Facts About The Holocaust Essay

The conditions in the ghettos were not those to be envied. Life in the ghettos was often filled with squalor, disease, hunger, despair and death. In many apartments, rooms that usually had a maximum of four people in them had anywhere from ten to fifteen people in them.[6] Food was not easy to come by either. Smugglers had to smuggle food into the ghettos just for people to have a little food. Even though not much food made it in the ghettos with smugglers, starvation would rule if there were none.

 

 

Although there was death in the ghettos, it was only an extremely small amount compared to the amount that was murdered by the Germans. Many prisoners of war, Slavs, Jews and others were put to death by the Nazis. Whether it be by starvation or exhaustion, beatings or shootings, millions of people were killed. Throughout the war, over 9000 camps were built, 6 of which were camps of mass murder.[7]Of those six, Auschwitzand Majdanek doubled as slave-labor and penal camps.

The Nazis, over a period of time, became more efficient killers. They had improved their ways of murder in three stages. In the first stage, which begun in June 1941, mobile killing units were used. Their job was to shoot the victims and kill them like that. This method was both costly and psychologically demanding on the killers. Thus, the second stage came into effect.

For the second stage, portable gas vans were used to kill the prisoners. Prisoners would be forced into a van, the engine would turn on and the exhaust pipe connected to the inside of the vehicle. Victims would slowly be killed by asphyxiation from the fumes of the vans. There were two main drawbacks for this extermination method though; there was a small capacity of people who could be killed at once and dying took so long that victims often lost control of their bowels and made a mess in the vans. The third stage then came into effect.

The third and final stage was by far the deadliest and most efficient; it was the stage of the gas chambers. The gas chambers had a much greater capacity than the vans and were more reliable. These broke down less than the vans but still experienced irregular gas buildups and the amounts of gas were sometimes not enough for killing. They went into operation in March 1942 and within months all the death camps except Chelmno had them. As many as 12000 Jews were gassed in one day at Auschwitz in August 1944.[8]

The gasses used in the chambers eventually became more efficient too. At first, carbon monoxide and hydrocyanic acid were used to kill people. Later, while the German scientists were in search of the cheapest and most efficient gas, they discovered Zyklon B. Zyklon B is an insecticide that when used in high enough doses can kill 2000 people in less than 30 minutes.[9] With this new gas, the death camp Birkenau was able to kill over 1,150,000 people, 1,100,000 were Jews.

The Jews weren’t just sent to camps to be killed though, many people had to do forced labor and the really unlucky ones got experimented on. Nazi doctors at death camps such as Josef Mengele conducted experiments of unimaginable horror on the inmates. Adults were put into pressure chambers, had drugs tested on them no matter the side effects, and even froze them to death. Children were exposed to experimental surgeries, injections of lethal bacteria and had limbs removed all without pain-killing drugs. Only a few children that were experimented on by Mengele survived. After the war he fled to South America where he avoided capture for 34 years and was only found after his death.

 

 

In conclusion, he Holocaust was not only a terrible experience for the Jews and the entire world; it also showed the pure evil some humans have inside. Millions of people were killed either on the spot or faced terrible torture. They were experimented on and starved to death. Not all were like this though; many people knew this was wrong. Some tried to stop it by stopping the man behind it all. But in the end, he stopped himself, not for the good of others, but for his own protection.

 

    Bibliography

Books:

 

Berenbaum, Michael – The World Must Know: The history of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 New York: Little Brown and Company, 1993

 

Internet sources:

 

The Holocaust – The Jewish Virtual Library

Accessed 30 December 2009
Available URL: http://www.
Wikipedia

Image via

.org

 

What date did the Holocaust start?

Accessed 31 December 2009

Available URL: http://unasked.com

 

Third Reich: Overview

Accessed 1 January 2010

Available URL: http://www.ushmm.org

 

Adolf Hitler

Accessed 4 January 2010

Available URL: http://remember.org

 

Adolf Hitler Quotes

Accessed 4 January 2010

Available URL: http://www.brainyquote.com

 

Operation Valkyrie: German Officer’s Plot to Assassinate Adolf Hitler

Accessed 10 January 2010

Available URL: http://ww2history.suite101.com

 

Adolf Hitler Quotes

Accessed 10 January 2010

Available URL: http://www.allgreatquotes.com

 

Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death

Accessed 10 January 2010

Available URL: www.mengele.dk

 

[1] http://www.brainyquote.com, pg 1

[2]Berenbaum, Michael, page 1

[3] http://www.ushmm.org, pg 1

[4] http://www.allgreatquotes.com, page 9

[5]Berenbaum, Michael, page 74-76

[6]Berenbaum, Michael, page 74

[7]Berenbaum, Michael, page 119

[8]Berenbaum, Michael, pages 122-123

[9]Berenbaum, Michael, page 123