Elie Wiesel's Life During The Holocaust

Elie Wiesel, almost fifteen-years-old, was sent to Auschwitz with his father because they were Jewish. He thought he was being sent to the gas chambers when he first arrived. He had the intent of hurtling himself onto a barbed wire fence to end his life. He soon found out that he wasn’t headed towards the gas chambers, so Elie Wiesel decided not to commit suicide. (Elie Wiesel, Night). Little did he know that life at Auschwitz would make him endure a pain worse than death. Elie Wiesel was stripped of his family, clothes, individuality, and life. He referred to Auschwitz as the “Antechamber of Hell.” (Elie Wiesel, Night). Auschwitz concentration camp was located “37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper

At first, the SS has prisoners did forced labor to work on the “physical contours of the camp.” (Holocaust Encyclopedia, Auschwitz). The first prisoners at Auschwitz 1 were German inmates transferred to this camp from Sachsenhausen, another concentration camp, in Germany as well. Auschwitz 1 was created to serve three main purposes, which most concentration camps did. The first purpose this camp served was to imprison enemies of the Nazis and German authorities in Poland for an unknown amount of time. The second intention of Auschwitz 1 was to have forced laborers to work on SS-owned construction jobs. The final objective this camp was meant to fulfill was to have a place to harm and eliminate groups of people that the Nazis discriminated against, such as Jewish folks. Auschwitz 1 is where SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele, a very well known physician, nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” carried out his disturbing medical experiments, along with other SS physicians. They conducted testson infants, twins, people with dwarfism, and sterilizations and castrations on adults against their will. These sick studies performed on humans took place in the hospital, which was located in Barrack 10, or Block 10. At Auschwitz 1, there was the “Black Wall.” This was located in the prison block, Block 11. Thousands of prisoners were executed on the Black Wall by SS Guards. (Holocaust Encyclopedia,

This camp already had a crematorium, but it was changed into a gas chamber that measured 835 square feet. Two provisional gas chambers were created from peasant huts. (Auschwitz-Birkenau- “The Death Factory”). In the summer and fall of 1941, Zyklon B gas was introduced to the concentration camp. This gas was used as a device for mass murders. At first, this gas was experimented with at Auschwitz 1 by the SS in September 1941. All gas chambers in the Auschwitz complex began to use Zyklon B after the success of the trials that took place at Auschwitz 1. (Holocaust Encyclopedia, Auschwitz). Zyklon B became the main killing method at Auschwitz. People walked to the gas chamber, not knowing that’s where they were headed and not knowing what was going to happen to them. People that were to be killed were put into a chamber and the doors were sealed shut. Zyklon B gas then was “dropped through openings in the ceiling.” SS guards witnessed the people, most of them innocent people, dying from this poisonous gas and could hear their cries and screams through a window of the chamber. (Wood 109). Eventually, the two provisional gas chambers were deemed to not be as large as the SS wanted and thought necessary for the killings they had foreseen for the future. Four new massive crematorium buildings were built between March and June of 1943; each consisted of three different