Holocaust Concentration Camp

Baaqir Salaam
October 10, 2013
English 3A
Killing Centers And Concentration Camps; The Institutions of Nazi Germany

In killing centers across Germany approximately six million Jews were killed, and even more were imprisoned in the work camps. To understand what killing centers and concentration camps were it is beneficial to think about what it was like to be inside of one. In killing centers there wasn 't much to see. The Jews or Africans or whoever was deemed unworthy of living by the Germans were shoved into a small room; some were told it was a shower and other were just pushed in. These were the gas chambers in places such as Chelmno, Auschwitz, or Lublin. Concentration camps however were a little different. These places put several
people in prison and made the work to fund the war. If the Jews or whoever was working there were found to weak to work then they were shot or had some other form of death e.g. left to die, punishments, poison etc. Random cruel and unusual punishments and tortures were bound to occur at any second. It might depend on a guard 's mood, or what a particular prisoner said or did. The German 's murderous practices, anti-semitic behavior, and torturous methods were all seen in the vile institutions such as concentration camps and killing centers.
Torture is an extremely volatile and evil thing.
This is what the Jews had to endure for over a decade during the Holocaust. There were several tortures in the concentration camps. One was the actual train ride to get to the camps. The victims were shoved onto a train and crammed until no more would fit and if there were any left they would be shot. The long hours of standing and no food or water took its toll on the victims and some died in the actual train. The doctors would also perform various medical experiments on the people imprison there. There was also a movement in the hospitals where doctors were encouraged to kill off any people with a mental or physical disability. In the women camps the prisoners were raped or sometimes the aesthetically pleasing Jews were kept in cages as some kind of sick pet. Sometimes they were bound by their hands or their feet and tortured and otherwise cruel and unusual punishment. The death marches were also a very intense style of punishment and selection. The SS soldiers and guards marched the prisoners to another camp or place. They were shot if they fell or lagged behind. Hence the fact that most of these tortures often ended in murders if just more proof that the Nazis had several murderous
practices.
The Germans murderous practices cut short the lives of many people.
The Germans had literally no reason to kill the way they did. They were just looking for someone to blame after the First World War, and Hitler gave them that. During the Holocaust approximately six million European Jews were killed and about eleven million total people were killed. The Germans had several tools in their toolbox to accomplish their task. They had gassing trucks. The victims were shoved into a hermetically sealed truck and then because the air was sealed off and the people inside suffocated. With the gassing trucks there were gassing chambers also. The chambers were used to annihilate several million people during the Holocaust era. In some places the chambers ran on exhaust fumes like the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The Zyklon B gas was used in Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Another way that the guards would kill were mass shootings. They would either make the prisoners dig their own grave and then shoot them into it, or dig a large hole in the ground and shoot the victims into as somewhat of a mass burial. Even the deportations would be punctuated with threats of death as shown in “The Last Morning” by Bernard Gotfryd when it says, “I noticed a poster reminding all inhabitants of the ghetto to deliver every sick or infirm member of their families to the only ghetto hospital. Noncompliance called for the death penalty,” (Gotfryd, 99). These horrendous actions were
pushed by Hitler and his increased backing of German pride and anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is the hostility or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group. Anti-Semitism is more or less what caused the war. Other factors like economic problems also helped contribute. It was the fuel for the fire. The fire that was German ideals and beliefs. It also is irrational. As this quote from “Conflict, Order and Action: Readings in Sociology” by Jean Paul Satre, a French philosopher during the Holocaust, it explains what anti-semitism is “If a man attributes all or part of his own misfortunes and those of his country to the presence of Jewish elements in the community, if he proposes to remedy this state of affairs by depriving the Jews of certain of their rights (certain rights), by keeping them out of certain economic and social activities, by expelling him from the country, by exterminating all of them, we say that he has anti-Semitic opinions,” (Satre, 124). He also explains, in the same book, how the argument for it is fragmented and flawed, “Indeed, it is something other than an idea. It is first of all a passion. No doubt it can be set forth in the form a theoretical proposition. The ‘moderate’ anti-Semite is a courteous man who will tell you quietly: ‘Personally, I do not detest the Jews. I simply find it preferable, for various reasons, that they play a lesser part in the activity of the nation.’ But a moment later, if you have gained his confidence, he will add with more abandon: ‘You see, there must be something about the Jews; they upset me physically,’” (Satre, 125). This represents the pure idiocy of some beliefs. If a person has done nothing to harm his fellow person then how can that person make the other feel anything? It is simple manipulation at its finest. Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic beliefs spread throughout Germany as a poison spreads throughout one’s body and quickly formed a tumor that became the Holocaust.
During the Holocaust the Germans executed anti-Semitic actions, torturous methods and murderous practices throughout the Holocaust in the forms of killing centers and concentration camps. Killing centers were places that the people that were selected were sent. They were sent there to die. They gassed them then the Germans burned the body. In concentration camps the prisoners were given work to do and noncompliance was punishable by the death penalty. In the world of death supplied by the German armada; the Holocaust was an eye opening experience for those who survived. In the end which was better? A concentration camp or a killing center? The opportunity to end it all, or a slim chance of survival?

Works Cited

Gotfryd, Bernard. "The Last Morning."Anton, the dove fancier: and other tales of the Holocaust. New York: Washington Square Press, Pocket Books, 1990. 99. Print.

Satre, Jean. "Anti-Semite and Jew."Conflict, Order and Action: Readings in Sociology. Toronto: Canadian Scholars ' Press Inc., 2001. 125, 124. Print.

"The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. http://www.holocaust-education.dk/holocaust/massedrapsmetoder.asp.

"United States Holocaust Memorial Museum." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. http://www.ushmm.org/.