The Horrors of the Holocaust

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The Horrors of the Holocaust

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish society.

The camps were divided into four basic categories: the four killing centers, the official concentration camps, the official reception and holding center, and a unique fortress town at Theresienstadt.2 Obviously, the killing centers had the greatest death rate. They "were only killing centers – they had no other function. The prisoners there did not die on the way to death—they were killed".3 The four killing centers were Chlemo, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Chlemo did not have crematories; they used the woods for mass graves. Belzec used diesel-run gas chambers, but they took a long time and were not very efficient. Sobibor also made use of gas chambers and mass graves. The most efficient of all the killing centers was Treblinka. Treblinka took note of the other camps mistakes and became quite an efficient killing center. Treblinka was able to destroy one million humans in a matter of twelve months.4 The official concentration camps were divided into labor/extermination complexes and...

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2. Feig, 26.

3. Feig, 28.

4. Feig, 30.

5. Feig, 26.

6. Feig, 32.

7. Feig, 31.

8. Feig, 26.

9. Feig, 24.

10. Feig, 23.

11. Feig, 31.

12. Feig, 31.

13. Feig, 24.

14. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second

World War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1986), 57.

15. "What the Camps Were Like, Told Through the Eyes of Piople Who Suffered Through

Them," The Holocaust: A Tragic Legacy, Online, ThinkQuest Holocaust Team,

Internet, 25 Oct. 1998, Available World Wide Web:

http://library.advanced.org/12663/survivors/witness.html.

16. "What the Camps Were Like."

17. Elie Wiesel, Night, (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 54.

18. Wiesel, 52.

19. Feig, 31.

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