Aushwitz Essay, Research Paper
: (1)
INTRODUCTION
The Holocaust is the most horrifying crime against humanity of
all times. “Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan
race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of
Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population.
He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme.” One of
his main methods of “doing away” with these “undesirable” was
through the use of concentration camps. “In January 1941, in a
meeting with his top officials the ‘final solution’ was decided”.
Jews were to be eliminated from the population. Auschwitz was the
concentration camp that carried out Hitler’s “final solution” in
greater numbers than any other. In this paper I will discuss
concentration camps with a detailed description of the most well-
known one, Auschwitz.
(2)
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. In the
early days of Hitler, concentration camps were places that held
people in protective custody. Victims for protective custody
included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies,
homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi
regime. “Gypsies were classified as people with atleast two gypsy
great grandparents.”
By the end of 1933 there were atleast fifty concentration
camps throughout occupied Europe. “At first, the camps were
controlled by the Gestapo (police), but by 1934 the S.S. (Hitler’s
personal security force) were ordered, by Hitler, to control the
camps.”
Camps were set up for different purposes. Some for forced
labor, others for medical experiments and, later on, for death/
extermination. Transition camps were set up as holding places for
death camps.
“Henrick Himmler, chief of the German police, the Gestapo,
thought that the camps would provide an economic base for the
soldiers.” This did not happen. The work force was poorly
organized and working conditions were inhumane. Therefore,
productivity was minimal.
Camps were set up along railroad lines, so that the prisoners
would be conveniently close to their destination. As they were
being transported, the soldiers kept telling the Jews to have hope.
(3)
When the camps were finally opened, most of the families who were
shipped out together ended up being separated. Often, the
transports were a sampling of what went on in the camps, cruelty by
the officers, near starvation of those being transported, fetid
and unsanitary conditions on the trains. “On the trains, Jews were
starved of food and water for days. Many people did not survive
the ride to arrive at the camp.”
Jews were forced to obey the guard’s orders from the moment
they arrived at the camps. “If they didn’t, they would be beaten,
put into solitary confinement or shot.” The prisoners usually had
marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them.
The sanitary conditions of the camps were horrible. “There
was only one bathroom for four hundred people. They had to stand
for hours in snow, rain, heat, or cold for role-call, which was
twice a day.” Within the first few days of being at the camps,
thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and disease. Other
people died from the cruel punishments of the guards; beatings and
torture. “Typhus, a disease caused by germs carried by flies, was
the main disease that spread throughout the camps. Even when
people were sick, they still continued working because they did not
see that sickness meant death.”
In 1937, 7,000 Jews were in camps. By 1938, 10,000 more Jews
were sent to camps. “Jews were taken to camps if they expressed
negative feelings about the government, if they married a non-Jew,
if they were sick (mentally or physically), or if they had a police
record.”
(4)
When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that
group were shot. Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily
hate Jews, but wanted to preserve the Aryan race, seemed to enjoy
making the Jews suffer. They also felt that slavery was better
than killing their prisoners. “Gold fillings, wedding bands,
jewelry, shoes and clothing were taken from the prisoners when they
first entered the camps and were sold.”
Surrounding some of the camps in Poland was a forest, that the
Jews who planned to escape would flee into. Before the escaped
prisoners got very far, they were killed. “When the Germans caught
a Jew planning a rebellion, and the Jew refused to name his/her
associates, the Germans would bring everyone from his/her barracks
out and force him/her to watch the Germans mutilate the others.”
The people who could not run away from the camps dreamt about
revolt.
Special areas of a camp were set aside for medical
experiments. One doctor in a medical unit performed an experiment
in sterilization. “He injected a substance into women’s ovaries to
sterilize them. The injection resulted in temperature and
inflammation of the ovaries.”
Joseph Mengels, one of the most notorious Nazi doctors, hummed
opera tunes when selecting among the new arrivals the victims for
the gas chambers or medical experiments. His women victims for
sterilization were usually 20-30 years of age. “Other experiments
included putting inmates into high pressure chambers to test the
effects of altitude on pilots. Some inmates were frozen to
(5)
determine the best way to revive frozen German soldiers.”
(6)
DEATH CAMPS
“The first death camp, Chelmno, was set up in Poland on
December 8, 1941. This was five weeks before the Wannsee
Conference at which time the ‘final solution’ was planned out.”
Usually, the death camps were part of existing camps, but some new
ones were just set up for this purpose. When the prisoners first
arrived at the camps, those sent to the left were transferred to
death camps. When Jews entered the death camps, their suitcases,
baby bottles, shawls, and eyeglasses were taken and were sold.
Once in the death camps the prisoners were again divided.
Women were sent to one side to have their hair shaven and the men
to the other. “They were all sent to the showers, naked with a bar
of soap, so as to deceive them into believing that they were truly
going into a shower. Most people smelled the burning bodies and
knew the truth. ”
There were six death camps; Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwitz
(Birkenau), Sobibor, Maidanek, and Belzec. These camps used gas
from the shower heads to murder their victims. A seventh death
camp, Mauthausen, used a method called “extermination through
labor”.
(7)
AUSCHWITZ
Auschwitz, located in Poland, was Nazi Germany’s largest
concentration camp. It was established by order of Himmler on
April 27, 1940. At first, it was small because it was a work camp
for Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. It became a death camp in
1941. “Auschwitz was divided into three areas: Auschwitz 1 was the
camp commander’s headquarters and administrative offices.
Auschwitz 2 was called Birkenau and it was the death camp with
forty gas chambers. Auschwitz 3 was a slave labor camp.”
“On the gate of Auschwitz was a sign in German which read,
‘Arbeit macht frei’, which means work makes you free.” Auschwitz
included camp sites a few miles away from the main complex. At
these sites, slave labor was used to kill the people. The working
conditions were so poor that death was a sure result. ” In March
26, 1942, Auschwitz took women prisoners, but after August 16, 1942
the women were housed in Birkenau.”
When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were met with threats
and promises. “If they didn’t do exactly as they were told, they
would be beaten, deprived of food, or shot. From time to time,
they would be assured that things would get better.”
The daily meals in Auschwitz consisted of watery soup,
distributed once a day, with a small piece of bread. In addition,
they got extra allowance consisting of 3/4 ounce of margarine, a
little piece of cheese or a spoonful of watered jam. Everyone in
the camp was so malnourished that if a drop of soup spilled
(8)
prisoners would rush from all sides to see if they could get some
of the soup. “Because of the bad sanitary conditions, the
inadequate diet, the hard labor and other torturous conditions in
Auschwitz, most people died after a few months of their arrival.”
The few people who managed to stay alive for longer were the ones
who were assigned better jobs.
“The prisoners slept on three shelves of wooden slabs with six
of these units to each tier. They had to stand for hours in the
wet and mud during role call, which was twice a day. Some people
thought the reason hundreds of people died, daily, was because when
it rained they lay with wet clothes in their bunks.”
In place of toilets, there were wooden boards with round holes
and underneath them concretes troughs. Two or three hundred people
could sit on them at once. While they were on these troughs they
were watched in order to assure that they did not stay too long.
“There was no toilet paper, so the prisoners used linings of
jackets. If they didn’t have they might steal from someone
else.” The smells were horrible because there wasn’t enough
water to clean the Latrine, the so called bathrooms.
When people were loaded onto trains to be taken to the gas
chambers, they were told that they were being “resettled” in labor
camps. This was one of the many lies told. It was impossible for
the Jews to make out which building was the gas chambers because
they looked presentable from the outside, just like any other
building. Over the gas chambers were well kept lawns with flowers
bordering them. When the Jews were being taken to the gas chambers,
(9)
they thought they were being taken to the baths. “While people
were waiting for them ‘baths’, a group of women prisoners, dressed
in navy skirts and white shirts, played very delightful music.”
“In Auschwitz, Jews were killed by something called Lykon B.
It was hydrogen cyanide which was poured through the ceiling of the
gas chambers and turned into gas. The S.S. commanders of Auschwitz
preferred Lykon B. because it worked fast.”
At first, there were five gas chambers in Auschwitz, the
procedure for gassing was as follows: “About 900 people were
gassed at a time. First they undressed in a nearby room. Then,
they were told to go into another room to be deloused, They filled
the gas chambers like packed like sardines. After a few minutes of
horrible suffering, the victims died. The bodies were then
transported to ovens where they were burned.” The gas chambers
were not large enough to execute great numbers at a time, so
crematoria were built. The crematoria would burn 2,000 bodies in
less than 24 hours. An elevator would take them from the dressing
room to the crematoria. “It took 30 minutes to kill 2,500
victims, but close to 24 hours to burn the bodies.”
Many Jews and non – Jews tried to escape from Auschwitz. Some
succeeded. Of course they wanted to inform the world of what was
going on. Those who escaped wrote descriptions of the horrors they
suffered. Information spread to many countries, yet no countries
seemed to do anything to help the situation. In fact, as the war
progressed, the number of prisoners increased. “In total, between
1.5 and 3.5 million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz between the
(10)
years 1940 and 1945.” Where were our brothers in America when
millions of Jews died?
(11)
CONCLUSION
The Nazis, under Hitler, organized the destruction of the
Jews. Why they did it is unknown. Perhaps it was because of a
history of tension between the Christians and Jews, or perhaps,
because Hitler needed a scapegoat for Germany’s problems.
People throughout history have been murdered; but never as
many people as during the Holocaust in such a short period of time.
1/3 of all the Jews in the world were eliminated. “The estimated
total is somewhere around six million. This number included Jews
from all over Europe. There were also 500,000 non- Jews
murdered.”
Hitler’s method of killing the jews and other undesirable
people was first by torture and then by plain murder. In the early
days of his leadership, he took away their rights as citizens and
then as people. They were treated like slaves and lived like
animals. After 1942, his goal was to exterminate all Jewish and
“unpure” people. Many Jews were killed before that date, but they
were a small number compared to the mass murdering of the
Holocaust.
” We Must Never Forget ” are the words that every Jew must
remember. By not forgetting, we are preventing another holocaust
from occurring. We are also letting the entire world know and
remember the millions of loved ones lost in the horrible killing
that we call the holocaust.
(12)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin
Watts, 1982.
Chartock, Roselle. The Holocaust Years: Society on Trial. New
York: Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, 1978.
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust – A History of the Jews of Europe
During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Reinhardt & Winston,
1985.
Meltzer, Milton. Never to Forget the Jews of the Holocaust. New
York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Rossel, Seymour. The Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1981.
“Concentration Camps”, Encyclopedia Judaica. 1972 ed., Keter
Publishers.
“Concentration Camp Conditions Reported Worse”, New York Times,
(March 7, 1940), page 8.
“It Happened to Me”, Sassy, (May 1991), page 24.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction page 1
Concentration Camps pages 2-5
Death Camps page 6
Auschwitz pages 7-10
Conclusion page 11
Bibliography page 12
Endnotes pages 13-14
AUSCHWITZ
CONCENTRATION CAMP / DEATH CAMP
CLASS 8-J
. Milton Meltzer. Never to Forget the Jew of the Holocaust. (New
York; Harper & Row, 1976) page 3
. Meltzer, page 5
. Yehuda Bauer. A History of the Holocaust. (New York; Franklin
Watts, 1982) page 205
. Meltzer, page 28
. Bauer, page 208
. Seymour Rossel. The Holocaust. (New York; Franklin Watts, 1981)
page 76
. Rossel, page 77
. Rossel, page 77
. Rossel, page 78
. Martin Gilbert. The Holocaust – A History of the Jews of
Europe During the Second World War. (New York; Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1985) page 127
. Rossel, page 86
. Rossel, page 101
. Bauer, page 219
. Bauer, page 219
. Bauer, page 208
. Rossel, page 79
. Gilbert, page 210
. Bauer, page 214
. ” It Happened to Me “. Sassy, New York. May, 1991, page 24
. “Auschwitz”. Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 1, page 854
. Gilbert, page 376
. Roselle Chartock, The Holocaust Year; Society on Trial. (New
York; Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, 1978) page 5
. Chartock, page 4
. Chartock, page 7
. Chartock, page 3
. Meltzer, page 130
. “Concentration Camp Conditions Reported Worse”.The New York
Times, New York, March 7, 1940, page 8
. Baker, page 215
. Baker, page 215
. Rossel, page 1
(1)
INTRODUCTION
The Holocaust is the most horrifying crime against humanity of
all times. “Hitler, in an attempt to establish the pure Aryan
race, decided that all mentally ill, gypsies, non supporters of
Nazism, and Jews were to be eliminated from the German population.
He proceeded to reach his goal in a systematic scheme.” One of
his main methods of “doing away” with these “undesirable” was
through the use of concentration camps. “In January 1941, in a
meeting with his top officials the ‘final solution’ was decided”.
Jews were to be eliminated from the population. Auschwitz was the
concentration camp that carried out Hitler’s “final solution” in
greater numbers than any other. In this paper I will discuss
concentration camps with a detailed description of the most well-
known one, Auschwitz.
(2)
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. In the
early days of Hitler, concentration camps were places that held
people in protective custody. Victims for protective custody
included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies,
homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi
regime. “Gypsies were classified as people with atleast two gypsy
great grandparents.”
By the end of 1933 there were atleast fifty concentration
camps throughout occupied Europe. “At first, the camps were
controlled by the Gestapo (police), but by 1934 the S.S. (Hitler’s
personal security force) were ordered, by Hitler, to control the
camps.”
Camps were set up for different purposes. Some for forced
labor, others for medical experiments and, later on, for death/
extermination. Transition camps were set up as holding places for
death camps.
“Henrick Himmler, chief of the German police, the Gestapo,
thought that the camps would provide an economic base for the
soldiers.” This did not happen. The work force was poorly
organized and working conditions were inhumane. Therefore,
productivity was minimal.
Camps were set up along railroad lines, so that the prisoners
would be conveniently close to their destination. As they were
being transported, the soldiers kept telling the Jews to have hope.
(3)
When the camps were finally opened, most of the families who were
shipped out together ended up being separated. Often, the
transports were a sampling of what went on in the camps, cruelty by
the officers, near starvation of those being transported, fetid
and unsanitary conditions on the trains. “On the trains, Jews were
starved of food and water for days. Many people did not survive
the ride to arrive at the camp.”
Jews were forced to obey the guard’s orders from the moment
they arrived at the camps. “If they didn’t, they would be beaten,
put into solitary confinement or shot.” The prisoners usually had
marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them.
The sanitary conditions of the camps were horrible. “There
was only one bathroom for four hundred people. They had to stand
for hours in snow, rain, heat, or cold for role-call, which was
twice a day.” Within the first few days of being at the camps,
thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and disease. Other
people died from the cruel punishments of the guards; beatings and
torture. “Typhus, a disease caused by germs carried by flies, was
the main disease that spread throughout the camps. Even when
people were sick, they still continued working because they did not
see that sickness meant death.”
In 1937, 7,000 Jews were in camps. By 1938, 10,000 more Jews
were sent to camps. “Jews were taken to camps if they expressed
negative feelings about the government, if they married a non-Jew,
if they were sick (mentally or physically), or if they had a police
record.”
(4)
When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that
group were shot. Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily
hate Jews, but wanted to preserve the Aryan race, seemed to enjoy
making the Jews suffer. They also felt that slavery was better
than killing their prisoners. “Gold fillings, wedding bands,
jewelry, shoes and clothing were taken from the prisoners when they
first entered the camps and were sold.”
Surrounding some of the camps in Poland was a forest, that the
Jews who planned to escape would flee into. Before the escaped
prisoners got very far, they were killed. “When the Germans caught
a Jew planning a rebellion, and the Jew refused to name his/her
associates, the Germans would bring everyone from his/her barracks
out and force him/her to watch the Germans mutilate the others.”
The people who could not run away from the camps dreamt about
revolt.
Special areas of a camp were set aside for medical
experiments. One doctor in a medical unit performed an experiment
in sterilization. “He injected a substance into women’s ovaries to
sterilize them. The injection resulted in temperature and
inflammation of the ovaries.”
Joseph Mengels, one of the most notorious Nazi doctors, hummed
opera tunes when selecting among the new arrivals the victims for
the gas chambers or medical experiments. His women victims for
sterilization were usually 20-30 years of age. “Other experiments
included putting inmates into high pressure chambers to test the
effects of altitude on pilots. Some inmates were frozen to
(5)
determine the best way to revive frozen German soldiers.”
(6)
DEATH CAMPS
“The first death camp, Chelmno, was set up in Poland on
December 8, 1941. This was five weeks before the Wannsee
Conference at which time the ‘final solution’ was planned out.”
Usually, the death camps were part of existing camps, but some new
ones were just set up for this purpose. When the prisoners first
arrived at the camps, those sent to the left were transferred to
death camps. When Jews entered the death camps, their suitcases,
baby bottles, shawls, and eyeglasses were taken and were sold.
Once in the death camps the prisoners were again divided.
Women were sent to one side to have their hair shaven and the men
to the other. “They were all sent to the showers, naked with a bar
of soap, so as to deceive them into believing that they were truly
going into a shower. Most people smelled the burning bodies and
knew the truth. ”
There were six death camps; Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwitz
(Birkenau), Sobibor, Maidanek, and Belzec. These camps used gas
from the shower heads to murder their victims. A seventh death
camp, Mauthausen, used a method called “extermination through
labor”.
(7)
AUSCHWITZ
Auschwitz, located in Poland, was Nazi Germany’s largest
concentration camp. It was established by order of Himmler on
April 27, 1940. At first, it was small because it was a work camp
for Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. It became a death camp in
1941. “Auschwitz was divided into three areas: Auschwitz 1 was the
camp commander’s headquarters and administrative offices.
Auschwitz 2 was called Birkenau and it was the death camp with
forty gas chambers. Auschwitz 3 was a slave labor camp.”
“On the gate of Auschwitz was a sign in German which read,
‘Arbeit macht frei’, which means work makes you free.” Auschwitz
included camp sites a few miles away from the main complex. At
these sites, slave labor was used to kill the people. The working
conditions were so poor that death was a sure result. ” In March
26, 1942, Auschwitz took women prisoners, but after August 16, 1942
the women were housed in Birkenau.”
When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were met with threats
and promises. “If they didn’t do exactly as they were told, they
would be beaten, deprived of food, or shot. From time to time,
they would be assured that things would get better.”
The daily meals in Auschwitz consisted of watery soup,
distributed once a day, with a small piece of bread. In addition,
they got extra allowance consisting of 3/4 ounce of margarine, a
little piece of cheese or a spoonful of watered jam. Everyone in
the camp was so malnourished that if a drop of soup spilled
(8)
prisoners would rush from all sides to see if they could get some
of the soup. “Because of the bad sanitary conditions, the
inadequate diet, the hard labor and other torturous conditions in
Auschwitz, most people died after a few months of their arrival.”
The few people who managed to stay alive for longer were the ones
who were assigned better jobs.
“The prisoners slept on three shelves of wooden slabs with six
of these units to each tier. They had to stand for hours in the
wet and mud during role call, which was twice a day. Some people
thought the reason hundreds of people died, daily, was because when
it rained they lay with wet clothes in their bunks.”
In place of toilets, there were wooden boards with round holes
and underneath them concretes troughs. Two or three hundred people
could sit on them at once. While they were on these troughs they
were watched in order to assure that they did not stay too long.
“There was no toilet paper, so the prisoners used linings of
jackets. If they didn’t have they might steal from someone
else.” The smells were horrible because there wasn’t enough
water to clean the Latrine, the so called bathrooms.
When people were loaded onto trains to be taken to the gas
chambers, they were told that they were being “resettled” in labor
camps. This was one of the many lies told. It was impossible for
the Jews to make out which building was the gas chambers because
they looked presentable from the outside, just like any other
building. Over the gas chambers were well kept lawns with flowers
bordering them. When the Jews were being taken to the gas chambers,
(9)
they thought they were being taken to the baths. “While people
were waiting for them ‘baths’, a group of women prisoners, dressed
in navy skirts and white shirts, played very delightful music.”
“In Auschwitz, Jews were killed by something called Lykon B.
It was hydrogen cyanide which was poured through the ceiling of the
gas chambers and turned into gas. The S.S. commanders of Auschwitz
preferred Lykon B. because it worked fast.”
At first, there were five gas chambers in Auschwitz, the
procedure for gassing was as follows: “About 900 people were
gassed at a time. First they undressed in a nearby room. Then,
they were told to go into another room to be deloused, They filled
the gas chambers like packed like sardines. After a few minutes of
horrible suffering, the victims died. The bodies were then
transported to ovens where they were burned.” The gas chambers
were not large enough to execute great numbers at a time, so
crematoria were built. The crematoria would burn 2,000 bodies in
less than 24 hours. An elevator would take them from the dressing
room to the crematoria. “It took 30 minutes to kill 2,500
victims, but close to 24 hours to burn the bodies.”
Many Jews and non – Jews tried to escape from Auschwitz. Some
succeeded. Of course they wanted to inform the world of what was
going on. Those who escaped wrote descriptions of the horrors they
suffered. Information spread to many countries, yet no countries
seemed to do anything to help the situation. In fact, as the war
progressed, the number of prisoners increased. “In total, between
1.5 and 3.5 million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz between the
(10)
years 1940 and 1945.” Where were our brothers in America when
millions of Jews died?
(11)
CONCLUSION
The Nazis, under Hitler, organized the destruction of the
Jews. Why they did it is unknown. Perhaps it was because of a
history of tension between the Christians and Jews, or perhaps,
because Hitler needed a scapegoat for Germany’s problems.
People throughout history have been murdered; but never as
many people as during the Holocaust in such a short period of time.
1/3 of all the Jews in the world were eliminated. “The estimated
total is somewhere around six million. This number included Jews
from all over Europe. There were also 500,000 non- Jews
murdered.”
Hitler’s method of killing the jews and other undesirable
people was first by torture and then by plain murder. In the early
days of his leadership, he took away their rights as citizens and
then as people. They were treated like slaves and lived like
animals. After 1942, his goal was to exterminate all Jewish and
“unpure” people. Many Jews were killed before that date, but they
were a small number compared to the mass murdering of the
Holocaust.
” We Must Never Forget ” are the words that every Jew must
remember. By not forgetting, we are preventing another holocaust
from occurring. We are also letting the entire world know and
remember the millions of loved ones lost in the horrible killing
that we call the holocaust.
(12)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin
Watts, 1982.
Chartock, Roselle. The Holocaust Years: Society on Trial. New
York: Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, 1978.
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust – A History of the Jews of Europe
During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Reinhardt & Winston,
1985.
Meltzer, Milton. Never to Forget the Jews of the Holocaust. New
York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Rossel, Seymour. The Holocaust. New York