The life of a prisoner was tough. The life of a prisoner was harsh. They had no respect. I think I could’ve survived a day living in a concentration camp. Do you think you could? This passage is about the daily life of a prisoner in a concentration camp. This is your chance for you to read the struggle.
The SS guards woke up the prisoners. The SS guards were short for Schutzstaffel. (History.com Staff) These guards started out as guards for Adolf Hitler and other Party Leaders. Then they were made police officers. It finally came down to them being concentration camp guards. Although you had SS guards some guards weren't. They were known as Kapos. (Gary M. Grobman) Kapos are prisoners that had been chosen by the Nazi´s. They help to keep the prisoners in order but that doesn’t mean they got out of the normal daily routine. You were still a prisoner. They get up and put their shoes on and
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make their bed. After making their beds they ran to the showers in the barrack. The bathroom facilities were small. There were thousands of prisoners who had to share toiletries. The toiletries were often just a long piece of wood over a trough with a tube running into a sewer. The long piece of wood had one hundred or more holes cut into it with no privacy for the prisoners to do their business. When the prisoners took their showers they often took them in groups of five or more so other people could get in and out faster. The showers were in a open room with no roof. The shower spouts were hanging over the side of the wall. You stood on concrete with a drain underneath you. Again no privacy or cover from the harsh weather conditions. So when you are done with your shower you got dressed. They wore the same dirty clothes for weeks which led into months at a time. (Primo Levi) So then you grab your dish and head to the breakfast line. The breakfast line was often in the center of the concentration camp. The line was miles long it usually depended on how many prisoners the camp had to see how long the line would be. If you had no dish you aren’t fed. The guards gave you watery soup with no taste, imitation coffee, and one peice of bread. While they were getting their food the guards would have a little bit of fun. They would ruin the food they were giving them and push and shove. So the prisoners would risk punishment of wasting food. (Extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp) Next is the Appell or morning roll call. The prisoners would line up in rows of ten. Even the prisoners who died that night would be included in the roll call. You had to stand at attention even in the blaring cold, rain, and heat. The clothes did not protect them from the weather and was very thin. Some would catch colds and die the next few days and others would die during the roll call itself. After the roll call the prisoners that had died that night and the prisoners who died during the roll call were taken to the crematories. A crematory is a place where bodies are turned into ashes. So the guards would take the bodies to the crematories to be burned. Also while the bodies would be burned it would give off an awful smell that people could smell for miles. (Extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp) Next they join their work team. Some prisoners would receive a tool such as; a shovel, a pickaxe, or etc. but if not they used their hands. They worked 12-14 hours at a time. then they go on lunch break. They received the same watery soup and if they had bread left from breakfast they could eat it as well. If a person ran out of strength and collapsed they would kill him and then take him back to the evening roll call. When the SS guards whistle they go back to the camp and stand at attention for the evening roll call. During roll call if someone tries to escape the rest of the prisoners will stand at attention and when the prisoner is caught he will be hung. They start over on the roll call which could take hours at a time. Then the SS guards would have all the prisoners walk pass the gallows as a warning. The gallows was a place to hang criminals or people who had broken the law. These were used since 1892 when Cheyanne architect James P. Julian invented them. (Extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp) So when the evening roll call was over the prisoners walked to dinner.
They are given the same watery soup that they received at lunch. When dinner is over the prisoners return to their barracks. A barrack was a room with beds for a mass number of people. The prisoners slept on straw beds. There were five prisoners to a bunk with just one blanket. The barrack is not heated. If one prisoner moves all five have to move in the same direction. It goes in the same cycle the next day. (Extract from the trial of Anton Kaindl, former commandant of Sachsenhausen Death Camp)
So the life of a Jew or prisoner had a very rough life living in a concentration camp. Could you imagine the pain that the guards went through? They had to watch people die and suffer. But they didn´t know what was going on at the time so they just done it so they could be paid. But this topic has taught me a lot about what the jews and other religious groups had to go through. So the Jews and other groups went through a lot but this was a huge time in history but I am very glad that I could be apart of the
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There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
Dachau and its sub camps were awful places in general, but living as a prisoner in these camps was even worse, just as the marches were. The physical characteristics that made up Dachau and its sub camps were horrifying. The prisoners that had to face the extreme conditions of camps were certainly not oblivious to everything that was happening. Marches were a significant part of prisoners’ lives during the later parts of World War II. Lives of prisoners during World War II were horrendous throughout. This was the life Max most likely endured after he left th...
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
middle of paper ... ... Life in Auschwitz was definitely not what many people thought it was. Life was hard, housing was rough, the guards were mean and brutal and the different things that could happen to you were terrifying. One day in there would have killed most people and they lived like that for years.
These treatments caused physical and psychological changes in these innocent prisoners. Prisoners at night had to undergo harsh treatments that left them acting and thinking like animals. Dehumanization. The. The story begins with Eliezer, a young Jewish boy, describing his life in a concentration camp.
The Holocaust existed as an actual living nightmare for the prisoners, as they suffered through a period of endless tragedies.With the Nazi regime gradually advancing in power in the 1930s, the lives of the Jewish population were submerging into danger. Due to the belief of “racial superiority” the Nazis had, they developed the Holocaust to exterminate those who were viewed as social threats. Prisoners were abused physically and psychologically, as the sight of dead corpses became a mundane picture. As the conditions were gradually getting worse, people could no longer see a light of escape. This can best be exhibited in three pieces of literature. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the author writes the book from his personal experiences being trapped
“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
Later on, the Gustapo, police, had found them, and they were sent to a camp. It was a mild camp, a mere waypoint. There was food, schools, and alright barracks. They were then selected because of their criminal status to go on to Aushowitz, an execution camp. Men and Women were seperated whenever they first got to the camp. Then the elderly and children were divided out. Those people, the ones who couldn't work, were sent to the gad chambers to be killed.It wasn't long before Anne and Margot contacted Scabbies, a contagious disease that slowly eats away at the skin infected. Once it was apparent that they were sick, Anne and Margot were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Mrs. Frank was left alone at Aushowitz. She died soon after. To put it simply, she was strucken with grief. Bergen-Belsen also housed Anne's frien...
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...
No one understands such a dreadful experience as the Holocaust without shifting in the way you were before. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the author defines his suffering at the hands of Nazis. Taken with his family in 1944, they were directed to Auschwitz to come before the dishonorable selection. There, Elie parted from his mom and sister leaving him with his father who was too busy to spend any time with his son before the camp. Being under the Nazis' control, Elie and his father moved to several camps. The Nazi command “deprived Elie...of the desire to live..., which murdered his God and soul and turned my dreams to dust” (32).
Living conditions for Nazi prisoners were over crowded. They had to sleep in unsanitary wooden and brick bunks with several others. Prisoners were given a curtain amount of time to use the facilities with no privacy. With little water they had to clean themselves the inmates lived in constant filth. The Nazi’s didn’t care how bad the weather was, the prisoners had to wait long hours during rolls call. Even the dead had to present during roll call. After roll call prisoners were marched to where they would be working at for the day. Some worked in factories, while others worked outside. Hours later they were marched to camp for another roll call.
At first, Nazis, local police, etc. would capture anyone who would criticize the Nazis. These people included, church leaders, communists, and socialists. The Nazis would throw them into local prisons to keep them confined. The Nazis soon realized that this arrangement was not working so well. They came up with a new resolution which was to build large, strong-minded camps in order to hold the thousands of prisoners restrained. Soon, the prisoners were substantially concerted into one area and Nazi’s called it the first “concentration camps” (theholocaustexplained.org). The living conditions in the camps were unbearable (fcit.usf.edu). Eventually, the Nazis extended all over Europe, constructing about 20,000 more camps but of all numerous types. These comprised more conc...
Solitary confinement is a penal tactic used on inmates who pose a threat to themselves or other inmates. Solitary confinement is type of segregated prison in which prisoners are held in their cell for 22-24 hours every day. If they are allowed to leave their cell, they will silently walk shackled and in between two guards. They can only leave for showers or exercise. Their exercise and shower are always done alone and inside. They can exercise in fenced in yards surrounded by concrete. Solitary confinement is either used as a punishment for prison behaviors, a protection method for targeted inmates, or a place to keep prisoners who are a threat to the general prison population. Many prisoners are put in Administrative Segregation for their protection. Many prisoners in this type of segregation are teenagers, homosexuals, and mentally ill prisoners. Many mentally ill prisoners are sent to solitary confinement because there are not rehabilitation services available, and prison officials have run out of options (Shalev, 2008, p [1-2]). Solitary confinement is a convenient method for prison systems, but the detrimental effects on inmates make it an unsuitable option for inmate control.
For most people, survival is just a matter of putting food on the table, making sure that the house payment is in on time, and remembering to put on that big winter coat. Prisoners in the holocaust did not have to worry about such things. Their food, cloths, and shelter were all provided for them. Unfortunately, there was never enough food, never sufficient shelter, and the cloths were never good enough. The methods of survival portrayed in the novels Maus by Art Spieglmen and Night by Elie Wiesel are distinctly different, but undeniably similar.