Belzec Research Paper

Taking the lives of 6 million Jews alone, the Holocaust is one of , if not the, greatest tragedies in history. It is completely deranged that at one point in time, millions of people stood by and supported Adolf Hitler. Adolf was a man who stored so much hatred towards Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, etc., that he found it acceptable to kill them through mass shootings, gassings, and Nazi camps. Other times called ‘concentration camps,’ the mere idea of Nazi camps was purely wicked. Disease, forced labor, starvation, and murder are only a few things that were incorporated into these camps. During this time, Jews (and every other group affected) were absolutely dehumanized. Once they arrived to these camps, typically through compact trains, they were not only stripped of the few items they had brought, but were stripped of their names, families and friends, usual lives, and any dignity or hope they had once had.

World War II was a time of devastating and catastrophic events. One of the tragedies that occurred in this time was the Holocaust. It is estimated that over six million people were killed from Holocaust occurrences. The Nazi political party can be accredited with the creation of this horrible event. They were led by the infamous ruler Adolf Hitler. He believed that all Jews of every race were inferior to the rest of the world. In his mind, the only way to make the world better was to eliminate the entire Jewish population. In order to do this, he decided to set up concentration camps. These camps would feed the Jews a miniscule amount of food, humiliate them, and overwork them. One of the most notorious of these camps was known as

The living conditions were inhumane. There were wooden bunks three rows high and the width of a large bed. Three or more people slept in one “bed”. They could only sleep with one blanket, and because of this, many froze to death. In winter, it could get far below freezing at night. The Jews were also given a striped uniform which they had to wear indefinitely without washing it. They were fed small portions of watery soup and small pieces of bread. Within a week or so, the concentration camp inmates were nothing more than skin, bones, and a number tattooed into their forearm. Also, there was always the imminent fear of death. An SS officer could shoot any inmate without reason. Death was the norm in the concentration camp. Many people starved, died of illnesses, or were murdered by the Nazis. They didn't know if they would live to see the next

Over 11 million civilians were murdered in between the time period of January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945. These innocent people were murdered in various, inhumane ways such as firing line, terrible living conditions, gassing with the use of carbon dioxide and Zyklon B, and forcing people to work until death. The Holocaust is one of, if not the darkest time in the history of human life on Earth. Many people committed suicide or suicide by guard because they did not and could not stand the conditions they were forced to live in. Most knew what their fate was and when it came time for them to meet their fate, they would kill themselves or have guards kill them. Auschwitz was the main camp everyone knew about, but there were other camps that were unknown or forgotten such as Chelmno or Belzec.

The Jews were convinced by the Nazis that they were just being relocated, but they were going to the so-called “Shower rooms,” but they were really gas chambers disguised(Blohm 48). Many of the concentration camps were improper, lacked protection from the weather, and one was just a series of tunnels inside a mountain that the Jews were forced on to build a secret weapon(Blohm 28)

Many people do not think of the Holocaust as 12 appalling years full of unforgettable tragedies. The Holocaust is not normally spoken about every day, but the amount of pain and terror during those eventful years should not be abandoned. The Jews were always referred to as animals and not as human beings. Germans used many forms of dehumanization and neglect. If it was not labor and abuse the other alternative was the crematorium. Not only were Jews treated with such disrespect, but many of them were sent to the ovens to get burnt. The ovens were a place where Jews were forced to suffer through a slow and agonizing death.

Jews were moved to the camps to either work or be killed (Veil 113). The Nazis also wanted to keep the children, but only twins because the Nazi scientist wanted to experiment on them (Veil 115). The Nazis had a plan called the System of Death where they told all the Jews that they were going to take showers and clean off and the Nazis took them to a medium sized room where they all stripped down getting ready for showers. The Nazis would then put some Zyklon B pellets into the chamber where it reacted with the oxygen in the air and turned into chlorine gas and all the Jews were dead in minutes. They then would force some other Jews to carry the bodies to the crematorium where the bodies would be

Have you ever thought about what the Japanese population during world war ll felt like, or what they went through when they were forced into internment camps? Well back then or maybe even now people didn’t think about how horrible it would have been for all of those people in the camps, or they just didn’t care. No one should have to go through such an awful experience like that, it was wrong what the U.S. did.

These camps were called death camps and their sole purpose was the annihilation of any Jews that were brought to them. The gas chambers were disguised as showers. This was a cruel mind trick that fooled many Jews into going into the “showers.” Sometimes cold water would actually fall out of the spouts. The water only lasted a few moments. Nazis started using a gas called Zykon because bullets were to expensive. Mobile killing vans were sealed on the inside and had pipes running from the exhaust to the inside of the van. Inside the different camps Jews worked. The Nazis planned this so that the Jews would pay for their own deaths. Jews were transported from camp to camp by cattle cars, trucks, or what the Nazis called Death Marches. On these Death Marches Jews were expected to walk miles each day to the next camp. They were given very little food and slept on the ground. Some Death Marches lasted weeks. The reason they were called Death Marches is because many Jews died on these marches. (Rogasky, Barbara Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust) The Nazis had planned this all out. An entire state bureaucracy was created with the task of make sure everything went smoothly as they killed over 6 million Jews and 5 million other undesirables. Undesirables were homesexuals, POWs, Gypsies, and Poltical Prisoners. The Nazis developed the technology and

This was the first group of prisoners. The group contained mostly of political deities and criminals (Buchenwald Concentration Camp n.p). Many more prisoners followed after this day where most of them were humiliated, suffered, and died. Since there were so many prisoners held captive at Buchenwald they had three different sections to split up the people. The first section was called the Large Camp and this is where they housed the prisoners'. The small camp is where prisoners were kept in quarantine. Lastly, the tent camp was set up for Polish prisoners sent to Buchenwald after the German invasion of Poland, in 1939 (Purdy n.p.). Buchenwald Concentration Camp was very cruel to the people who were held captive there.

Around 800,000 to one million individuals were killed at Treblinka Death Camp from July 23, 1942 to October 19, 1943 in Eastern Poland; 90 precent of all detainees was killed inside of two hours of entry. The bodies were then taken by Sonderkommandos to the open cremation pit on a peak. The pit had iron rails bound in layers inside of it like grillwork, on which the bodies were burned. Jews were intermittently forced to enter the pit and filter through the fiery remains for any bones that should have been be ground. On August 2, 1943, the prisoners fought back. About half of the 1,500 detainees permitted to live in the camp attacked the camp ordnance after three Jews walked up to the two guards at the back entryway and stabbed them with their

Bergen-Belsen wasn’t just a concentration camp, it was used as many different things in the time of World War II. The stories of the people that actually escaped the prison were incredible. There were very few people that survived and most people died inside of Bergen-Belsen. There are even many memorials in honor of the fallen and the dead at Bergen-Belsen, as well as many other concentration camps around the world. Of course, the concentration camps are apart of national history, even if they were devastating. People back then were obsessed with power and that is one of the main reason for Jews dying in the concentration camps. Bergen-Belsen especially, is known as one of the worst camps for Jews to be transported to. Only few survived from Bergen-Belsen. One thing is for sure though, these events showed the true color and meaning of people being crazy with

“It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel had experienced this when he was captured by the Nazi and taken to the camps. Concentration camps were probably the most inferior place in the world. Torture did not begin with the camps though. The fear that the Nazis would come for them would eat the Jews lives’ out. Then, when the Nazi captured the Jews, they had to go through the transportation which was another type torment. The camps would then come last, the final destination where many Jews’ lives would end. During the Holocaust, concentration camps impacted the lives

Living in them must have been the worst experience a person could have endured during World War II besides being in the war itself and fighting on the front lines. Everyday life at a concentration camp were horrible. First you would be woken up at around 4 a.m. Then on to breakfast, which would usually be very small portions of bread and maybe some coffee. After breakfast you would go to roll call to make sure you were still there and ready to be forced to work from sun up to sun down. After roll call you would march to the yard to work. Work would include digging ditches or tunnels, often by hand, and often resulting in death because you could work fast enough for the guards approval with your hands and you would be shot. Work would usually be 12-14 hours a day, moving sandbags, digging, moving heavy stones, or even working in a factory. Factory work was just as horrible as working in the yard, being in a factory didn’t mean you had it easy. All work in a camp was very stressful, laborious, and long. All the work in the camp was done as fast as possible, and as hard as possible. If it wasn’t up to the guards’ standards, you would be taken away from your work and killed. After morning work, there would be a lunch break. At lunch, you didn’t have much time to eat what little, if any, food they gave you. A whistle signaling the end of lunch break would send you right back to your afternoon shift of work. The afternoon was said to be harder because you were more hungry in the afternoon from little to no lunch and such hard work. Men working would often faint due to the harsh conditions, and if you happened to faint, you would be beaten to death by the SS guards watching over your progress at work. “Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered prisoners” Elie said about the treatment of the workers in the camps. After another whistle sounded, you would be brought back from the yard or factories to the camp,

At camp they would work untill the Nazi’s thought it was time to kill them. During 1933 the Nazis started to establish a network of camps. They were concentration camps due to the fact that they were used to concentrate enemies and certain groups of people in one place all together. Not one was better than the other for the Jews though, they all were gonna eventually gonna get killed by either sickness or the Nazi’s. The camps were not kept well, they were kept dirty and nasty cause it did not make a difference if they were clean or not to the