In 1940,in Oświęcim, Poland, a concentration camp opened for the prisoners of Germany’s invasion of Poland. Auschwitz, the main camp used by Adolf Hitler, was the single most substantial concentration camp built during the Holocaust and oversaw the casualties of over one million people, whilst even more were put to labor and tortured for “scientific reasons.” The anti-Semitism from Hitler and his followers consequently sent innocent Jews by the train into Auschwitz. By the end of Auschwitz’s use, one sixth of the lives claimed during the Holocaust were at Auschwitz. Auschwitz was not just a place where people were slain, it was far worse than could ever be conceptualized. To the prisoners there, death would have seemed like a gift. Of the survivors …show more content…
The iron fences were armed with guards who would shoot anybody who stepped foot in sight of the fence. The camp was monitored constantly to avoid anyone escaping to freedom. Prisoners of Auschwitz were kept on the brink of death and starvation. They were exploited for slave labor, with the hope that it would lead them toward freedom? At this point, death and freedom meant the same thing to them.
Prisoners were greeted with the phrase, Arbeit Macht Frei, meaning, work sets us free. This presented them the idea that working there would set them free. Auschwitz oversaw the deaths of over a million people from when it was finished and opened, to when the Nazi regime had ended. The people sent there were loaded in trains like canned sardines. Once they arrived, people were separated into two or more groups. The trains carried thousands of people to Auschwitz, and most of them were never seen again. If someone didn’t comply with Hitler or the guards there, that person would be terminated
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To the prisoners, this was their tragic and unfortunate reality. Death would seem to loom at the door every second of the day for them. What would seem like a rather normal day for the prisoners, could always be their last, yet they would never know until it was too late for them. Auschwitz wasn’t only a place of looming death, it was a torturous science lab, where humans were its test subjects. The excruciating and unethical experiments often involved testing medical procedures on prisoners. Procedures such as reattachment of lost limbs were performed at Auschwitz. The only people that even had a chance of gaining anything from the atrocities done in the medical laboratories in Auschwitz were Hitler’s army, moreover, that’s who the experiments were for. The lengths such doctors went to incredibly inhumane lengths just to support Hitler’s army for WWII. They collected data from testing in order to integrate the radical forms of medicine into the war effort. Most of the experiments were performed on twins and identical twins. Once the twins were seperated, they never saw each other again. Whenever a test subject died or was killed, that person was dissected for further information toward the war
They were then herded like animals into cattle cars, eighty persons in one cattle car and they were taken away. They were in these cattle cars for twenty four hours; they were not given any food or anytime to get out. They were living in their own feces. Soon they arrived at Auschwitz,
To commence, the people in power use authority to exploit their ‘captives’. In Night, Wiesel vividly describes the unfamiliarity of Auschwitz as he first arrives. The SS guards take this to their advantage by lying to
It’s hard to believe what atrocities have been committed throughout the course of history; however, it’s important to learn about them. World War II was an especially dark time in history when many types of people were killed by Nazi Germany. “Night” by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography in which Elie recounts his terrible experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Elie tells what horrors he had to endure as a Jew and how the Nazis made him lose his sense of being, as well as making him almost lose his faith. Prisoners in the camp were constantly being killed and burned in the crematorium and everyone who was not able to work either died by themselves or died at the hands of the SS guards.
Some of the Jews that survived at Auschwitz were liberated. Auschwitz was a killing center for the jews or others that the Nazis were against. Called the undesirables. Some punishments and executions they used were shooting, hanging, starvation to death, and the post. The text states, “The victim’s hands were tied behind his back and he was hung from a post so that his feet could not touch the ground.
Once the Jewish people reached the concentration camps, they were typically immediately separated by gender. Women and girls were almost always immediately executed, and boys and men would then go through a “selection” process, where the old, sick, and disabled–those who would be unable to work–were separated from their peers (“Auschwitz”). Wiesel had left his mother and sisters soon after arriving in Auschwitz “in a fraction of a second” with “no time to think” and continued onward with his father in disarray and confusion (29). Those selected to be unfit for work would be killed by being gassed, shot, or thrown into a crematorium to be burned. After witnessing human beings, notably babies, being sent to the crematorium, Wiesel “felt anger rising within”
As an adolescent, Elie is forced to bear witness and experience unspeakable horrors; things that no child should ever have to go through. Seemingly overnight, Elie and over six million other Jews are stripped of their identity, faith, and humanity. Starting at his arrival in Auschwitz, Elie realizes the world’s capability of cruelty as he helplessly watches hundreds of men, women, and children alike being thrown into pits of flame. Left in utter horror, Elie questions “how it [is] possible that men, women, and children [are] being burned and the world [keeps] silent” (Wiesel 32). Years in malicious concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald, result in detrimental physical and mental repercussions as prisoners are deprived of the most basic human rights.
Over the course of World War Two, the Nazis murdered over six million Jews. Killing factories known as concentration camps exterminated Jews and other enemies of the Nazis throughout Europe. Hitler used these camps to eliminate anybody who threatened the ‘perfect Aryan race’ that he wished to create. The deadliest camp of all was known as Auschwitz, and it is where a fifteen year old Elie Wiesel is brought in 1944. He remained in concentration camps until their liberation in 1945.
Also in the article, “Preserving the Ghastly Inventory of Auschwitz”, it states, “ ‘We are doing something against the initial idea of the Nazis who built this camp… They didn’t want it to last. We’re making it last’ ” (Donadio). This quote is important because it indicates that survivors ultimately had some feeling of victory.
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”).
At a tragic time like the Holocaust, millions of people were killed in concentration camps. The camp that started it all was the Dachau concentration camp built on March 20, 1933. During Hitler’s reign in World War II, the Nazis built a prison in Dachau out of an old factory. Heinrich Himmler ran it, but instead of prisoners, there were mostly innocent people, especially Jews. Dachau concentration camp served as a prison for Jews, and people who committed the smallest of crimes, but it wasn't just any ordinary prison, it served as a building for torturing and a mass murdering area where prisoners felt pain, loss, and scared.
During Nazi’s period approximately more than 300,000 Germans were put to death. This case is also known as the gas chambers technology used by Nazi in the war. These gas chambers were mainly constructed on the hospital grounds. There are different claims including Nazi’s argument, some of them which are mentioned in the books are: “1. Involuntary killings of people for medical reasons led to the
As they were starving to death even a sip of soup was worth dying for. They were not treated right which therefore led them to be beasts who would die for a sip of soup. Body Paragraph 3 Topic Sentence: Auschwitz was a camp made to torture and hurt Jews as much as possible, many Jews did not make
Thousands of Jewish prisoners were killed per day in concentration camps. The way the Nazis succeeded in killing this much Jews was by creating gas chambers and crematoriums. First, in the novel night, Elie Wiesel described how he witnessed dozens of “children being thrown into the flames.” Wiesel was told when he arrived to Auschwitz that “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney.
Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele” (History.com Editors). “Auschwitz was also a killing center and played a central role in the German effort to
Although, by late summer 1942 it was no secret to anyone in the Ghetto that deportations meant almost certain death. “From July 22nd until September 12th, 1942, Mass deportations were a common thing in the Warsaw Ghetto”. (Case Study: Warsaw Ghetto) One of the worst “Resettlement Operations”, ended the lives of almost 300,000 people. The Great Action was definitely one of the most tragic movements that Hitler ever ordered.