Camp Sobibor The first commandant of Camp Sobibor was called Franz Stangl. Franz got his experience in being commandant for the camp was the Christian Wirth in Belzec. At the time the Christian Wirth was a death camp. It was estimated that the commandant had 20 to 20 SS soldiers that worked for Franz. Feldhendler was second in command. A very brave man named Lieutenant Aleksandr Pechersky, was made leader of a group of prisoners that were going to escape Sobibor. Camp Sobibor was constructed in March 1942. A railroad was constructed going into the camp and a fence woven with branches would block the view to make sure passengers and other viewers wouldn’t see what was happening. The first transport of prisoners had arrived on April 7, 1942. Between April 1942 and October 1942 approximately half a million Jews were murdered at Sobibor. On July 5 1943, bunkers were built and to improve security, mines were places around the camp. In March, the biggest transport was from France containing over 4,000 prisoners arrived to the camp. Early in the morning, November 23, 1943, it was announced that the final liquidation would take place. The camp was closed down at …show more content…
More than 2,000 Jews from many countries would be transported to Sobibor. Once the Jews arrived, they were forced to write letters to their families to let them know that they had safely arrived at camp. The strongest would live and the weak would die. A survivor had said, “They mistreated us, they shot the old and the sick new arrivals who couldn't walk anymore”(The Sobibor Death Camp). The Jews that got to stay were carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers. One of the survivors said, “I polished SS boots as dying people screamed”(The Sobibor Death Camp). The elderly, sick, and invalids were told they would receive medical treatment, but instead, they were put into carts, be taken behind the Chapel, and they would be
GEORGE GINZBURG. George Ginzburg is a holocaust survivor. He was born on the 25 of February1923 in Zoppot Poland. His parents were Russian immigrants that escaped from the Russian revolution and settled down in Berlin. George grew up as a Berliner, but it wasn’t until 1938 that George and his family had troubles with Nazi’s.
They then handed over their valuables. After all of this, the Ukrainian guards chased the prisoners to the gas chambers. Some Jewish men were kept alive to be laborers. “One group of young Jewish men worked at unloading and cleaning the trains; another group sorted the property of victims, while a further group removed the bodies from the gas chambers. All of these men were subject to the selection process and themselves in danger of being sent to the gas chambers” (“The Holocaust Explained”).
On April 11, 1945, Harry J. Herder Jr. and his company discovered one of the many secret horrors of World War II that dotted the European landscape; the Buchenwald concentration camp. The battle hardened man who had seen his fair share of death and human suffering surveyed the camp with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Before his eyes lay human beings so starved they could not pick themselves up off of their bunks, children who had never seen the outside of the camp fence, partially clothed bodies and shaved heads. Shocked and disgusted, Harry J. Herder Jr. and two of his comrades then took a deeper tour of the camp. Eerie, and abandoned by the German soldiers lay the “medical rooms” with human organs floating in jars of liquid and the gallows where unruly prisoners were hung.
They were put into camps in the middle of nowhere. Their so-called “house” was poorly built, they had very thin walls, the house always leaked whenever it rained, they had to make their own furniture, the food wasn’t very good, and there was a fence keeping them in. Many people died trying to get out of the camps. Many innocent people were taken into these camps, a lot were even arrested.
Before this occurs, however, the Jews are stripped of all of their freedom, belongings, and much of their clothes. Instead, the Nazis view them only by their Jewish heritage. This removes every person’s individuality, as they are defined according to what they have. The manner that the people were transported was through cattle cars. This was a particularly harsh and unhealthy environment.
However, Jewish people in concentration camps and ghettos faced the most adverse conditions. They experienced contagious diseases, overcrowding, starvation, and torture. Jewish prisoners who were reluctant to avoid being executed were successful in launching uprisings within the camps. Some of the most infamous uprisings were Treblinka, Auschwitz and Sobibor. In that, approximately “1,000 Jewish prisoners participated in the revolts; Jews seized what weapons they could find—picks, axes, and some firearms stolen from the camp armoury—and set fire to the camp.
Anything is possible, even with these crematories…”(Wiesel 15). This quote showcases the absence of humanity in concentration camps. The Nazis valued the lives of the Jews so little that they threw the Jews into fires and gas chambers without any regard that those were human lives. The prisoners were denied of their basic human right, life. They were no longer humans, but instead they were corpses.
Did you know that eleven million people died in the holocaust? Six million of those people were Jews. The Jews were captured and taken to concentration camps because the Nazis simply hated them. Concentration camps were made to kill off all of the Jews. They did this because they saw them as a problem to Germany.
With such dreadful conditions, the Jews began initiating resistance and uprisings. Even though the prisoners knew loss was unquestionable, they fought bravely and certain. The Jews wanted the future generation to know that they would never give up without a fight. The Nazi officers kept watch of the prisoners every second; the inhumanity of the guards murdered the spirit of the Jews. Because of the environment of the camps, a countless number of Jews died every day.
The ones in the camps were called “undesirables” who were homeless, homosexual, criminals, political dissidents, communists, and Jews. Prisoners in the Nazi labour camps were worked to death. They had a small amount of ration. The prisoners who couldn’t work were killed and many died as a result of forced labour in the camps. Later on after the invasion of Poland, Jews over the age of 12 who were living in the General Government were forced to work under forced labour.
During the camps the jews had to do many things before actually doing. Such as shaving their heads wearing the same uniforms and getting disinfected. When getting disinfected there was “a barrel of foul-smelling liquid by the door. Disinfection. Everybody soaked in.”
World War II is said to be the worst conflict in human history. About fifty to eighty million people died all together. There were concentration camps run by the Germans and there were essentially two wars raging. The two wars were the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific, which was Japan against the United States. World War II went on for six years and would destroy more land and property around the world and kill more people than any other war before.
Have you ever wondered Why were the Concentration camps established? who went to there, what kind of things happen to them while there? And how many people died? What happen to the survivors? Let’s find out what really happen in the Concentration Camps.
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
Since no doctors, lots of diseases got passed around throughout the camps. The life of Jews controlled by Nazi’s was no life to live. Nazi’s treated Jews with the most ruthless, and often quite refined, cruelty. The Jews would not get fed good and did not get many clothes. As they arrived at camp they got there clothes taken and then received the striped pajamas.