Initially, Hitler and his armies built concentrations camps to seclude anyone not perceived as the ideal human being. Upon taking one step off of their transportation Jews immediately …show more content…
The Nazi’s took advantage of every aspect to having prisoners in their camps, whether they took away lives or put people to work. In the article A Tortured Legacy, written by Andrew Nagorski explains, “Auschwitz was both a death camp and a complex of labor camps, which accounts for a relatively large number of survivors.” (“Nagorski”) Auschwitz camps murdered million people, but the prisoners put aside that worked survived through the harsh conditions and ended up living a full life after. Having no empathy at all, the soldiers used whatever storage available, and when full, they used outside resources and compacted as many prisoners in as possible. Johann Paul Kremer …show more content…
That changed once prisoners latched onto jobs- in the kitchens, warehouses, and other sheltered places-which increased their odds for survival. Of the 150,000 Polish prisoners who were sent to Auschwitz about 75,000 died there. (“Nagorski”)
Although Auschwitz killed many, it also saved many lives, giving opportunities to work keeping prisoners out of harms way. Millions went through the walls of Auschwitz, it provided as a last destination for some, but for others it brutally took a never forgetting toll on many lives.
Lastly, Nazi’s doctors took advantage of the prisoners using them as test subjects for their own experiments. For war purposes, German physicians tested multiple scenarios that might occur while fighting. In the article Josef Mengele, by Michael Berenbaum, explains,
In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater potable.