Concentration Camps
A concentration camp is where prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and political prisoners are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions, or place or situation characterized by extremely harsh conditions. The first were established in 1933 for confinement of opponents of the Nazi Party. The supposed opposition soon included all Jews, Gypsies, and certain other groups. By 1939 there were six camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Ravensbruck.
Auschwitz
Auschwitz, or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is the best-known of all Nazi death camps, though Auschwitz was just one of six extermination camps. It was also a labor concentration camp, extracting ...
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to both the greatest number of forced laborers and deaths.
The history of the camp began on April 27, 1940 when Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, ordered the construction of the camp in north-east Silesia, a region captured by the Nazis in September 1939. The camp was built by three-hundred Jewish prisoners from the local town of Oswiecim and its surrounding area. In June of 1940 the camp opened for Polish political prisoners. By 1941 there were about 11,000 prisoners, most of whom were Polish. From May 1940 to the end of 1943, Rudolf Hess was head commander of Auschwitz. Under his leadership, Auschwitz quickly became known as the harshest prison camp in the Nazi regime. Polish prisoners were forced to stand at attention for roll call for hours on end naked in the cold, snowy tundra of Polish winter. Following its first year of existence, Heinrich Himmler visited Auschwitz and told Hess that its labor resource was to be expanded to 100,000 prisoners, making it ...
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prisoners who were sent to Birkenau in 1941, only 150 survived to the following summer. Some prisoners were assigned to the most gruesome task -- that of the Sonderkommando. These prisoners were forced to work in the crematoria, burning the Jews who had just been gassed. All prisoners who were selected for forced labor were tattooed with numbers on their left arms. Any slip, outburst, or failure to comply with the guards resulted in immediate death. Because executions by gunfire were inefficient, expensive, and potentially identifiable, intoxication by poison gas--a method used by the Germans to kill over 50,000 mental patients since 1939--was agreed on as the method of choice. ...
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Concentration Camps. (2006, April 19). Retrieved November 22, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Concentration-Camps/44643
"Concentration Camps." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 19 Apr. 2006. Web. 22 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Concentration-Camps/44643>
"Concentration Camps." Essayworld.com. April 19, 2006. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Concentration-Camps/44643.
"Concentration Camps." Essayworld.com. April 19, 2006. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Concentration-Camps/44643.
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