Download The Camps

The Camps
Survivors found in barracks in Mauthausen and Buchenwald.
The Final Solution
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While the United States was becoming embroiled in the war in the Pacific, back in
Europe the true intent of the Nazi armies was becoming increasingly clear. As more
and more of eastern Europe fell into German hands, the territory became a sort of
backyard for the Nazis, where the ugliest parts of their plan could be carried out far
away from prying eyes. By late 1941, the first Jews from Germany and western
Europe were gathered and transported, along with many other minorities, to
concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and
western Russia, where they were first used as slaves and then systematically
murdered.
At this point, the notorious gas chambers of the later Nazi concentration camps were
not yet common. Most victims were taken in groups to secluded areas where they
were stripped of clothing, pushed into open pits, machine-gunned, and then quickly
covered over, in many cases even before all were dead. Indeed, one of the reasons
for creating the gas chambers and extermination camps was that many troops in the
German S.S. experienced severe psychological repercussions carrying out the
gruesome tasks put before them.
The German atrocities were not directed solely at Jews. Precisely the same fate
awaited millions of non-Jewish Russian and eastern European civilians, as well as
many Soviet prisoners of war. By December 1941, the number of Nazi murders was
already in the hundreds of thousands and growing rapidly.
The Wannsee Conference
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On January 20, 1942, a group of fifteen Nazi officials met in a villa in the Wannsee
district outside Berlin in order to settle the details for resolving the so-called “Jewish
question.” The meeting was led by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo (the Nazi
secret police), and included several members of the S.S. along with representatives
of several German government ministries. Neither Hitler nor any heads of
government ministries were present.
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The topics discussed at the Wannsee Conference included the logistics of expelling
Jews from Germany by emigration, the possibility of mandatory sterilization, and the
best ways to deal with people of mixed blood. The conference devoted considerable
attention to the matter of who would be legally considered a Jew; ultimately, it set
different conditions for pure Jews and those of mixed blood, in turn classified by first
generation and second generation. Delegates also discussed how to handle Jews
who would not or could not leave the country; it was decided that these Jews would
be sterilized and sent to live in all-Jewish “retirement ghettos.”
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The official record of the Wannsee Conference made no mention of mass killing of
Jews or of extermination camps. However, the meeting did set a secret goal to
remove 11 million Jews from Europe by whatever means and expressed concern that
the mass emigration process already taking place was becoming expensive and more
difficult to negotiate. The terms “final solution” and “absolute final solution” were
used, although the specifics were not elaborated.
Concentration Camps
(Konzentrationslager)
Prior to and during World War II Nazi Germany maintained concentration
camps (Konzentrationslager) throughout the territory it controlled.
The Nazis adopted the term euphemistically (to make it sound “better”) from
the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War to conceal
the deadly nature of the camps.
None ever were actual concentration camps, whose purpose was to
concentrate and detain large groups of people at specific locations. Their
main purpose was to kill through attrition.
The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily labor
camps. During the war, prisoners in the concentration camps included
millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet and other prisoners of war, homosexuals,
gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others.
Millions of concentration camp prisoners were killed through
mistreatment, disease, starvation and overwork.
The extermination camps were the facilities set up by Nazi Germany in World
War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe.
Members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as
Roma (Gypsies), Serbs exterminated as a main target of Croatian Usta!e, Soviet
prisoners of war, Poles and others, were also killed in these camps.
Prisoners at these camps were not expected to live more than 24 hours
beyond arrival.
The method of killing at these camps was typically poison gas, usually in "gas
chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings, starvation
or sadism.
Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that many of the
Einsatzkommandos involved in the mass shootings went mad or committed
suicide, "unable to endure wading through blood any longer".
The bodies of those killed were destroyed in crematoria (except at Sobibór
where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered.
The Death Camps
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Nazi forces had begun the mass killing of Jews as early as 1939, when Germany first
invaded Poland. These actions expanded greatly during the invasion of the USSR in
1941. By 1942, the so-called Endlösung, or “final solution,” took shape, as the
murders become increasingly systematic and Hitler pressed his underlings to speed
up the process. During the previous year, S.S. commanders had experimented with
different methods, and gas chambers proved to be the method of choice.
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Although prisoners died by the thousands from disease, overwork, or starvation in
German labor camps throughout Europe, there were only seven designated
extermination camps. Six were located in Poland, one in Belorussia. These camps
existed purely for the purpose of killing, and most of the prisoners taken to them were
dead within hours of arrival. A limited number of prisoners deemed fit enough to work
were temporarily forced to labor in these camps, but they were underfed and
overworked until they too were unfit for labor and subsequently killed.
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More than 90 percent of the victims sent to these extermination camps were Jews,
brought in from all over Germany and other German-controlled areas of eastern and
western Europe. Romany (Gypsies) and homosexuals also lost their lives in the
camps in significant numbers, as did some Soviet prisoners of war. The camps
continued operation virtually unimpeded until the Allies finally liberated them near the
end of the war.
“Cattle cars” as transport
Survivors of Mauthausen
Sieg Maandag,
a young
Jewish Dutch
survivor,
walking on a
street
bordered by
cadavers near
Bergen-Belsen
20 April 1945
Newly arriving prisoners are registered upon
arrival at Buchenwald concentration camp
located near Weimar, Germany.
The faces of the brothers Robi and Gyuri gaze out of the mirror.
Paul Vadasz married before World War II, and had two sons. In
1944, when the boys were 5 and 3 years old, the family was sent to
Auschwitz. Paul was the only member of the family to survive, and
when he returned to Oradea, he found the mirror with the
photograph among the few remaining items in his home.
Emanuel and Avram
Rosenthal killed at
Majdanek.
March 22,
1933 - Nazis
open Dachau
concentration
camp near
Munich
Nov 24, 1941
Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague,
Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model
ghetto for propaganda purposes.
Arrival of Jews into the Theresienstadt
ghetto/concentration camp.
Remnants of personal effects found
at the site of the exterminations at
Chelmno.
In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel spoke
about the enduring importance of his
spoon.
This violin used to belong to Mordechai Schlein
(Motele), who was born in 1930 in Karsnovka,
Poland, now Ukraine.
Juliek “played his soul” on his violin in the
book, Night, by Elie Wiesel.
Only two Jewish families lived in Karsnovka at the time: the Schleins, who made a meager
living grinding flour, and the Gersteins, who had become very wealthy from the sugar beet
trade. At the age of eight, Motteleh moved into the Gersteins palatial home, and was
enchanted by the music lessons given there. They gave him the violin which lay in the house
unused, and Mrs. Gerstein’s brother, impressed by Motele’s musical talent, gave him his first
lessons.
The Germans entered Karsnovka in 1941, and murdered Motele’s entire family in their own
home. Motele saw everything from his hiding place in the attic, and when night fell, he took his
violin and fled to the forest. The young boy hid in the forests of Byelorussia until he
encountered Misha, (Moshe Gildenman) who commanded a Jewish partisan unit. Misha took
Motele under his wing, and provided permanent refuge for the boy in the partisans’ camp. It
soon became apparent that Motele, by now an accomplished violinist, could be very helpful to
the partisans.
The 12-year-old Motele fought with them and carried out a variety of missions, including
listening to the movements of German troops while playing his violin in town squares.
Tragically, Motele was killed during a bombardment, but Misha zealously guarded the faithful
violin. He bequeathed the instrument to his family, and his grandson, Sefi Hanegbi kept it for
many years. He recently decided to place it in the permanent care of Yad Vashem, and at a
unique ceremony in the presence of Keshet Eilon (the international master classes at Kibbutz
Eilon), the violin was handed over to Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev.
Copyright ©2003 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
Dec 8, 1941
In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes
operational.
Jewish deportees from the Lodz ghetto arrive in Chelmno after having been
transferred from a closed passenger train to a train of open cars at the Kolo
station. Jews taken to this extermination camp are placed in mobile gas vans
and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is
fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them.
Killing people face to face as the Einsatzgruppen did left them demoralized
and depressed, so mobile gas vans (using carbon monoxide) were utilized
to kill more effectively and spare the German soldiers the pain of killing.
Extermination camps also aided in mass killing in the “easiest” way
possible.
A group of Jewish men awaiting death in a gas van. They were told
they were being transported to a new location.
In January 1942
mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at AuschwitzBirkenau in Bunker I in Birkenau with the bodies being
buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow.
A stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets
found at Majdanek death camp in 1944.
Close-up of the
containers and
a soldier’s gas
mask found at
Majdanek.
After liberation, an
Allied soldier
displays a stash of
gold wedding rings
taken from victims
at Buchenwald.
SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews
from Auschwitz and Majdanek. German banknotes are sent
to the Reichs Bank. Foreign currency, gold, jewels and
other valuables are sent to SS Headquarters of the
Economic Administration. Watches, clocks and pens are
distributed to troops at the front. Clothing is distributed to
German families. By Feb. 1943, over 800 boxcars of
confiscated goods will have left Auschwitz.
Sept 26, 1942
Oct 14, 1943
Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with
300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive.
Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All
traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted.
A group portrait of the participants of the successful uprising in the
Sobibor death camp.
April 6, 1944 - Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children.
Only one survived.
Group portrait of staff members and some of the children from the children's home at
Izieu. (Below) Marcel (on left) and Albert (in center) Bulka with Alec Bergman, on the
terrace at the children's home, a place of refuge for children who had come to France
to escape Nazi persecution - until the raid of April 6, 1944 by the Lyon Gestapo, headed
by Klaus Barbie. Of the 51 persons arrested, 44 were children. The entire group was
sent to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz, on one of the last transports from
France.
June 12, 1944
Rosenberg orders Hay Action the kidnapping
of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen
for slave labor in the Reich.
Polish boys imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire
fence. Approximately 40,000 Polish children were kidnapped and imprisoned
in the camp before being transferred to Germany during "Heuaktion" (Hay
Action), ordered by Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Eastern
Occupied Territories. The children were used as slave laborers in Germany.
July 24, 1944
Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp
at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.
A group of Soviet soldiers surveys a German warehouse
containing thousands of shoes taken from prisoners
before their deaths.
In 1945
As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration
camp inmates away from outlying areas.
Prisoners being evacuated from Dachau concentration camp walk along a
street in Gruenwald on a forced march to an unknown destination. April 1945.
Another view of the march. Prisoners received little aid from people
in towns they passed through, and in some cases were harassed
and assaulted.
Auschwitz Extermination Camp Liberated
January 27, 1945
Prisoners of Auschwitz greet their Soviet liberators.
Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated
2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.
The entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I).
The gate bears the cynical Nazi motto "Arbeit Macht Frei"
(Work makes one free).
Jewish children, kept alive
in Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
extermination camp.
Among those pictured are:
Tomasz Szwarz; Alicja
Gruenbaum; Salomea Rozalin;
Gita Sztrauss; Wiera Sadler;
Marta Wiess; Word Eksztein;
Josef Rozenwaser; Rafael
Szlezinger; Gabriel Nejman;
Gugiel Appelbaum. Pesa Balter
(second from the left), arrived in
Auschwitz in August 1944 at the
age of 11.
Six-year old Anna
Klein and
three-year old
brother Jon.
Both perished in
Auschwitz.
American soldiers escort children survivors of Buchenwald out of the
main gate of the camp. Among the children pictured is future Nobel Peace
Prize winner Elie Wiesel (fourth child in the left column).
Young survivors behind a barbed wire fence in Buchenwald.
Crematoria ovens in Buchenwald concentration camp.
Crematoria in Bergen-Belsen
An exhibit of human remains and artifacts retrieved
by the U.S. Army from a pathology laboratory run
by the SS in Buchenwald. These items were used as evidence of SS
atrocities.
The items include tattooed skin taken from executed prisoners, a lampshade
made of human skin, and two shrunken heads from Polish prisoners who
were recaptured after escaping from the camp and executed.
April 15, 1945
Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by
the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was
a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."
A mass grave in
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
April 29, 1945
U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.
Survivors in Dachau on the day of liberation.
Survivors in Dachau on the day of liberation.
Assignment
• React to these photos of the camps.
• Why do you think the Nazis would take pictures of their
crimes? Why would they chronicle it?
• What is the difference between a concentration camp
and an extermination camp?
• What do you think it would have been like to liberate
(free) one of the camps?
• How many Jews were killed in this manner? How many
others?