Nazi Concentration Camp Essay
During the Holocaust the Nazis had more than 300 concentration camps. Concentration camps were terrible camps that the Nazis set up for people they considered “racially undesirable elements.” The Nazis sent up different camps for different people and purposes. Manny Jews, Russian prisoners, handicapped, homosexuals, and gypsies were killed in concentration camps because the Nazis considered them a threat or racially undesirable. (Source: Wikipedia.com)
The Nazis didn’t like Jews because of their religion. So before the concentration camps were set up the Nazis wanted to find a solution to what they called a Jewish problem. This was called the final solution. At first the Nazis planned on sending all Jews to the island of Madagascar but the plan was later rejected. Later at the Wannsee conference the Nazis decided to send all jews to different camps, concentration camps. At the camps the Nazis were either going to just kill the people or make them work until they died. All of this was decided shortly after Hitler became chancellor. (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica)
Right after Adolf Hitler became chancellor the first concentration camps were setup in Germany in February, 1933 (Source: Wikipedia.com). The first camp was called Dachau. It was founded in March, 1933 (Source: holocausthistoryfacts.com). At first the camps were used to torture political opponents. Then from 1934 to 1935 Heinrich Himmler took full control of the police and concentration camps. Hitler allowed Himmler to keep people the Nazis considered “undesirable” because of their religious beliefs and/or race. Examples of the people kept in the camps were political prisoners, Jews, handicapped, homosexuals, and gypsies. During World War II, from 1939-1942, there were over 300 active concentration camps. Not all of the camps were used for the same thing, there were different types of camps (Source: Wikipedia.com).
The Nazi’s had different types of concentration camps for different people and purposes. There were hostage camps, labor camps, POW camps, transit and collection camps, and extermination camps. Most of the camps’ names pretty much explained what they were used for. Hostage camps were camps where the Nazis kept and killed hostages. In labor camps inmates did hard work while living under terrible conditions, most people died because of the hard labor. The Nazis kept war prisoners in POW camps. At transit and collection camps inmates were collected, then later sent to other camps. At extermination camps people were killed either the day they got there or over a short period of time. People received terrible treatment in the concentration camps and while they were being taken to the camps. (Source: Wikipedia.com)
Acording to holocausthistoryfacts.com people received bad treatment in and outside of the concentration camps. Before people arrived at a camp, Nazis arrested them even though some of them were innocent. The people were loaded into boxcars with little to no food or water. They would live in the boxcars for days and sometimes even weeks. Many people died because of dehydration or starvation and sometimes even because of the cold temperatures. Once they arrived at the concentration camp, all of their belongings were taken from them. Acording to Wikipidia.com they were then split into two groups. One group was made up of people that were able to work and the other of people that physically couldn’t. The people that could work, worked until they died, only resting to sleep and eat whatever little food they got. The people that couldn't work (disabled, young, old, and weak) were killed in gas chambers. Acording to History.com the workers usually died because of mistreatment, starvation, over working, working too slow, and disease such as Typhus and Malnutrition. Eventually doctors started using the camps to perform medical experiments, which also caused many deaths. In one of the biggest camps, Auschwitz, about 8,000 Jews died each day by starvation,exhaustion, gas chambers etc. Because of all of the deaths there were very few survivors when the camps were found and the prisoners were liberated.
During World War II the Nazis tried to keep the concentration camps a secret but once the allies discovered them, from 1944 to 1945 they tried to free the people in the camps. The Nazis didn’t want enemies to know about the camps so they destroyed some of them before the allies got a chance to see them. Some of the camps the Nazis were able to destroy were Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. The Americans were able to free Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen. The British only freed Bergen-Belsen while the soviets freed more camps than the Americans and British. The Soviets were able to free Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Theresienstadt (Wikipedia.com). Acording to History.com most of the people that were freed died after they were freed because of diseases or starvation. There were more deaths in the concentration camps than there were survivors. Acording to holocausthistoryfacts.com many survivors have written books about their experience in the concentration camps. The books describe the everyday life of a concentration camp inmate.
The books written by the survivors of concentration camps are worth reading if you want to learn more about life in the camps. Acording to History.com concentration camps were camps that the Nazis set up during the Holocaust for people they didn’t like, based on their race and beliefs. The camps were a terrible place where many people were killed. Even though the concentration camps are part of history they remind us that any sort of racism or political injustice is wrong and that we should try to get rid of any sort of injustice to prevent events like the Holocaust from happening again.