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The 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust were killed in many ways. Jewish children
and elders alike starved to death in the ghettos. Jews were put to work in slave camps until
their deaths. Many others were suffocated in gas chambers or were killed in
death marches. It is almost impossible to describe all the horrible ways that the Jews died
during the Holocaust. In this section, we try to explain the most common methods of the Nazis' used to wipe
out the European Jewry.
The Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Poland surrendered on September 18. Reinhard Heydrich
ordered to create the first ghetto on September 21 which was named a "short-term solution for a long-term
problem." [5] The purpose of the ghettos was to "concentrate the Jewish population within the
larger cities; the ghettos served as relay stations for the transfer of a huge population." [6]
Thousands of Jews died in the ghettos as the result of torture, starvation, and disease.
Most ghettos were located along the railroad lines and in the worst parts of the cities.
The locations of the ghettos would later make liquidation of the Jews easier. There were many ghettos, some
of which existed for several years and some for shorter periods. The nine major ghettos were Bialystok
(Poland), Kovno (Lithuania), Lodz (Poland), Lvov (Poland), Minsk (Belorussia), Riga (Latvia), Theresienstadt
(Czechoslovakia), Vilna (Lithuania), and Warsaw (Poland).
Jews were trapped inside these ghettos. Barbed wire fences, or the eight-foot brick wall in
the case of the Warsaw ghetto, isolated the Jews from the outside world. If a Jew tried to escape, he or she
would be shot by a guard without warning. A large number of children in the ghettos were lost, homeless, or
orphaned. Their parents were either killed or moved to a different location. Food was distributed in small
rations that were never enough to feed the prisoners. One common cause of death was starvation.
Living conditions were intolerable. For example, at the Lodz ghetto, "The area contained a
total of 31, 721 apartments, most of them nothing more than single rooms without running water. More than
160,000 Jews were crammed into this dismal neighborhood." [7] Without proper sanitation, many
Jews suffered from typhus (caused by infections of fleas or lice) and typhoid (caused by drinking contaminated
water) along with other diseases. At the Warsaw ghetto for example, of 500,000 Jews, "an average of 5,000 to
6,000 died each month from starvation, disease, exposure to cold, and shootings." [8] To end their
sufferings, some Jews committed suicide.
When the Nazi Party gained power in Germany, any person who opposed the Nazis became a political prisoner. The
first concentration camps were built with the initial purpose to house these political prisoners, primarily the
Communists and Socialists .
When Hitler and the Nazis' persecution against the Jews intensified, the concentration camps
were used to imprison the Jews and the other "undesirables." There were twenty-seven major camps throughout
Europe during the Holocaust according to the "Chart of Concentration and Death Camps." [37] Some
of the most infamous camps include: Dachau, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Majdanek.
While approximately three million Polish Jews were forced into 400 ghettos following the
invasion of Poland, other Europeans Jews were forced into concentration camps. [9] Prisoners of
the concentration camps suffered in similar or even worse ways than the prisoners of the ghettos.
In the ghettos, there was little direct killing of prisoners. However, the purpose of the
concentration camps "evolved beyond imprisonment toward forced labor and outright murder." [10]
Thus, systematic murders of Jews were quite common in the camps.
When the Jews arrived at the camps, men were separated from women and children. For many
Jews, that was the last time they saw their family members. Men, women, and children all alike were stripped
naked, then had all of their hair removed, and were given a number. Some Jews had this number tattooed on
their arms.
Among the activities that took place in the camps, forced-labor was widespread. The famous
Nazi slogan displayed at the gate at Auschwitz was "Arbeit Macht Frei," which means "work makes you free." The
prisoners produced a significant portion of the materials, such as weapons and clothing, used by the Nazis during
the War.
As brutal and cruel as the ghettos and the concentration camps were, the climax
of the Nazis determination to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews) was the
extermination camps. These camps had one function--to exterminate the remaining Jews in Europe.
The extermination camps ofAuschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec, and Chelmo were all
located within occupied Poland. Once the extermination camps were established, Jews were relocated from other
ghettos and concentration camps to the extermination camps. In all six of these camps, Jews were unaware of the
hard truth that they were had entered a place fully equipped with gas chambers and crematoriums awaiting to end
their lives. "They were told that they would have to be deloused and enter the baths... The baths were in reality
the gas chambers. The shower heads in the baths were actually the inlets for poison gas."
[11] The Nazis used carbon-monoxide and Zyklon B to mass murder their harmless victims in the
"showers."
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The use of gas to exterminate their enemies and the development of extermination camps
derived from the special mobile killing squads of Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen
took 40 to 60 people at a time inside a gas van. These vans were then sealed and "concealed pipes filtered exhaust
gas fumes among the victims." [12] However, this method was not sufficient for the Nazis' purposes
because only a small number of victims could be killed at a time. Other problems also arose. "The capacity to
kill millions of Jews in gas vans also had technical deficiencies, including the mental stress on the SS in those
areas where they had to unload the bodies themselves as well as the frequent van breakdowns." [13]
When the extermination camps were constructed, the number of deaths rose rapidly. For example, at
Auschwitz, as many as 12,000 Jews were killed each day. The new technology allowed 2,000 people at a time to be
killed in five minutes in a gas chamber. [14]
Auschwitz functioned differently than the other camps. About 10% of those arrived at the camps
were allowed to work. However, these people worked under such severe conditions that many eventually died. Doctors
at Auschwitz also performed many notorious medical experiments. Victims of the experiments were tested to see how
long they could endure extreme weather or high temperature. One well-known medical experiment was the study of twins.
They were examined from head to toe then dissected. [15]
As the Allied forces progressed closer to the occupied lands of Germany, the Nazis destroy the camps to wipe out
any evidence of the genocide which had occurred. Of the few prisoners who survived were about 200,000 Jews. These
Jews, similar to other prisoners, were a "useful labor force" and thus were taken to territories inside Germany.
[16]
One mean of transporting prisoners was long "?glossary("forced marches");?>. Prisoners were
forced to walk for long distance in bitter cold weather "with little or no food, water, or rest." [17]
Many could not keep up and were killed by the guards. Others died due to "exposure, starvation, and cruel treatment
by their SS guards." [18] The Nazis' violent persecutions against the Jews ceased when World War II ended
on May 7, 1945. Regretfully, it was already too late for many European Jews.
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