The Camps

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The Camps

• Holocaust PowerPoint 8

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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 Deaths Head emblems proudly
• Camp had a mix of prisoners anti-Nazi,
  ministers, Communists, gypsies, alcoholics,
  criminals, and Jews.

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Vught

• A womans 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 530 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

4
Theresienstadt

• An unusual camp built 35 miles north of Prague
• Was, at first, a ghetto for the elderly, WW I
  veterans, and Jewish govt 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

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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

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

• 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

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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.

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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

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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
• Nazis stole an estimated 128 million
• Those allowed to live had their heads shaved,
  were tattooed, and were sent to a barrack

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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.

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Advice on How to Survive

• Dont 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
• Dont argue with the guards or Kapos dont
  complain dont ask why
• Dont Call Attention to Yourself
• Resistance of any kind, even complaining, brings
  punishment on everyone else

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• 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
• Dont be offended by the stench of the camp or
  the death all around you
• Dont trust anyone too far
• Survival requires toughness that doesnt exist in
  the world beyond the barbed wire fence

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• Have a Reason for Living
• They are trying to destroy a persons humanity
  and the main thing separating the animal from the
  human is the humans 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

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• 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

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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.