Monday, November 30, 2015

Elie Wiesel- Healing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgWJrLn2SGk

Born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania (then and now part of Romania), Elie Wiesel pursued Jewish religious studies before his family was forced to relocate to Nazi death camps during WWII. Wiesel survived, and later wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir Night. He has also penned many books and become an activist, orator and teacher, speaking out against persecution and injustice across the globe.

Early Life

Elie Wiesel was born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania, which would later become Romania. Wiesel, who grew up with three sisters and pursued religious studies at a nearby yeshiva, was influenced by the traditional spiritual beliefs of his grandfather and mother, as well as his father's liberal expressions of Judaism.

Surviving the Holocaust

In 1944, Nazi Germany forced Jews who resided in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania to relocate to labor and death camps in Poland. At the age of 15, Wiesel and his entire family were sent to Auschwitz as part of the Holocaust, which took the lives of more than 6 million Jews. Wiesel lived in the camps under deplorable, inhumane conditions, gradually starving, and was ultimately freed from Buchenwald in 1945. Of his relatives, only he and two of his sisters survived.

Wiesel went on to study at the Sorbonne in France from 1948-51 and took up journalism, writing for French and Israeli publications. His friend and colleague François Mauriac encouraged him to write about his experiences in the camps; Wiesel would publish in Yiddish the memoir And the World Would Remain Silent in 1956. The book was shortened and published in France as La Nuit, and as Night for English readers in 1960. The memoir became an acclaimed bestseller, translated into many languages, and is considered a seminal work on the terrors of the Holocaust. Night was followed by two novels, Dawn (1961) and Day (1962), to form a trilogy that looked closely at humankind’s destructive treatment of one another.

Writer and World Activist

Wiesel went on to write dozens of books, including the novels Town of Luck (1962), The Gates of the Forest (1966) and The Oath (1973), and such nonfiction works as Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1982) and the memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea (1995). Wiesel has also become a revered international activist, orator and figure of peace over the years, speaking out against injustices perpetrated in an array of countries, including South Africa, Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda. In 1978, Wiesel was appointed chair of the President's Commission on the Holocaust by President Jimmy Carter. Additionally, he has been honored across the world with a number of awards, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor's Grand Croix.

Teaching is another passion of Wiesel's, having been appointed in the mid-1970s as Boston University's Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. He has also taught Judaic studies at the City University of New York, and served as a visiting scholar at Yale.

Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, and later founded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity with his wife Marion (Erster Rose) Wiesel.

Source-http://www.biography.com/people/elie-wiesel-9530714

Thursday, November 19, 2015

The Nuremberg Trials

After the war, some of those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust were brought to trial. Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen as a site for trials that took place in 1945 and 1946. Judges from the Allied powers -- Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States -- presided over the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals.

Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death. Most of the defendants admitted to the crimes of which they were accused, although most claimed that they were simply following the orders of a higher authority. Those individuals directly involved in the killing received the most severe sentences. Other people who played key roles in the Holocaust, including high-level government officials, and business executives who used concentration camp inmates as forced laborers, received short prison sentences or no penalty at all.

The Nazis' highest authority, the person most to blame for the Holocaust, was missing at the trials. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the final days of the war, as had several of his closest aides. Many more criminals were never tried. Some fled Germany to live abroad, including hundreds who came to the United States.

Trials of Nazis continued to take place both in Germany and many other countries. Simon Wiesenthal, a Nazi-hunter, located Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann, who had helped plan and carry out the deportations of millions of Jews, was brought to trial in Israel. The testimony of hundreds of witnesses, many of them survivors, was followed all over the world. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in 1962

KEY DATES

AUGUST 8, 1945
CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL (IMT) ANNOUNCED AT LONDON CONFERENCE
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) is composed of judges from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Leading Nazi officials will be indicted and placed on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, under Article 6 of the IMT's Charter for the following crimes: (1) Conspiracy to commit charges 2, 3, and 4, which are listed here; (2) crimes against peace--defined as participation in the planning and waging of a war of aggression in violation of numerous international treaties; (3) war crimes--defined as violations of the internationally agreed upon rules for waging war; and (4) crimes against humanity--"namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated."

OCTOBER 6, 1945
LEADING NAZI OFFICIALS INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES
The four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (IMT)--Robert H. Jackson (United States), Francois de Menthon (France), Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union), and Sir Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)--hand down indictments against 24 leading Nazi officials. The indicted include Hermann Goering (Hitler's heir designate), Rudolf Hess (deputy leader of the Nazi party), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm Keitel (head of the armed forces), Wilhelm Frick (minister of the interior), Ernst Kaltenbrunner (head of security forces), Hans Frank (governor-general of occupied Poland), Konstantin von Neurath (governor of Bohemia and Moravia), Erich Raeder (head of the navy), Karl Doenitz (Raeder's successor), Alfred Jodl (armed forces command), Alfred Rosenberg (minister for occupied eastern territories), Baldur von Schirach (head of the Hitler Youth), Julius Streicher (radical Nazi antisemitic publisher), Fritz Sauckel (head of forced-labor allocation), Albert Speer (armaments minister), and Arthur Seyss-Inquart (commissioner for the occupied Netherlands). Martin Bormann (Hitler's adjutant) is to be tried in absentia.

OCTOBER 1, 1946
VERDICT AT NUREMBERG
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) announces its verdicts. It imposes the death sentence on 12 defendants (Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, SeyssInquart, and Bormann). Three are sentenced to life imprisonment (Hess, economics minister Walther Funk, and Raeder). Four receive prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years (Doenitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath). The court acquits three defendants: Hjalmar Schacht (economics minister), Franz von Papen (German politician who played an important role in Hitler's appointment as chancellor), and Hans Fritzsche (head of press and radio). The death sentences are carried out on October 16, 1946, with two exceptions: Goering committed suicide shortly before his scheduled execution, and Bormann remained missing. The other 10 defendants are hanged, their bodies cremated, and the ashes deposited in the Iser River. The seven major war criminals sentenced to prison terms are remanded to the Spandau Prison in Berlin.

Antisemetic laws in Germany, 1933–1939

During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, government at every level—Reich, state and municipal—adopted hundreds of laws, decrees, directives, guidelines, and regulations that increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of the Jews in Germany.

Here are examples of anti-Jewish legislation in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939:

1933

March 31
Decree of the Berlin city commissioner for health suspends Jewish doctors from the city’s charity services.

April 7
Law for the Reestablishment of the Professional Civil Service removes Jews from government service.

April 7
Law on the Admission to the Legal Profession forbids the admission of Jews to the bar.

April 25
Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limits the number of Jewish students in public schools.

July 14
De-Naturalization Law revokes the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.”

October 4
Law on Editors bans Jews from editorial posts.

1935

May 21
Army law expels Jewish officers from the army.

September 15
Nazi leaders announce the Nuremberg Laws.

1936

January 11
Executive Order on the Reich Tax Law forbids Jews to serve as tax-consultants.

April 3
Reich Veterinarians Law expels Jews from the veterinary profession.

October 15
Reich Ministry of Education bans Jewish teachers from public schools.

1937

April 9
The Mayor of Berlin orders public schools not to admit Jewish children until further notice.

1938

January 5
Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names forbids Jews from changing their names.

February 5
Law on the Profession of Auctioneer excludes Jews from this occupation.

March 18
The Gun Law excludes Jewish gun merchants.

April 22
Decree against the Camouflage of Jewish Firms forbids changing the names of Jewish-owned businesses.

April 26
Order for the Disclosure of Jewish Assets requires Jews to report all property in excess of 5,000 reichsmarks.

July 11
Reich Ministry of the Interior bans Jews from health spas.

August 17
Executive Order on the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names requires Jews to adopt an additional name: "Sara” for women and “Israel” for men.

October 3
Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property regulates the transfer of assets from Jews to non-Jewish Germans.

October 5
The Reich Interior Ministry invalidates all German passports held by Jews. Jews must surrender their old passports, which will become valid only after the letter “J” had been stamped on them.

November 12
Decree on the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life closes all Jewish-owned businesses.

November 15
Reich Ministry of Education expels all Jewish children from public schools.

November 28
Reich Ministry of Interior restricts the freedom of movement of Jews.

November 29
The Reich Interior Ministry forbids Jews to keep carrier pigeons.

December 14
An Executive Order on the Law on the Organization of National Work cancels all state contracts held with Jewish-owned firms.

December 21
Law on Midwives bans all Jews from the occupation.

1939

February 21
Decree Concerning the Surrender of Precious Metals and Stones in Jewish Ownership.

August 1
The President of the German Lottery forbids the sale of lottery tickets to Jews.

Hitler's Youth

Before the Nazi Party was founded, a strong youth movement already existed in Germany. It began in the 1890s and was known as the Wandervögel, a male-only movement featuring a back-to-nature theme.
Wandervögel members had an idealistic, romantic notion of the past, yearning for simpler days when people lived off the land. They rejected the modern, big city era and took a dim view of its predecessor, the industrial revolution, which had been started by their fathers and grandfathers. They scorned greed and materialism, and the new emerging corporate mentality. They found strict German schooling oppressive and rejected parental authority. They saw hypocrisy in politics and the rigid social class system of Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, based entirely on birth and wealth.
Instead, they longed for a Jugendkultur, a culture of youth led by youth, in which they would be truly valued as individuals. They wanted something greater to believe in than the staid values of their parents.

Young German men march off to World War I in August 1914 with flowers in their rifle barrels and much jubilation. Below: A post World War I view of a scout-like formation of Wandervögels from Berlin on a hike.

A post World War I view of a scout-like formation of Wandervögels from Berlin on a hike.

Below: A 1930 portrait of four young Wandervögels from Oberammergau looking somewhat like latter-day hippies.

Wandervögel members distinguished themselves by wearing shorts and hiking boots rather than the starched shirts and creased trousers of the middle class. They delighted in rediscovering nature without any modern conveniences, traveling on long hikes and sleeping out under the stars. They sang old German folk songs around the campfire and also developed a custom of greeting each other by saying "Heil," meaning hail to you.
This youth movement grew rapidly from 1900 to 1914, attracting the attention and grudging admiration of the mainstream political and religious establishment in Germany, which soon created its own competing youth groups, borrowing the back-to-nature theme and other ideas from the Wandervögel.
The Catholic Youth Organization, the Boy Scouts, along with a variety of political, religious, paramilitary, and sports groups sprang up, organized so that youth was indeed led by youth, with the leader being just a few years older than the boys he led.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most German youths were quickly caught up in the war mania that swept Germany and enthusiastically went off to the battlefield anticipating it as a noble experience that would mold them into 'new men.' In reality, they died by the millions, cut down by the machinery of modern warfare including machine-guns, mustard gas and explosive artillery shells. By 1918, Germany was defeated and soon plunged into political and social chaos.
New political, paramilitary, religious, and sports oriented youth groups sprang up all over Germany, including the Young Socialists, Young Democrats, and Young Conservatives. Many of the groups adopted military style uniforms and established a hierarchy of formal ranks, a big change from the informal clothing and rule by consent of the pre-war youth groups. However, they shared some of the same themes, opposing a return to the old social status quo, while working to create an idealistic new era, a better Germany, a better world perhaps.
Among the multitude of post-war political organizations hoping to lead Germany into the future was the German Workers' Party founded in 1919 in Bavaria, now led by young Adolf Hitler. In 1920, he renamed it as the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) called the NSDAP or Nazi Party. That same year, Hitler authorized the formation of a Youth League of the National Socialist Workers' Party under the control of his storm trooper organization known as the SA (Sturmabteilung).
A proclamation published in March 1922 in the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter called for new members by declaring: "We demand that the National Socialist Youth, and all other young Germans, irrespective of class or occupation, between fourteen and eighteen years of age, whose hearts are affected by the suffering and hardships afflicting the Fatherland, and who later desire to join the ranks of the fighters against the Jewish enemy, the sole originator of our present shame and suffering, enter the Youth League of the NSDAP."
Among the rules: no membership fees and an emphasis on "love of one's country and people; enjoyment of honest open combat and of healthy physical activity; the veneration of ethical and spiritual values; and the rejection of those values originating from Jewry."
Weekly meetings were held featuring lectures and discussions. Every second Sunday was spent in mandatory hiking trips across the countryside. The League also established its own libraries for members excluding "trashy literature." The first uniforms were copied from the brownshirted SA. This caused resentment among the younger SA members who were sometimes confused with Youth League members.
The new Nazi Youth League attracted very few members at first, competing against numerous other well established groups. In May 1922, the Nazis held a meeting at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a large beer hall in Munich, to officially proclaim the foundation of League. That meeting attracted only 17 youths.
The Nazi Youth League was headed by Gustav Lenk who established small units in Nuremberg and other cities. As the organization continued its slow but steady growth, Hitler officially named Lenk as National Youth Leader. In May 1923, Lenk published the first Nazi youth magazine, Nationale Jungsturm, which proved to be a money loser and was then reduced to a supplement of the Völkischer Beobachter.
The Nazis were based in Munich in the German state of Bavaria which was a hotbed of political groups violently opposed to the German democratic government (the Weimar Republic) based in Berlin. By November 1923, the Nazis, with 55,000 followers, were the biggest and best organized. Nazi members now demanded revolutionary action. The result was Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in which he attempted to seize power in Bavaria.
On November 9th, a column of three thousand Nazis, led by Hitler, marched toward the center of Munich but soon encountered a police blockade. Shots rang out. Sixteen Nazis and three police were killed. Hitler fled the scene then hid out in the attic of a friend's home until he was arrested two days later. Other Nazi leaders were arrested or fled the country to avoid prosecution. Hitler went to prison. The Nazi Party and its Youth League were officially disbanded by the German democratic government. Most observers thought they had seen the last of Hitler.

Propaganda against Jews

"The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea...." - Adolf Hitler, 1924

At the core of the Holocaust we find modern anti-Semitism, the current version of Jew Hatred - that same phenomenon which appeared throughout the centuries, perhaps finding its most blatant manifestation with the medieval Church. The modern German anti-Semitism was based on racial ideology which stated that the Jews were sub-human (untermensch) while the “Aryan” race was ultimately superior. The Jew was systematically portrayed as a low-life, as untouchable rot (faulniserscheinung), and as the main cause of Germany's difficulties.

Germany had major problems resulting from World War I. Although no warfare had occurred on German soil, the Emperor had fled, and the Weimar Republic was only established after years of severe political instability, with localised Bolshevist experiments and street terror in the cities. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 brought the relinquishment of land on almost all fronts, especially to France (Alsace-Lorraine, Saar) and Poland (Danzig corridor); the reduction of the German army to a home militia; and reparation payments beyond the prevalent economic capabilities. The rocketing inflation of 1922 and 1923 caused further economic instability, which became even worse with the advent of the Great Depression of 1929. By 1932, unemployment in Germany peaked, and it was in this economic and political climate that Adolf Hitler established the Nationalist-Socialist Party (with "Mein Kampf" as its manifesto). With Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the national policy of organized persecution of the Jews began."

Nazi Propaganda Minister

One example of this propaganda is the publication known as Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) which appeared in Germany in 1938 and leaves little question regarding the intended Nazi solution to the "Jewish problem." The book begins innocently enough by describing a favouriteGerman pastime, picking wild mushrooms in the woods. A young boy, Franz, accompanies his mother on a walk in a beautiful, wooded area and helps her gather mushrooms. After carefully describing and showing Franz several varieties of both edible and poisonous mushrooms, his mother compares the good mushrooms to good people and the harmful mushrooms to bad people. The most dangerous people are, of course, the Jews.

The Nazi ideal of a “community of the people” tapped into German traditions that lauded social harmony over conflict and in addition valued hard work, clean living, and law and order. For the Nazis, this idealized community could never see the light of day unless it was based on racial purity.To this end, the new regime set out to mobilize the nation around certain missions, including the elimination of recognizable social types (and stereotypes) who disturbed the peace or who did not conform to well-established German values, but also those who did not fit into the white “Aryan” race.

The Nazi version of the struggle between “us” and “them,” between the “community of the people” and the “enemies of the community,” was not just hostile, but vehement and full of language that dripped with war and images drawn from the Darwinian struggle for survival. In the kind of total-war rhetoric the Nazis used, it followed that mercy and compassion toward all enemies was portrayed as a vice, while intolerance and fanaticism were transformed into virtues.

Once social enemies were targeted, the police, the judges, and any number of civil servants were quick to take the initiative and swing into action, even trying to outdo one another in their fealty to the cause of making the new order. The authorities in state and society “below,” in the cultural realm, medicine, welfare, the penal system, and so on, showed they were pleased that Hitler allowed them the flexibility and freedom to implement measures that many of them had only dared to contemplate in earlier years.

No single target of Nazi propaganda took higher priority than Germany's young. By 1937, 97% of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers' Union. Every member of this union had to submit an ancestry table in triplicate with official documentary proof. Courses and textbooks in Nazi schools reflected the aims of Hitler. Of the topics that teachers were required to treat, the most important was racial theory and, by extension, the Jewish problem. In `The National Socialist Essence of Education’, a German educator wrote that mathematics was "Aryan spiritual property; … an expression of the Nordic fighting spirit, of the Nordic struggle for the supremacy of the world.”

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Living Conditions in Concentration Camps

Auschwitz-Birkenau:
Living Conditions, Labor & Executions

Auschwitz-Birkenau: Table of Contents | History & Overview | Photographs

Living Conditions

The reasons for the epidemics and contagious diseases that prevailed in Auschwitz concentration camp included the dreadful living conditions, which varied during the years that the camp operated, and were different in each part of the camp. In Auschwitz I, prisoners lived in old brick barracks. Several hundred three-tier wooden bunk beds were installed in each building. The overcrowding in Auschwitz I forced basements and lofts into use as living quarters, as well.

Two types of barracks, brick and wooden, housed prisoners in Birkenau concentration camp. The brick buildings were erected in great haste, without suitable insulation, on marshy ground. More than 700 people were assigned to each barrack, although in practice the figure was sometimes higher. These barracks lacked any true heating; nor did they contain sanitary facilities.

The second type of accommodation for prisoners at Birkenau consisted of wooden stable-barracks (Pferdestallbaracken). The interiors, designed to hold 52 horses, were partitioned into stalls. The stalls contained three-tier wooden bunks. Several hundred prisoners lived in each such barrack.

Dampness, leaky roofs, and the fouling of straw and straw mattresses by prisoners suffering from diarrhea made difficult living conditions worse. The barracks swarmed with various sorts of vermin and rats. A constant shortage of water for washing, and the lack of suitable sanitary facilities, aggravated the situation.

Living and sanitary conditions in Auschwitz III (Monowitz)concentration camp and the several dozen branch camps resembled those described above.

Feeding the Prisoners

Prisoners in the camp received meals three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. Factors influencing the nutritional value of the food included the official nutritional norms in the Nazi concentration camps. In practice, Auschwitz prisoners with less physically demanding labor assignments received approximately 1,300 calories per day, while those engaged in hard labor received approximately 1,700. After several weeks on such starvation rations in the camp, most prisoners began to experience organic deterioration that led to the so-called "Muzulman" state, extreme physical exhaustion that ended in death.

Order of the Day

At Auschwitz, as in other concentration camps, the order of the day was strictly established. Prisoners spent over ten hours per day working, and the rest of the time was taken up by long roll-call assemblies, lining up for food rations or a place in the latrines or the washroom, removing dirt and pests from clothing, and disinfection.

Labor

A WVHA decree of March 31, 1942 established a minimum working day of eleven hours in all concentration camps. At Auschwitz, labor was one of the means used to destroy prisoners. They labored in various sectors of the economy. Initially, they worked at building the camp: leveling the ground, erecting new blocks and buildings, laying roads, and digging drainage ditches. Later, the industries of the Third Reich made increasing use of cheap prisoner labor. The pace of the work, the starvation rations of food, and constant beatings and abuse exacerbated the death rate. The German IG Farbenindustrie cartel, which built the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel factory at Monowice near Oswiecim, had priority in obtaining prisoner labor. The majority of the Auschwitz sub-camps were located near the mills, mines, and factories of Silesia. Prisoners dug coal, produced armaments and chemicals, and built and expanded industrial plants.

Executions

Executions were one means of physically liquidating prisoners and people brought from outside the camp. At first, people were shot to death in the pits near the camp from which gravel had been dug. From the autumn of 1941 until the autumn of 1943, most of the executions by shooting took place in the courtyard of Block No. 11 in the main camp. Most of the victims here were Poles, who received sentences of death by shooting from, for instance, the Gestapo summary court.

Soviet prisoners of war were also executed at Auschwitz concentration camp. Beginning in September 1941, executions were also carried out using poison gas.

At least 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war were put to death in this way. After the dismantling of the Death Wall in 1944, larger groups of Poles sentenced to death by the police summary court were executed in the gas chambers. Executions by hanging were carried out sporadically in the camp. As opposed to shooting or killing in the gas chamber, hanging was public. It was carried out in front of other prisoners, usually during roll call. The goal was to intimidate the witnesses, and the victims were most frequently prisoners caught trying to escape, or suspected of aiding escapers.

Source-http: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/auconditions.html

Concentration Camps, 1933-1945

The concentration camps, 1933-1945

The Nazis set up their first concentration camp, Dachau, in the wake of Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. By the end of the war, 22 main concentration camps were established, together with around 1,200 affiliate camps, Aussenkommandos, and thousands of smaller camps.

In 1945, when Allied forces liberated the concentration camps at Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and elsewhere, the world was shocked at the sight of images of dead bodies alongside half-dead people in these camps. This was the remains of the Nazis’ horrible crime, to imprison people in camps because of their “otherness” or in order to use them for forced labour.

A concentration camp was not the same as an extermination camp – camps constructed with the specific purpose of mass murdering Jews and other victim groups. Despite this fact, the concentration camps claimed many thousands of victims. Imprisonment in a concentration camp meant inhuman forced labour, brutal mistreatment, hunger, disease, and random executions. It is certain that several hundred thousand died in the concentration camps. In comparison, more than three million Jews were murdered in the extermination camps.

At the beginning, the first inmates in concentration camps were political opponents of the Nazi regime. But ”different” people such as Jews, gypsies, and criminals were caught and placed in concentration camps – all in the name of the Nazis’ racial and regimentation ideology.

It was the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 that provided the Nazis with the authority to detain people in ‘protective custody’ (Schutzhaft). This was the stepping stone to an organised and centrally directed camp system, which was placed under the direction of Heinrich Himmler as head of the SS and the police.
The camps could be divided into different categories according to their purpose and function: forced labour camps, work- and reformatory camps, POW camps, transit camps, police camps, women camps and ghetto camps. The extermination camps had a special position within the Nazi camp system.

A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed wire, watchtowers and guards. The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk ”beds”. In the forced labour camps, for instance, the inmates usually worked 12 hours a day with hard physical work, clothed in rags, eating too little and always living under the risk of corporal punishment.

The sick, the old and those who could not keep up with the work temp were “selected” and then killed with gas, injections or shot. Others were chosen for terrible pseudo-scientific experiments – most often losing their life.

To this was added the horrible destiny that hit those prisoners who ended up as Muselmänner. This was the name for an inmate so undernourished that he or she was a living dead – a living, round-shouldered skeleton. The Muselmänner were either killed or died before they were executed.

Forced labour

Forced labour played an important role in the Nazi regime’s Jewish policy as well as for the economy of the concentration camps. Forced labour became particularly important following the outbreak of World War II, when the Nazi war economy demanded an enormous effort.
In connection with the ’Final Solution’, the Jews’ role as workers diminished as the extermination process was escalated. This was particularly apparent as far as the Polish Jews were concerned. A morbid form of forced labour was instituted in 1941, according to which Jews should be “worked to death”.

In Auschwitz and Majdanek, which had the role of both being a working and an extermination camp, Jews were divided upon arrival into those capable of working ands those not. The last group was sent directly to the gas chambers, whereas those able to work had to work themselves to death in SS’s industries – or they were executed when they worn down. In Auschwitz, the Jews worked in the so-called Monowitz working camp (Auschwitz III) in factories, or they were hired out to private businesses such as the chemical corporation I.G. Farben or the SS’s own factories.

Jews, especially German, Western European and Russian, also worked as slave labour in work camps in Germany. The Kraft durch Freude Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg, for example, used the “cheap” Jewish slave labourers. A tile work in Sachsenhausen, owned and operated by the SS, used Jews and other slave labourers. In the Harz, near the concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau, Jews worked in an underground weapons factory.

The victims

It is impossible to estimate the exact number of victims for the concentration camp system and of those who fell victim to the death marches.

The most current reliable figures from scholars are at least 500,000 and perhaps as many as over three-quarters of a million died as a result of the inhuman slave labour, hunger and disease in concentration camps.

List of main concentration camps

Atotal of 22 main concentration camps (Stamlager) were established, together with approximately 1,200 affiliate camps. Besides these, thousands of smaller camps existed in all parts of German-controlled Europe. The 22 main camps, in alphabetical order, were as follows: Arbeitsdorf, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Herzogenbosch, Kaunas, Krakow-Plaszow, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Riga-Kaiserwald, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Vaivara, Warsaw, Wewelsburg, Germany.

Extermination camps

n the period of 1941-1945, for the first time in the history of mankind, industrial plants were used to kill people. A total of six extermination camps were established for the genocide of the Jews, where the Nazis carried out the mass murder of 3 million Jews – half of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust.

Chelmno was the first extermination camp to be established as part of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ – the Nazis’ systematic effort to exterminate the Jews. This was quickly followed by the establishment of three more extermination camps: Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. They were established under the code-name Operation Reinhard – the starting signal to the extermination of the approximately 3 million Jews who lived in Nazi-occupied Poland. In the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek two further extermination camps were established.

The six extermination camps were all situated in former Poland and had mass murder as their purpose. Outside Poland at least two camps existed that in many ways resembled the six extermination camps in Poland: Jungfernhof (in Latvia) and Maly Trostinets (in Byelorussia).

All of the extermination camps were thoroughly organised and resembled industrial plants to an alarming degree. However, only Auschwitz-Birkenau, with its advanced gassing facilities and crematoria, was marked by high technology. In crematoria I and II there were elevators from the gas chambers underground, where the Jews were murdered, to the crematoria, where the bodies were burned.

The six extermination camps were established within a very short time. From December 1941 to December 1942 Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek all became operational. These sites were chosen because they were all situated near railway lines, in quiet rural areas of “far away” Poland, outside the spotlight of German and international public opinions.

Six Extermination Camps

In Chelmno, the first extermination camp to be established with the single purpose of killing people – first of all Jews – in a systematic fashion, 152,000 inmates were gassed to death using exhaust gas from trucks, in the period of December 1941-March 1943, and again from June-July 1944.

The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function until August 1943. 600,000 Jews fell victim to the merciless efficiency of the gas chambers at Belzec.

Sobibor also began its operations in May 1942. The killings continued through October 1943, when an uprising among the prisoners put and end to the activities of the camp. 250,000 lost their lives in Sobibor’s gas chambers.

The extermination camp Treblinka was working from July 1942 to November 1943. In August 1943 an uprising destroyed many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in this camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also functioned as a concentration camp and a work camp, became the largest killing centre. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million were killed in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first gassing experiments, involving 250 Polish and 600 Soviet POW’s, were carried out as early as September 1941. The extermination camp was started up in March 1942 and ended its work in November 1944.

Nine out of 10 victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. The remaining victims were mainly Poles, gypsies, and Soviet POW’s. Majdanek began its gassings in October 1942. The camp functioned in the same way as Auschwitz-Birkenau, and also included a concentration- and work camp. In the autumn of 1943 the camp was closed after claiming between 60,000 and 80,000 Jewish victims.

Killing methods

The use of gas chambers was the most common method of mass murdering the Jews in the extermination camps. The Jews were herded into the gas chambers, then the camp personnel closed the doors, and either exhaust gas (in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) or poison gas in the form of Zyclon B or A (in Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau) was led into the gas chamber.

Another method was the use of gassing trucks. In Chemno gassing trucks were used, where Jews, after being driven into the trucks, were suffocated by the exhaust fumes that were led into them in the truck. A third method was mass shooting of Jews and other groups (Soviet POW’s, Poles, etc.). In Majdanek, on 3-4 November 1943, between 17,000 and 18,000 Jews were killed in one day as part of a mass shooting. The event was called Erntefest (‘harvest feast’) and included similar actions all around the Lublin District. More than 40,000 Jews died as a result.

When the victims arrived to the extermination camps in overcrowded trains, they were herded out onto the arrival ramp. Here, German SS-men and perhaps brutal Ukrainian guards forced them to hand over their belongings and their clothes. Most of the victims had been told that they were merely to be moved to the east for new jobs and living places, and most of them had brought their favourite belongings.

In the “pure” extermination camps, men were separated from women upon arrival. The first to be gassed were the men – the women had their hair cut off before they went to their death.

In the combined concentration- and extermination camps, Majdanek and Auschwitz, the SS chose those able to work for the work camps.
Those unable to work – the old, women and children – were immediately sent to the gas chambers or shot in the "camp hospital". Even those able to work ended up in the gas chamber sooner or later, or they fell victim to random shooting actions within a few months, when they had been worn out by the tough work. That is, if they had not died already. Those able to work for instance helped carry the bodies to the crematoria or search the bodies for valuables.

The bodies were looted of gold (from the teeth), before being thrown into large mass graves. In time, the bodies were burned – either in mass graves or in the crematoria – when, as the Soviet armies advanced through Poland, the Nazis tried to hide their terrible crime.
There are few examples of uprisings in the extermination camps. In Sobibor and Treblinka prisoners tried to rebel in 1943, and the same was tried in Auschwitz in 1944. Only a very few managed to escape.

Source-http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/history-of-the-holocaust-shoah/the-killing-machine/concentration-camps.html

The Holocaust