Auschwitz: a Nazi Concentration Camp

“By the end of the war, nearly two million people would perish in this hellhole called Auschwitz.”(Ayer, 51) Auschwitz consisted of multiple camps, some death camps and some work camps. It was relatively isolated from any villages or cities so no one would know what was going on in Auschwitz. The Nazis sent millions of people to work in concentration camps and some were sent to death camps, but Auschwitz was the worst one of them all.

Many people were sent to Auschwitz. In total, one million three hundred thousand Jews, two hundred eighty thousand Poles, forty thousand gypsies, twenty thousand soviet prisoners of war, and ten thousand other prisoners of war were sent to Auschwitz. Of these, one million one hundred thousand Jews, one hundred forty thousand Poles, twenty thousand gypsies, and ten thousand soviet prisoners of war were sent to the extermination camps where the Nazis killed them. Two hundred thousand Jews, one hundred forty thousand Poles, twenty thousand gypsies, ten thousand soviet prisoners of war, and ten thousand other prisoners of war were forced to work in the concentration camps.

The people who were sent to work in concentration camps had all sorts of jobs. Some prisoners were sent to build additions to the camp to make it bigger since the camps had more and more people incoming each day. Others were forced to lay roads and some dug drainage ditches. Prisoners dug coal to power the crematoriums that were built to destroy the dead bodies. They made armaments which were guns and other various weapons and chemicals that the Nazis would probably later use to kill them. The others helped build industrial plants since the Nazis had to produce their own supplies for the war.

The Nazis had various ways of killing the prisoners and disposing of their bodies. Many prisoners were taken into gas chambers where the Nazis used cyanide gas to kill them and then sent their bodies to the crematoriums where they were burned. Some prisoners were shot in the middle of the camp, and were thrown into ditches where they were burned. To show an example of what could happen to people who didn’t work hard or fast enough, the Nazis hung some prisoners in public. If a prisoner was weak, they were sent to the hospital where some of the patients were killed by a lethal injection if they could not recover from their ailment. Prisoners were also taken into the bathhouses thinking that they were going to be able to finally bathe after being filthy for so long, but instead, the Nazis killed them with cyanide gas that came out of the showerheads. Once so many prisoners were dying that the guards could not keep up with the amount that they had to incinerate they started throwing the bodies in enormous piles outside where they burned them in clear view of the other prisoners.

“And one day we went to sleep, and the next morning we got up. And there was no wake up call. And we went up and there were no Germans around. And it was a beautiful day, May 8, 1945.” (Erika J., One Human Spirit) The prisoners in Auschwitz were overjoyed to be liberated from the concentration camp that claimed the lives of millions of Jews and was also the most horrible one.