“Concentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Living conditions in these camps were absolutely horrible. The amount of people being kept in one space, amongst being unsanitary, was harsh on the body. “A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed wire, watchtowers and guards. The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk “beds”. In the forced labour camps, for 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. “The Holocaust is the most investigated crime in history, as has often been pointed out in response to deniers. Eichmann may be that crime’s most investigated criminal” (Sells, Michael A.). Adolf Eichmann was one of the head Nazis. He had a lot of authority in enacting what Hitler had told the Nazis to do. He was just about as responsible as Hitler was for killing all of those innocent
The living conditions in the camp were rough. The prisoners were living in an overcrowded pit where they were starved. Many people in the camp contracted diseases like typhus and scarlet fever. Commonly, the prisoners were beaten or mistreated by
The Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known. There were many key people who participated in this outrageous genocide however some get more attention then others. Adolf Eichmann is a classic example. Eichmann was a self-proclaimed “Jewish Specialist” and head of the Gestapo Department. Eichmann was responsible for keeping every train rolling right into the stations of the concentration and death camps during the holocaust. Now we will take a look into Eichmann’s childhood, life experiences, and his later actions to see what shaped into a man of hatred towards the Jewish race.
Imagine the worst torture possible. Now imagine the same thing only ten times worse; In Auschwitz that is exactly what it was like. During the time of the Holocaust thousands of Jewish people were sent to this very concentration camp which consisted of three camps put into one. Here they had one camp; Auschwitz I; the main camp, Auschwitz II; Birkenau, and last is Auschwitz III; Monowitz. Each camp was responsible for a different part but all were after the same thing; elimination of the Jewish race. In these camps they had cruel punishments, harsh housing, and they had Nazi guards watching them and killing them on a daily basis.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
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 living conditions are prisoners lived in several hundred three-tier wooden bunk beds in old barracks, due to overcrowding the basements and lofts were forced to be used, more than 700 people were set to each barrack, had no sanitary facilities. (living conditions, labor and executions) These poor living conditions were so disgusting and shocking, a bunk bed made for two holding around 5-8 Jewish men and women. (Holocaust, 2010) In some parts of the concentration camps jews had to sleep in barracks that were actually stables that were meant to hold 52 horses each. There were hundreds living in each of these barracks/stables. (living conditions, labor and executions) The mattresses that these jewish prisoners slept on varied from hard wood or straw on hard wood, things worsened once prisoners started to get diarrhea and the foulness of the smell from damp, and leaking roofs along with the diarrhea. Along with the foul smell came various vermin and rats that swarmed all the barrack spreading diseases. ...
The concentration camps were an important feature of the Nazi regime between 1933-1945 (Caplan and Wachsmann 17). The camps had harsh conditions and no regard for the acceptable legal norms of arrest and detainment adopted by constitutional democratic countries.
Ordinary men have the capacity to commit extraordinary crimes and on April 11, 1961, Adolf Eichmann, an ordinary looking man, faced trial for the murder of five million Jews. Adolf Eichmann served in the Nazi party as their expert on Jewish matters. During the Nuremberg trials that took place years before Eichmann’s trial, many witnesses testified to the control Eichmann had over the implementation of the final solution. SS Captain Wisliceny worked under Eichmann in Hungary in 1944 and he proclaimed that Eichmann said, “he would jump into his grave laughing, because of the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience, gave him extraordinary satisfaction’” (48). Also, Eichmann worked with the members of Jewish councils, and they claimed in earlier trials that he had a direct hand in the “Jewish Question” (49).
During the Holocaust there were different types of concentration camps where innocent Jews went to suffer and die. There were death camps, huge prisons and killing centers. During the Holocaust, the most famous concentration camp was located at Auschwitz. Systemic gassing of Jews began at Auschwitz in March of 1942. (2) It is unimaginable to the human mind that these death camps existed. Not only did they exist and operate like well-oiled machines, the amount of concentration camps is mind numbing which shows the determination of Germany’s destruction of Jews. The variety of camps which included: labor, death, cold experiments, and work related, to name a few, totaled 10,005. “There were 52 main concentration camps, which had a total of 1,202 satellite camps. Auschwitz, by itself, with its 50 satellite camps, had 7,000 guards among...
The Europeans had bad concentration camps. They would barely feed the prisoners, and would work them to the bone. “Before being sent to a camp, a captured prisoner of
The camps were most of the time too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. The food was largely made army-style food. Another extreme, if anyone tried to flee, armed guards who stood watch around the clock, would shoot them.
Prisoners wore suits with blue and white vertical stripes and were forced to shave their heads. They wore clogs that made them difficult to walk in the stony ground. The dormitory consisted of three tiers of long rows of bunks set two by two and each bunk was used by two men. The camp was built for forced labor as workers worked in 12 hour shifts. Forced labor included military equipment and weapon factories, stone quarries, and construction projects. Medical experimentation was present and performed by scientists and physicians. Victims were injected with vaccines that supposedly treat diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and diphtheria; this caused thousands of deaths. Most experiments were performed with homosexuals through castration and hormonal transplants to change them heterosexual. If inmates were weak or disabled, they would be killed with hazardous gas or phenol
The more and more I open my eyes and read about prison conditions the more I realize that they are concentration camps in the sense that a abnormal number of people are concentrated and tortured within its con...
Hitler and the Germans were not the first people to use a concentration camp, they are who most people think of when that phrase is said because of their dominant use of the camps. Concentration camp is defined as a place where large amounts of people associated with a political opponent or a minority are deliberately imprisoned (Merriam-Webster). This is exactly how Hitler and the Germans used their rendition of the concentration camp. There were many components to the concentration camp, especially the early concentration camp, and many components to the expansion of the German power that they contained.
World War II was a tragic fight that became too out of control due to several concentration camps. Not only were there so many camps, but there were camps split up into smaller sub-camps. Each of these tiny, terrifying camps transported millions of Jews from camp to camp until they eventually died off. The Jews suffered painful deaths and some were very slow deaths. Although Treblinka's camp killed approximately 870,000 people, Auschwitz was made up of three smaller sub-camps that killed 1.1 million people, therefore, Auschwitz was the worst concentration camp.
At the beginning of World War 2 in 1939, concentration camps became a place where millions of incent people were enslaved, being tortured, staved, and worked to death, all as part of the war effort. During the war, Nazi camps for “undesirable people” spread across the country like...