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Michael Wayman

Larry Neuburger

English 101

8 May 2011

Research Paper

Death Camps

Chuck Ferree explains that of all the examples of injustice against humanity in history,

the Jewish Holocaust has to be one of the most prominent. In the period of 1933 to 1945, the

Nazis waged a vicious war against Jews and other "lesser races".

Ferree describes the camps were classified by countries, based on the 1939-1945 borders. The

Holocaust catastrophe during the years 1933 to 1945 was a massive occurrence. It began in

Germany and ultimately engulfed an area encompassing most of the European continent. It was

also an event that was experienced by a variety of perpetrators, a multitude of victims, and a

host of bystanders. Unlike the perpetrators, the victims were perpetually exposed. Furthermore

Ferree explains they were identifiable and countable at every turn. Jews and non-Jews alike, the

victims as a whole, however, have remained an amorphous mass. Millions of them suffered a

common fate in front of pre-dug mass graves or in hermetically sealed gas chambers. Although

the Holocaust is perceived by many to record the suffering of people of the Jewish faith, no

records on any aspect of the Second World War can fail to record that in addition to the six

million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered, at least an equal number of non-
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Jews were also killed, not in the heat of battle, not by military siege, aerial bombardment or the

harsh conditions of modern war, but by deliberate, planned murder. (Ferree)

(USHMM) tells the first concentration camp in the Nazi system, Dachau, opened in March,

1933. By the end of World War II, the Nazis administered a massive system of over twenty

thousand camps that stretched across Europe from the French-Spanish border into the

conquered Soviet territories, and as far south as Greece and North Africa. A large amount of

prisoners were Jews, but individuals were arrested and imprisoned for a variety of reasons,

including ethnicity and political affiliation. Prisoners were subjected to unimaginable terrors

from the moment they arrived in the camps; it was a dehumanizing existence that involved a

struggle for survival against a system designed to annihilate them.While the Jewish people were

in the camps, the Nazis established an identification system and prisoners were ordered to

follow them or else they would be put to death. Some prisoners were lucky and could have

some work, others they called kapos or work supervisors were the ones who said who lived or

died. (USHMM)

According to Michael Berenbaumthe first camp in the Nazi system, Dachau, opened in March,

1933. This camp was set up just five weeks after Hitler became chancellor. It was built at the

edge of the town of Dachau, about twelve miles north ofMunich, It was the model and training

center for all other S.S. camps.After the Nuremberg Laws, which meant the Jewish people were

outlawed and isolated from society. The European Jews were almost wiped out completely

killed out with only a small percent left after the death camps had ended.

Businesses were destroyed, synagogues demolished, and nearly a hundreds¶ of Jews killed in

ghettos, and death camps. The way of living in these camps were very poor, lack of food, no

places to really bathe, disease spread and several died from these things. The Jewish population

was murdered by the Nazi party beginning in the spring of 1941. In this time if you were to
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walk the streets where you lived, or ate in your own home it was dangerous if you were of the

Jewish religion. The Jewish people were completely different race then what Hitler had wanted

and he blamed them for what went wrong in his life so he wanted to eliminate the complete race

that was not of his own race.

He had set up six death camps which included: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka,

Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. These camps served one purpose and that was to kill the

Jewish people in Europe. In these camps alone Hitler was close to killing off all the Jewish

people, out of three million people in all the camps together and concentration camps two

million seven hundred thousand that¶s ninety percent, were killed in these death camps. These

numbers showed how effective that all of these camps really were. Hitler driving thousands of

people to their death Hitler did not feel bad at all for what he was doing in fact he thought that

he was doing his people a favor by getting rid of all these Jewish people.

Auschwitz was one of the biggest death camps were most of the European Jews died. When

people would arrive they were yelled and told to split up, as soon as that was done the children

and elderly were taken on trucks and driven around for about forty five minutes. The tail pipe of

the truck was shoved into the back of the truck where the people would breathe the horrible gas

and die. As soon as they seen that the people were dead the Nazi soldiers would then dump their

bodies in a ditch that was set up for the Jewish people. Some people would not even make it to

the gas chambers soldiers would line people up after making them dig their own graves and

shoot all of them and would watch as they would fall into their final resting places.

(Berenbaum)

The USHMM explains how Hitler came up with a better plan as he like to call it and have a

better upgraded place so Belzec was created. Inthe summer of 1942, when the exterminations

were at its height Hitler made this death camps with a static gas chambers, that looked like a
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bath house it even had a star of David on it so that people would not freak out when they saw

this room. As the people were told that they needed to go and clean themselves so that they

could be prepped for work. As soon as the rooms would feel up with people a very toxic gas

prussic gas would be released in the air and all that inside would meet an unfortunate fate. By

this time people were sending letters and trying to get others involved in catching and closing

this horrible place down, but no one would do anything about at the time people were scared or

did not believe such a thing was happening in their country. Belzec looked like a prison having

barbed wire on both sides of the complex with several soldiers standing and waiting for the

Jewish people with guns telling them to get out. There were little wooden stairs that led up to

the chambers. It had a hold up to seven to eight hundred thousand people at a time. There was

always a smell of death that was in the air at all times. (USHMM)

There was a dressing room where people had put their valuables, and little huts everywhere. A

loud speaker would come on and tell the soldiers what they were supposed to do when the Jews

had arrived. When trains would arrive people would be yelled at to get out and get whipped

while they were being removed. Soon after they were unloaded the woman and girls hair were

to be shaved in a little barber hut. Soon after that they were to get naked and wait.

A soldier would then tell them that they were to line up and to line up and go into the chamber

letting people know that nothing will hurt them and to breathe in so that their lungs would get

stronger, and in doing this it will prevent diseases. So after everyone was inside the gas would

start filling the room up everyone would be screaming to get out. Within fifty minutes everyone

would be dead and the soldiers would pull out the bodies and throw them in a ditch, and the

bodies were set on fire. The process would then start over again with a new bunch of

people.Chelmno was another death camp that the Germans used to kill the Jewish

people.Furthermore the USHMM explains what was unique about the camp was that not many

people even knew of its existence. It was a small park with a house in the front of it. At one
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time it was a park that had closed down. This old park was turned into a death camp that only

about five acres around. Yet so many people died here thinking all the way up till they arrived

that this place was here for the Jews to work. When people arrived though, it was a different

story.

Once everyone had been removed off the train they were told that they have to undress so that

the clothes could be disinfected, and so they could bathe for work. They were then led to a

bathe-house so everyone loaded up in a big truck. As soon as the truck was full, smoke from the

exhaust would be let in and all the people would be killed. Shortly after the cries were stopped

the soldiers would drive to the end of the camp, and unload the bodies in a ditch then they

would be buried. Later after that the bodies would be burned in a clearing. An average of

thousand people a day died this way with only short breaks in between.(USHMM)

scrapbookpages.com talks about how the Birkenau was a camp that was set up at the height of

the mass killings. It was set up in the spring of 1943, it had four gas chambers and up to six

thousand Jews were gassed each day there in Poland. Over a million Jews were killed there by

November 1944. The world first learned that the Jews were being gassed at Auschwitz when

resistance fighters in the Polish Underground passed this information on to the Polish

government in exile in Great Britain. On June 25, 1942, The Telegraph, a British newspaper,

ran a story about the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz. The headline read

"Germans murder seven hundred thousand Jews in Poland." According to this first report, which

was also broadcast on the radio by the British BBC in June 1942, a thousand Jews a day were

being gassed. The town of Auschwitz, which was originally founded by Germans in 1270

according to Robert Jan van Pelt, is now known by its Polish name, Oswiecim, and the three

camps are known as Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz. The Polish name for Birkenau is

Brzezinka and Monowitz is called Monowice by the Poles. In June 2007, the United Nations
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officially changed the collective name of the three Auschwitz camps to Auschwitz-Birkenau,

German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp from 1940-1945

. This change was made at the request of the government of Poland so that people will know

that Poland had nothing to do with setting up the camps or running them. The Birkenau death

camp and the Monowitz labor camp were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Union in the First

Army of the Ukrainian Front, under the command of Marshal Koniev, on January 27, 1945.

After the three Auschwitz camps were liberated, the survivors were on their own. Unlike the

concentration camps in Germany, where the liberated prisoners remained in the camps as

Displaced Persons and were cared for by the Americans or the British, the Auschwitz-Birkenau

prisoners from twenty nine countries were released to find their own way home. On January 18,

1945, the three Auschwitz camps, called Auschwitz I, II and III, and the fourty satellite camps

had been abandoned by the Germans. The gassing of the Jews at Auschwitz II, also known as

Birkenau, had stopped at the end of October 1944. The evacuation of the Birkenau survivors to

other concentration camps in the West had already begun in early October. The war is over and

now the Jewish people have to pick themselves up and start all over again.

(scrapebookpages.com)
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Works Cited

'


 

  .N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2011.

(Berenbaum, Michael.)

"The List of the Camps."
 



 
.N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2011.

(Ferree, Chuck)








 
 .N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2011.