Summary: German Concentration Camps

“In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die” Elie Wiesel. Concentration Camps are specific places in which individuals are detained or confined usually under harsh conditions. They were used to hold political and religious enemies of the Nazi party throughout most of WWII and a majority of the camps were in Poland. They held Jews and various religious groups prisoner. The horrific acts committed in concentration camps defy reason and negatively impacted the lives of millions of innocent people. German concentration camps were first created in 1933 to detain political opponents of the Nazi party. Nazi Germans eventually began to imprison
Jews and other religious groups in the occupied areas. In 1938 the SS (German Soldiers) began to utilize the available labor for economic profit. The amount of concentration camps continued to increase throughout all of the German occupied countries, murdering millions all the while creating profit for the German empire. Millions of innocent people fell victim to the heinous deeds that manifested themselves at concentration camps such as Auschwitz; only one of countless killing centers and forced-labor camps. Prisoners in the concentration camps were considered pests and lived in horrific conditions not meant for any living creature, consequently they walking skeletons because of the little food that they were given.
The prisoners involuntarily lived in their own waste and excrement because of the lack of a specific area to relieve themselves; there was not any kind of insulation in their living quarters to keep them warm at night for they slept in barns or crudely fashioned wood or brick barracks. They often had to work in factories for many hours with no breaks. The intense labor along with the extreme malnutrition caused the prisoners to become catabolic, which is when the body begins to target muscle due to a lack of calories. The prisoners often carried diseases that they contracted from other people and became distributors of them as they moved throughout the
camps. There were numerous methods of mass murder devised by the Nazis as an attempt to decrease the population of Jews and other prisoners.
The earliest method conducted by the Nazis was execution by gunfire, but it was ruled to be inefficient and psychologically traumatizing for the soldiers committing the act. The Nazis regularly used Carbon Monoxide poisoning in various fashions to murder the prisoners of the camps. Carbon Monoxide poisoning was commonly used throughout the war in transport trains and vehicles so that the deceased prisoners could be sent to crematoriums or mass burial sites when they arrived at their destination. Prisoners were killed in gas chambers by extremely toxic gasses created from chemicals causing them to asphyxiate from the lack of oxygen. One of the toxic gasses was produced by pellets of the pesticide Zyklon B after it was heated and exposed to the correct environment. Many other camps such as Auschwitz had multiple killing centers within their camps such as gassing chambers and crematoriums. The Soviet Union was among the first to liberate a concentration camp towards the end of the war. They liberated the Majdanek camp in Poland and many other killing centers were soon overrun following the latter part of WWII. The concentration camps began to be liberated by the allied forces in early 1944. After liberation many prisoners began to die from malnutrition and diseases that they had contracted while they were imprisoned in the camps. Many
prisoners family did not make survive the war, so they no longer had a place to live after they were freed so they continued to live in the camps. Countless barbaric acts were committed against the prisoners in concentration camps, and millions of prisoners did not survive because of the harsh conditions, but luck is what kept most survivors alive. Sadly over 9 million innocent people perished in concentration camps because of the Nazis and their atrocious acts against humanity, but thousands of people are alive today because of the brave men and women who risked their lives during WWII. “I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains” Anne Frank.