Concentration Camps
by Shayna and Shada
Concentration camps were established during the beginning of 1933 almost immediately after the Nazi's assumed power on January 30, 1933. They were set up because the Nazis wanted to imprison political opponents. Concentration camps are also called corrective labor camps, relocation centers, and reception centers. The first concentration camps were built by the Nazi's in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.
Security police, otherwise known as the Gestapo, had the authority to arrest anyone and to put them into a concentration camp for an indefinite amount of time. The Gestapo arrested Communists, socialists, religious dissenters, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Jews.
The criminal police, or the Kripo imposed on professional criminals and groups of asocials: Gypsies, homosexuals, prostitutes, and shirkers.
There were six main camps in 1939 that each held about 25,000 prisoners these camps were: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbeurg, Mauthausen, and, for women, Ravensbreuck.
To be put in a camp, one did not go through normal judicial trials, if the Nazi's said for you to go you had no choice and no say. Many different places have been used as concentration camps but they usually consist of barracks, tents or huts. All of these were surrounded by watch towers and barbed wire.
When Jews arrived in the death camps they were stripped from all of their clothes and valuables. They were then separated into two groups. Strong Jews were kept alive to work for a while. The weak, old, sick and most Jewish women were sent to the "showers". The "showers", as they called them, were large rooms with no windows. They were all then packed into the room, then the doors were locked. Instead of water pouring out deadly gas was showered into the room. The dead were then stripped of everything valuable that was not taken before, even gold teeth. The remains of the dead were then burned in huge ovens. Even those who were saved to work would die within a couple of months. In Auschwitz, a concentration camp, over 2,000,000 Jews were killed in the "showers". 500,00 more died of starvation and disease. During all of this the strong had been disinfected, given a shower and given a prison uniform. The uniform was given to them no matter what size it was. A number was given to the prisoner and it was tattooed on their arm.
A usual day in the concentration camps, for the strong, began at dawn. They were awoken from there barracks which usually had three hundred to eight hundred inmates per barrack. Prisoners bunks were made of slatted wood and three to four prisoners shared a bunk. They were then organized in groups in order to go to the bathroom. The inmates typical breakfast was going to a distribution center and eating some moldy bread and small portions of coffee or tea. Then they were sent out to work for ten to fourteen hours. They worked in mines, factories and road or airfield buildings. The weather was severely hot in the summer and prisoners who resisted orders from the guards were shot right there. Many roll calls were done to be sure that no prisoners had escaped.
There were different types of concentration camps. In some the people were worked to death in industries such as the G.I. Farben chemichle works and the V-2 rocket factories. Those who were no longer able to work were killed by gassing, shooting, or fatal injections. Some inmates were also used for "medical experiments." Such as having the skull of a human male sawed open when the victim was still alive without the help of anthesia so they could see how the human brain worked and looked when still in use. Pregnant women had numerous experiments done to their unborn children. And if the woman was not pregnant she would be made so.
More than four million persons, most of whom were Jews, died in the Nazi camps. This number doesn't even mention all the Jews that died outside the camp walls.
