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What Is Auschwitz? Auschwitz is located in Oswiecim in Poland ,and has become a symbol of the Holocaust. One of the main reasons that Nazi Germany established the camp there was because it was a central intersection of roads and railways. Before the Second World War, Jews living in Oswiecim were half of this small town's population. After the Holocaust, it may be argued that Oswiecim will forever be overshadowed by Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps ever.
Not only has Auschwitz become a symbol of the Holocaust due to its size, but also because innocent Jews were sent there from all over Europe to go through pain and fear and to be murdered in gas chambersbeating and so on
Auschwitz was surrounded by high electric barbed wire fences, which were guarded by SS soldiers armed with machine guns and rifles. Some Holocaust survivors have said that not only did the barbed-wire surrounding Auschwitz tremble and howl, but also the tortured earth itself moaned with the voices of the victims
In the first period of the existence of the camp, it was mostly Poles who were sent here by the Germans. These people were regarded as particularly dangerous Over time, the Nazis also began to send groups of prisoners from other countries to Auschwitz.
Over 50% of the registered prisoners died as a result of starvation, labour that exceeded their physical capacity, the terror in the camp, executions, the living conditions, disease and epidemics, punishment, torture, and medical experiments.
The majority of the Jewish men, women and children deported to Auschwitz were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers immediately after arrival. At the end of the war, in an effort to remove the traces of the crimes they had committed, the SS began dismantling the gas chambers, crematoria, and other buildings, as well as burning documents.
Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz "On arrival at the "Cottage," they were told to undress. At first they went calmly into the rooms where they were supposed to be disinfected. But some of them showed signs of alarm, and spoke of death by suffocation and of annihilation. A sort of panic set in at once. Immediately all the Jews still outside were pushed into the chambers, and the doors were screwed shut. With subsequent transports the difficult individuals were picked out early on and most carefully supervised. At the first signs of unrest, those responsible were unobtrusively led behind the building and killed with a small-calibre gun that was inaudible to the others. "
In all, 1.1 million people died during the four and a half years of Auschwitz's existence; one million of them were Jewish men, women and children. · Only an estimated 11% of Jewish children who were alive in 1933 survived the Holocaust. · In total 90% of the Jewish population in Poland died. · Other groups who died included Polish prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Romanies people with disabilities, homosexuals and prisoners of conscience or religious faith
What Happened at Auschwitz? In March 1942 trains carrying Jews began arriving daily. Sometimes several trains would arrive on the same day, each carrying one thousand or more coming from the ghettos of Eastern Europe, as well as from Western and Southern European countries.
The majority of the victims who came from both Western and Eastern Europe including Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, were unaware of their of their fate. They were transported like animals in cattle-cars and arrived in a state of total collapse to the camp. Most of the people actually never really entered the camp, but just crossed it on the way to the gas chambers.
The dehumanized minority often became registered prisoners with shaved heads in striped uniforms. Jews chosen for slave labour were stripped of everything. Prisoners' personal identities were taken mainly by the act of tattooing their arms with numbers ,replacing their personal names.
Although the Nazis terrorized and dehumanized prisoners in Auschwitz, as well as in other concentration camps under their control, many Jews attempted to retain their dignity and humanity.
What happened at Auschwitz was innocent people being killed for absolutely no reason what so ever, and doing this project made me realise the torture, pain and fear that people in concentration camps went through and how serious it actually was.
The End By EmmaDarby
