The Final Steps in the Nazi Genocide
Fear soon struck the Jewish population as sudden reports of the Ghettos forced them to leave their belongings and their homes. They would embark on a trips with harsh conditions to the concentration camps. The whole process of reaching there, working in the camps, and the fear of extermination were horrible. Dozens of stories about madness in the train cars, abandoned by peers, or other dire scenarios of suffering sprawled out of Final Steps of the Nazi Genocide. The Nazi supporters were faithful enough to commit these atrocities in the name of an "ethnic clense" proposed by Hitler and the Nazi party.
Deportation
After the the Jews were grouped in the Ghettos, the Nazi government ordered them to be "emptied". This mean't that the Jews would be deported from the ghettos, and they had to ride transports, board trains, and march to their destinations. Train cars were crammed with hundreds of Jews forced in. Many passengers of the trains didn't make it. This is mainly due to the environment as there wasn't any food, bathrooms, and sickness. Also, exhaustion would strike marchers, but no matter how they were going to reach their destinations. They all were heading to the concentration camps.
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Concentration Camps
“When I came to power, I did not want the concentration camps to |
There were three camps, the work, holding, and the death camps. Upon arrival the Jews were sorted, the women and the children were deemed useless and killed, while the men, which consisted of healthy males fit to work over the age of about 16 were sent further into the camps to be assigned to kommandos. Kommando was the German word for unit. These work units were given task to do that ranged from manual labor to working in the crematoriums. The Jews would be taken to work from dawn to dusk at these concentration camps. Along with the overbearing work, the oppression the Nazis had changed the prisoners. The result was that resistance was very rare. The concentration camps have multiple different variants that did different work. There were quarries, electrical work, and many more. Some of the camps were easier than others, depending on what they were making.
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The Shutzstaffel (SS)
The Shutzstaffel was originally organized by Hitler to serve as his person body guard, but as the group grew, it became one of the most fearful military group in Nazi Germany under SS chief Heinrich Himmler. They were the ones responsible for reducing the SA strength during the rise of the Nazi Party. During the Holocaust, they started to expand into more than 250,000 members. The SS had many responsibilities. They "engaged in activities ranging from intelligence operations to running Nazi concentration camps" (History). Most of the time, the concentration camps were set up by the SS, and their officers commanded the camps. Those that operate in concentration camps were called Waffen-SS. They were also known as the SS-Totenkopfverbände, "SS Death's-Head Units". These units were distinguished by their cap's insignia of a skull. Primarily they were to administer and guard the camps, but they were given authority to execute any prisoner. "The daily life of prisoners lay in the brutal and merciless hands of the camp commandants and these SS Death's-Head Units" (Holocaust Encyclopedia).
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The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear." |
The Horrendous Conditions in The Concentration camps
“Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.”
-Elie Wiesel, Night
The oppression from the other "veteren" prisoners and being at the mercy of the SS, Shutzstaffel, led to a change in the mindsets of prisoners. Under the fear of a terrifying death, the prisoners were reduced to live at any costs. They were adopted to the "survival of the fittest" way of living. People would fight for food, abandon morals to get what they want, and the sick were ignored.
Accounts of these acts can be reinforced by a former prisoner, Elie Wiesel, the author of Night. The book was a memoir over his time in the Aushwitz and Buchanwald concentration camps. |
An interview between Orpah Winfrey and Elie Wiesel
"Oprah and Elie Wiesel Interview at Auschwitz" Youtube, uploaded by Sydney Noelle Lang, 14 December, 2016.
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Extermination
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The Nazi exterminated the Jews in many ways including gas chambers, firing squads, and many of them starved to death or died from exposion to harsh environments. The Nazi then sent their bodies to the crematorium where mass numbers of cremation machines were located. For them, burning the bodies was a "convenient" way to get rid of bodies. A select group of prisoners were tasked with managing the crematorium. Before removing the bodies, other prisoners would strip their dead for clothes and anything else that was valuable, which was rare to find. Many of these camps stunk from the smell of death in the air. Hitler almost succeeded in the elimination of the Jewish population. While other groups had suffered, the amount of Jews were enormous. Six millions Jews had suffered the atrocities of these death camps. In total, more than twelve million were victems of the Holocaust.
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