Extermination Camp Holocaust

Joao Neto
6B
Kathy Najafi
07/27/2011
Abstract Extermination camp (in German) was the term applied to a group of camps built by Nazi German during World War II with the express purpose of killing the "enemies" of the Nazi regime (Jews, Roma Gypsies, prisoners of Soviet war, as well as Polish and other). All this is part of the Holocaust and called Final Solution of the Jewish question, the plan to (in the words of Nazi) “German lands clean of the Jewish people”. These fields are also known as "death camps". The most common method of execution in these camps was by Zyklon B a gas that was used in the famous gas chambers, although many prisoners were executed by firing squad and other means. The dead bodies were destroyed in crematoria
(except at Sobibor – extermination camp- where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered. The Auschwitz was one of the most symbolic death camps at that time because was the one where healthy prisoners were kept alive and forced to become slaves rather than immediately killed. In others death camps were only used to kill people, nothing else.
One Symbolic Death Camp The system of death camps has become a society of total domination, only when healthy inmates were kept alive and forced to become slaves rather than immediately killed to reiterate, while the fields [Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno] served the sole purpose of killing prisoners. One can speak of the fields as fields of mass killing but not as a new type of human society. Most of the literature on the field has tended to emphasize the role of the camps as places of execution. Unfortunately, few ethical theorists or religious thinkers have paid attention to the highly significant political fact that the fields were in fact a new form of human society. Only when the death-row inmates were kept alive for longer, a new society was developed. It was in the Auschwitz extermination more efficient system, the gas chambers using Zyklon B mass attached to crematoriums in the same place, was first put to use. Auschwitz was also the most affluent society of total domination in human history that was established. Much has been written about the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor who used to meet new people who came and separated those who would be killed immediately and those who would be forced to work as slaves to death. This process selection was not the case in fields such as Treblinka because they functioned as killing centers. In Auschwitz, the camp served two apparently contradictory purposes; Auschwitz was a center of slave labor and execution. Given the nature of slavery as practiced by the Germans, only slaves convicted could successfully be treated as a thing rather than as human beings. Because not all deportees were dead on arrival, many more survived in Auschwitz than any other of the death camps.
Of the 1.1 million Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, approximately 100,000 Jews left the camp alive. Many of these survivors succumb during the march to the west or during the stay in the spring of 1945 in concentration camps like Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. Yet, thousands have seen the release, after the war and testified about her ordeal. And some did during the war. The most important report in time of war on the German genocide against the Jews, sponsored by the Refugee Council of War was written by two escapees from Auschwitz, describing the installation of extermination room in some detail. The Gentiles 100,000 survivors of Auschwitz, including the Poles, with 75,000, were the largest group, all testified that they could use the field as a center of Jewish
extermination. Concluding, I think that this Death Camp was a symbolic because was the one where healthy prisoners were kept alive and forced to become slaves rather than immediately killed.
The other reason to support this theory was that, only when the death-row inmates were kept alive for longer, a new society was developed. This was the main reason why this was the only death camp in which approximately 100.000 Jews left the camp alive. Because of this reasons, few ethical theorists or religious thinkers have paid attention to the highly important political fact that this field was in fact a new form of human society.

References

"Auschwitz Death Camp." Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota. Web. 27 July 2011. <http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/memorials/auschwitz/>.
"Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Web. 27 July 2011. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189>.
"Auschwitz — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts." History.com — History Made Every Day — American & World History. Web. 27 July 2011. <http://www.history.com/topics/auschwitz>.
"Auschwitz-Birkenau - Home Page - History." Auschwitz-Birkenau - Home Page - Museum. Web. 27 July 2011. <http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/>.
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