They recount that the victims were usually arranged into a massive pyramid shape with the strongest and most desperate individuals near the top. Often, the walls would have to be cleaned in between uses to remove the blood left by fingers scraped bloody by people trying, in vain, to claw their way out of the rooms (Levin, 1993).
At the death camps, the strongest prisoners were used to perform the most disgusting work of removing dead bodies and operating the crematoria; this was their only alternative to being gassed or shot themselves. Camps without crematoria used large open burning pits similar to the execution pits employed before widespread use of gas chambers. Sometimes, a prisoner on such work details would recognize individuals in the crowd headed to the disrobing area as a former acquaintance or neighbor. In such instances, they could not do anything to warn the victims of their imminent death without risking being thrown into the gas chambers themselves. In any case, warnings at this stage would have accomplished little but to add to the fear and horror undoubtedly experienced by victims of the Nazis in their last moments of life. Still, the psychological toll of this dilemma was great enough that more than a few working prisoners eventually threw themselves into the flaming pits where the corpses were burned to escape their situations (Guttenplan, 2001).
Work camps maintained extensive networks of prisoner barracks lined up in long rows that were visible to allied aircraft from miles above. Inside each barracks, prisoners slept on wooden slats with hay or dilapidated mattresses and usually in a single layer of thin camp uniforms without any winter clothes to protect them from the cold. Roll calls were held multiple times per day and prisoners who were too ill to get out of bed were simply removed and shot outside the barracks as examples for other prisoners or taken to the "infirmary" and shot their instead (Guttenplan, 2001). Generally, Cholera, Typhus, and Tuberculosis spread rapidly among the prisoners to the extent that even as work camps, more than half of all prisoners died within months of their arrival. Medical treatment for prisoners was nonexistent and usually consisted of a bullet to the head.
Those who managed to survive did so on rations consisting of a slice of stale bread...
Holocaust The sheer scale of the Holocaust can make it difficult to understand, because while human history is rife with examples of oppression and genocide, never before had it been carried out in such an efficient, industrialized fashion. The methodical murder of some six million Jews, along with millions of other individuals who did not fit the parameter's of the Nazis' racial utopia, left a scar on the global consciousness and
The asylum automatically granted under the Swiss constitution was denied for those seeking it for religious reasons. By 1942, only 9,150 foreign Jews were legally resident in Switzerland, an increase of just 980 since 1931. It was the Swiss government that requested the German government to help it identify Jews by stamping all Jewish passports with a prominent letter "J," following the Nuremberg acts in 1935. "By 1942, acting
At this point, it is easy to see how Hitler was able to be a success in his plans and how he used the basic human need for order to carry out his plan. However, one still must wonder why no one resisted. Regardless of the order that his methods created, what he did was horrific by any standard. One has to wonder why the people did not simply rise
My entire family was marched at gunpoint into railway cars ordinarily used for cattle and sent to one of the many Eastern European death camps established throughout the continent by the Nazis. My brother and I watched our family and neighbors being rounded up from where we were hiding on the roof of our apartment building two nights ago. He believes that our family might still survive the war at
Part 1: The Need for an Analytical FrameworkThe Holocaust was one of the most catastrophic events in human history. The purpose of this paper will be to identify and engage primary research resources in a discussion of the causes and effects of the Holocaust. The goal is to identify an analytic framework that can help readers to understand the causes and effects of this tragedy. There are many factors that
11. Existentialism Existentialism is a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the larger reality of the external world beyond the specific human needs or goals of the individual. Its two most influential contributors are Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. 12. Information on the origins of Jazz Generally, Jazz is believed to have originated in New Orleans, Louisiana after the Creoles who were originally from the West Indies and lived under Spanish and then French rule became American
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