Chronicle). Kaiserwald had a total of 11,878 prisoners in the camp. These numbers are small compared to Auschwitz who had 150,000 prisoners at any given time. Kaiserwald was open for a year while Auschwitz was open for five.(History & Overview of Auschwitz).
One of the biggest problems was sanitation. Clean water for drinking and bathing was rare and illness from poor hygiene or contaminated water was very common. Most of the camps were in tight groups and contagious diseases such as chickenpox, colds or the flu would spread over camp within
...perly, so everything went wrong. From their poor services, food, water, and sanitation, people started to die because of diseases which mainly broke out with Typhus. After the situations became bad, they separated the camp by adding another camp a mile and a half away. Then when the situations went worse, they changed the second camp to be a temporary hospital and rehab camp. But regardless of their efforts Typhus still spread, killing five hundred people a day. When this information broke out to people, it was seen as a living nightmare. There was a massive amount of people that started to die and people started burning the dead people’s bodies. They had no other choice, but to burn them. From the amount of people dying, the British army had to replace troops for bulldozers to move the thousands of bodies. After this horror story, many Jews immigrated to Palestine.
During World War 2, thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps. One of the most famous camps in Europe was Auschwitz concentration camp. From all of the people sent to this concentration camp only a small amount of people survived. These survivors all will be returning to Auschwitz to celebrate 70 years after liberation.
Over one million people were massacred within Auschwitz over the years that it served its main purposes;...
Auschwitz was a very brutal camp as soon as someone stepped off the train. Most people would not last more than an hour at this horrific camp. The largest killing camp is also known for the largest number of deaths. People getting killed, left and right. The number of recorded deaths at Auschwitz was reported to be 1.1-1.3 million Jews (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
In March of 1933 the first Nazi concentration camp was opened and by the end of World War II there was over 40,000 camps all together. While in these camps Jewish people were subjected to cruel and inhumane punishments
Three and a half million men women and children died in concentration camps, after they had been worked half to death in the use of slave labour.
Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945. It has been estimated that nearly half of the total number of concentration camp deaths between 1933 and 1945 occurred during the last year of the war” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in the world’s history.
As America became involved we realized our medical strategy was practically non-existent, so we copied France and Britain’s plans. Our new medical strategy still contained problems that were in need of fixing. Some of these problems included sanitation and blood loss. Sanitation levels were dangerously low, baths were rare (as was laundering) , and the drinking water was contaminated with who-knows-what. But, we did know that this was causing rapidly-spreading diseases throughout camps. When a soldier would suffer a wound or was operated on there was often a decent portion of blood lost. But fear not, for solutions to these problems were soon discovered!
The mental inhumanity was so bad that most prisoners thought of suicide and some even committed it. Along with this was the pain and torture the prisoners felt from the physical inhumanity which resulted in deaths of over 50% of the inmates who stayed there. The total effect of both of the camps is shown throughout the inhumanity brought about there. The fact that inhumanity was able to cause the deaths of just about 6,000,000 people shows how easy it is for it to hurt other humans.
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
They starved to death and many got infections that were not taken care of properly. They were beaten for the simplest things and they were used as experiments. They were taken into gas chambers where they were tricked into thinking that they were taking baths. They lost their friends and family they were torn away from their children, mostly they were never seen again. In the final months of the war they were taken on marches killing off even more of them.When they came to their old homes ( even though some ceased to exist) they were still hated they were beaten and killed by rioters. Many were lost, but in the end there were survivors people that made it through this torturous place. “ No tiger can eat me no shark can beat me... even the Devil would lose his teeth biting me I feel it ; I will get out of this place.” - Fritz Loehner.( Aretha)
When the U.S. soldiers of Cannon Company found the first concentration camp on April 11, 1945, they were unprepared for what they were about to see. Those that had survived the torture looked like skeletons from starvation, were disease ridden, and could hardly even move. And now, although safe from the Nazi’s, they had to face years of recovery and physical therapy. An even more unforgettable sight was the amount of dead bodies laying about. Since death was so common place in the camps, there were corpses stacked up, one after the other, of people who had died of starvation or