The first concentration camp were built in Germany after Hitler was made chancellor in January of 1933 .Nazi built over 1,000 Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps that were built on a swamp. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people were confined. The Auschwitz-Birkenau …show more content…
Prisoners slept in 60 spaces, with only three bunks in each space, they slept on straw spread over the bunks. The wooden barracks were once stables, were they had once kept animals. Walls had gaps at the bottom and top, during the winter which left the barracks bitterly cold. The Auschwitz-Birkenau had no windows, and only a row of skylights at the top of the roof, each barrack had two stoves with a brick heating fuel running between them. However, fuel was not provided. Due to the harsh conditions of these barracks many prisoners died. Overpopulated camps in 1945 were terrible. They had many diseases that were brutally neglected such as; Typhus, Dysentery, and …show more content…
Chelmno, a camp located in Poland, was the very first to kill victims using gas, but they used the mobile vans. In 1942 they finally used gas chambers, there are six gas chambers that were known of located in; Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar and Sonnenstein that were all located in Poland. What the victims have been told were showers were actually gas chambers, 2,000 people could be held in the chambers, but they made the victims raise their arms into the air to make more room for more prisoners. There would be less room and less oxygen for them to breathe so the killing will be much quicker. About 12,000 prisoners a day were gassed, eventually gas vans were created, the engine exhaust was put in the inside of the vans, using Zyklon B which is known as a pesticide. Zyklon B were peas sized pellets that when it hits the air turns into a lethal gas, suffocating prisoners in three to fifteen minutes. Gassing didn’t cost much and was considered, a more efficient way of killing off the "Life unworthy or life". After killing them in the chambers they would know when the prisoners were all dead when the prisoners screams had stopped, Nazis would wait and hour before opening the doors to the chambers. The Nazis had a set or workers know has Sonderkommandos, who were prisoners the Nazi party partially trusted, the prisoners removed the bodies from the chambers and pulled there rings and gold