Holocaust Concentration Camps

Concentration Camps During the Holocaust
During the time of the Holocaust, there was a total of 341 camps and 13 main camps. Some of those main camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Chelmno, Treblinka, and Dachau (Sofsky 41). The camps were built to detain the Jews and others that were brought there. Also, for isolating, torturing, and killing them (Kogon 48). The buildings had guard towers to watch all the prisoners so they couldn't escape, the walls were over a meter thick along with barbed wire on top and around the walls to keep them in (Sofsky 48). All the prisoners had a job they had to do everyday. Work during the winter was 4:30-5:00 and in the summer it was 4:00-8:00 (Kogon 78). When they first originally built these …show more content…
There were four killing centers that were built on Polish soil (Feig 28). There were Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, and Chelmo. In the beginning or the Holocaust, they had soldiers called Einsatzgruppen that were members of the Schutzstaffel that was ordered to kill the Jews and Communist Party officials before killing centers and extermination camps were made( Feig 29). There were four big crematoriums in each camp that had eight gas chambers and about fifty ovens. Crematorium 1 was used for natural death or executed as if they were shot or beat to death (Gutman 158). Each cremation would hold up to 4,756 on a daily basis. Crematoria 2 and 3 could burn up to 2,500 bodies in 24 hours, which is more than the other crematories could burn on a daily basis (Gutman 170). Each of the eight gas chambers was able to hold 800 people (Gutman 162). During the 1940’s the 4 crematoriums weren't able to keep up with the gas chambers because the chambers could hold 4x more than the crematoriums could. The pits were about 25 ft wide, 150 ft long and 6 ft deep (Lace 39). After the fire was done burning after 6 hours and was cool enough the soldiers would go into it with shovels and shovel out all the ashes and sometimes they would find body parts like fingers, arms and legs because the bodies didn't always burn completely so they would put them in a smaller …show more content…
He ordered for all Jews to either be killed or sent to camps. Few weeks after he came into power he started making the camps and hiring SS guards (Feig 23). About twelve months later he decided on the “final solution” on the problem with the Jews. The “final solution” was a plan that had different stages to the plan of exterminating all Jews (Naumann 3). The invasion of Hitler and the SS guards wasn't just in Germany, it also happened in Poland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, etc (Feig 25). During this time of Hitler’s ruling he issued a predated “Mercy Death” for patients that were incurable (Kogon 200). One year later after Hitler became Chancellor, Reinhold Hanning joined Hitler in the “final solution” to kill all

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