All these people were sent to concentration camps. At these camps the prisoners were forced to do hard labor such as building construction materials to build other concentration camps. Other items produced at the concentration camps were items for German war effort.

In the year 1941, between the months of January and March the Jewish of small communities west of Warsaw were deported to the Warsaw ghetto. Between April and July 1942, the Jewish of nearby towns east of Warsaw were also deported to these ghettos. Also a few hundred Gypsies were sent to the Warsaw ghetto. The total population of the Warsaw ghetto was over 400,000. In 1941 10% of the ghetto’s populations were already dead.

During the summer of 1942 the German SS and German police sent exactly 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to 2nd Treblinka extermination camp. Extreme violence was used to put the Jewish in freight cars that were forced away from their homes and business. These freight cars were going to Malkinia. When they arrived there the Jewish prisoners were then sent to Treblinka. They were also forced to march to different concentration camps. If one of them fell out of line they were shot.

During the war Nazi doctors inside the camps would perform medical experiments on the prisoners. The type of experiments would be things like throwing prisoners into ice cold water to see how long they would survive. The reason for doing this was to test out new equipment for German soldiers shot out of war planes who landed in ice cold waters. They would also see how long a human could survive without air in high altitudes. Children (usually 12 and over) were the subjects of most of these experiments.

To further the elimination of the prisoners the camps would take them to gassing chambers. At these chambers the Nazis would apply fake shower heads inside because the Nazis told them they would be taking a delousing shower. After the gassing of the prisoners the soldiers would then take the corpses to a crematory. Before the Nazis put the bodies in the fires they’d check for things like golden teeth. They also cut the prisoners hair for stuffing mattresses and felt slippers.

The largest concentration camp was Auschwitz. Auschwitz was located in Poland and formed in 1940. Up to 6,000 Jews were gassed a day. The chemical used to gas the prisoners were Zyklon B pellets which were previously used for fumigation. The pellets were converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. This was the quickest gas that killed the prisoners because by 20 minutes all the people who were in the gassing chamber were dead.

On May 7th, 1945 Germany surrendered. The next day, May 8th, was know as V-E Day (that stood for Victory in Europe). The next day as United States soldiers moved through Germany and Poland they discovered the horrors of the concentration camps. Even the soldiers who have seen the many terrors of war were shocked by what they saw.

Now today, we have a museum honoring the people who have died and the people who have lived through such a horrible experience. It is the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C.