Nazi Death Marches During WWII, Hitler ordered for all Jews to be taken to work camps, where they were forced to work in with little to no food. Most of the time the Jews would be making stuff for the German army such as, tools or clothing. The Jews had to have a strong spirit, or they would perish. But, towards the end of the war American troops invaded Germany, finding the work camps. Afraid of the American troops finding the work camps; Hitler ordered all work camps to be evacuated to death camps deep in Germany.
Liberation was a sign of the end of war. Liberation occurred in late 1944 to early 1945, just before the end of World War 2. Soviet Forces were the first to reach Nazi camps in July of 1944, those camps were Majdanek and Poland (Liberation of Nazi Camps). America liberated multiple camps in April of 1945 (Rice 88). Russia liberated many camps as well in January of 1945 (Rice 88).
The Nazis dehumanize their victims physically, mentally, and emotionally in the concentration camps. The Nazis provide very little or sometimes no food for Jews, which results in death because of starvation. This is used every day by the Nazis to dehumanize Jews mentally. The biggest challenge the Jews face is staying healthy with very little food. If any of the workers are not capable of performing tasks due to sickness or disease, they are most likely to get killed.
The victims of the holocaust were taken to the concentration camps by train. The families were taken from the homes, with no belongings besides what they had on their bodies, and could even be separated from each other. The victims in the camps were also known as the ‘Walking Dead’ because of their poor condition. As soon as the victims arrived they were treated very poorly. “Once the SS guards got ahold of the victims they were beaten terribly, starved, and even murdered” (The Concentration Camps: The Treatment of Concentration Camp Victims).
You were no longer identified as a person but as just another object with a serial number. Often the Nazi’s would do selections, where they would pick apart the healthy from the weak. If you passed the selection you were to go back to what you had been doing in the camp. If you did not pass you were sent off to be killed. The Nazi’s used several ways to kill people in
Millions of people that the Nazis considered to be imperfect were brutally killed in this camp. The Auschwitz concentration camp deported at least 1.3 million people to the complex, out of which 1.1 million were murdered in cruel and inhumane ways until the camp’s liberation by the Soviets on January 27, 1945. The idea of the “final solution” was implemented by the infamous leader of the Nazi party, Adolf Hitler. This brutal regime leader soon became, “convinced that his “Jewish problem” would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany” (History.com). It is difficult to find an accurate number of the people that were transported and killed in Auschwitz.
The victims of the Holocaust comprised of many different factions of people, including the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, trade unionists, and political opponents of the Nazis. (Vail 112). The Holocaust was a time in history when millions of people were persecuted in Europe by being sent to live in ghettos and eventually to be deported to concentration camps where they were systematically annihilated until the Allied forces liberated the remaining survivors. The Jews were forced into ghettos, which were described as quarantine facilities (Altman 19). One of the phony reasons they gave the public for sending the Jews to the ghettos was so that they wouldn’t have political or economic power (Altman 16).
Another method of killing the Nazi’s used was mobile gas vans. Guards during the Holocaust killed humans in vans by carbon monoxide in the back of sealed spaces in the vehicles, 152,000 people were killed in less than a year using this method. Each van could hold up to 100 Jews and it only took the Nazi’s a couple of blocks before all the victims would die. This method was slightly more painful in the death of victims because it took about 20 minutes until their heart completely stopped beating (Gassing Operations). As the war continued in 1944, around 7 and a half million Jews were forced to work.
Along with this the conditions were terrible and they were not properly fed and cleaned, and they were forced to do hard jobs and labor. As a result of this many died from sickness and disease or because they were just not strong enough to continue. The Nazis did not have a systematic way to kill the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Either they died from the conditions or they were killed by the gas chambers and occasionally by firing squad. Killings by gas chambers were much more effective because you could kill much more at once.
During the March, the prisoners did not receive food or water for three days. Because of this, many of the prisoners grew weak and weary until the point where failed dead. They were mistreated and abuse so bad that many of them was ran over by trucks and kill all because they were either too weak or felled behind the group. When the prisoners made it to the trains, many of them were forced to get on the train beyond capacity. They were packed so tight that there were standing room only and for those that could not fit had to walk the rest of the way to the camp.