The Camps

Holocaust PowerPoint #8

The Major Concentration CampsDachua

• Located near Munich• Built to hold 8,000 prisoners• Theodore Eicke commandant from 1933-1940

– Offenses included inciting speeches, supplying atrocity stories to opposition, and collecting true or untrue information and concealing it, talking about it, or smuggling it outside the camp.

– Anyone physically attacking a guard, refusing to obey an order, or giving speeches while marching or at work was shot on the spot or hanged later

– His phrase “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free) hung over the camp entrance

• Himmler and the SS officials decided that those who entered the camps as prisoners would never leave alive

• Guards wore their Death’s Head emblems proudly

• Camp had a mix of prisoners: anti-Nazi, ministers, Communists, gypsies, alcoholics, criminals, and Jews.

Vught• A woman’s camp in Holland• Prisoners wore blue overalls

with a red stripe down the leg• Day began at 4 a.m. with

prisoners standing in lines • Breakfast was at 5:30 a.m.

(black bread and a drink resembling coffee)

• Work in factories began at 6 a.m. making radio parts for German aircraft

• One hour lunch break included gruel made from wheat and peas

• At 6 p.m. role call was taken again

Theresienstadt

• An unusual camp built 35 miles north of Prague

• Was, at first, a ghetto for the elderly, WW I veterans, and Jewish gov’t officials, but they soon were joined by Czechs, Poles, and Dutch prisoners

• It had a lending library, orchestra, lectures, schools, and an artist studio.

• Visited by the Swedish Red Cross• Artists drew pictures to please Nazi

masters by day and pictures showing hunger and cruelty at night.– Those pictures were hidden and

survived the Holocaust• In 1944 the camp became a shipping

point for prisoners on their way to Auschwitz

Bergen-Belsen• On the road to Hamburg• Opened in 1943 it quickly earned a

reputation as the worst camp• Josepf Kramer (commander)

ignored health and sanitation conditions

• Cruelty was ordinary there; men would have their hands tied behind their backs and then be suspended in the air for hours

• Prisoners were picked at random to burned alive in the crematorium

• Typhus epidemic in 1944 killed thousands

• Average life expectancy was nine months

Buchenwald• A camp located near

Weimar, opened in 1933• Neatly stacked piles of

corpses lay unburied around the camp

• Inmates starved on a daily diet of a piece of brown bread with a little margarine on top and a little stew

• In a stable built for 80 horses, 1,200 men were housed; inmates worked 12 hours shifts making guns and ammunition

Elie Wiesel is 2nd row, 7th from the left.

Mauthausen• One of the worst camps• Jews sent there worked in the

stone quarry carrying heavy rocks up a steep slope ; many were crushed to death; some gave up hope and jumped off the ledge

• Franz Ziereis, commandant, was called “Babyface” by the prisoners– Shootings, gassings, hangings,

lethal injections, and torture by blasts of cold water were common

– About 36,000 executions were reported at the prison

• No prisoner was treated like a human being.

Auschwitz• “Hell on Earth”• Largest camp, serving as both a

concentration camp and death camp

• Located 160 miles from Warsaw• First prisoners at Auschwitz were

“dangerous Poles” (intellectuals, Communist, and Jews)

• Birkenau was located across from Auschwitz– Was originally built to house

more people, but soon became overcrowded too (750 in space meant for 500)

• In 1943 camp had one incinerator that could dispose of 340 bodies each day, two to handle 1,140 each, and two to handle 768 each – a total of 4,756 bodies per day

• Estimated that as many as 4 million people were sent to Auschwitz

Selection at Auschwitz• Cattle cars stopped• Men were separated from women

and children• All passed by an SS doctor who

motioned to the left (life at hard labor) or the right (death)

• Families were split up in emotional scenes

• Their luggage was to be left and then it was sorted through by the guards; all became property of the German government– Nazi’s stole an estimated $128 million

• Those allowed to live had their heads shaved, were tattooed, and were sent to a barrack

Survival in the Camps• Those who did not adjust quickly to

life in the camps quickly died• Elderly people and small children

did not do well in these places• Many were described as the

“walking dead”• Some did survive; old timers told

new comers the first three months were the test, and if you could survive them, you could make it through three years

• Mantra was “live through one day at a time”

• Appearing too smart or appearing too stupid made the inmate a target

• About 700,000 out of the 8 million sent to the camps survived.

Advice on How to Survive• Don’t Cry

– To cry is a sign of weakness; show no anger or self-pity

• Follow Orders Quickly– Order and discipline are the

highest law at the camps; must submit to severe training

– Don’t argue with the guards or Kapos; don’t complain; don’t ask why

• Don’t Call Attention to Yourself– Resistance of any kind, even

complaining, brings punishment on everyone else

• Try to Look Healthier than You Feel– Try to get assigned to an

“easier” job (i.e. sewing room, hospital, or skilled labor job)

– Try to find a “friendly” clerk that might help you out or save your life

• Become Callous– Ignore the beating of the old

man or young woman going on nearby

– Don’t be offended by the stench of the camp or the death all around you

– Don’t trust anyone too far– Survival requires toughness

that doesn’t exist in the world beyond the barbed wire fence

• Have a Reason for Living– They are trying to destroy

a person’s humanity and the main thing separating the animal from the human is the human’s ability to reason

– Believe that God has a purpose for your life, and you must survive to fulfill that purpose

– Believe in yourself, that you can and will outlast them

– Survive so you can tell the story of what you and your family have suffered during these impossible times

– Survive so you can tell the liberator about the cruelty of the guards and see them brought to justice

– Find ways to occupy your time

– Religion is secretly discussed by inmates to keep hope alive

– Rabbis reminded prisoners that God rewards those who keep the faith and punishes those who abuse the innocent

Prisoner of War (POW) Camps• Stalag 7A – Moosburg, Germany

– Conditions were not much different of Concentration Camps• The only difference is that prisoners were not killed. Prisoners who were

officers negotiated that any prisoners who were Jewish would not be taken away or mistreated.

• Suffered from overcrowding• Two blankets per prisoner, many would sleep on dirt floors• Prisoners suffered from diarrhea due to malnutrition• Work details consisted of clearing debris, building and filling bomb craters• Prisoners were paid $13.00 a month and were allowed to mail family• Played baseball, bridge, basketball and horseshoes when time was allowed.