The Holocaust was a horrible time. Part of this tragedy was the concentration camps. During the 1930s and 1940s, German Nazi leaders established 22 concentration camps where Jews, but also along with Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, Slav, and others who were judged undesirable were imprisoned. Most prisoners were worked to death, shot, gassed, or given lethal injections. By the end of the war, six million people had died in concentration camps. Here is an inside look on these unthinkable crimes.

Transportation of victims to the death camps was usually by train. As many as 1000 people would be shoved onto a cattle car. The trains, consisting of freight cars moved slowly on special schedules to their destinations. The train cars were usually just cattle cars. Often, the sick and elderly died on the way to the camps. When the train stopped, they would be forced off the train and would gather on the landing – the ramp. Those who were “unfit” or unhealthy, and most of the women and children would be sent to the left. They were to be exterminated. Those who were fit would be sent to the right, to work at hard labor. That meant probable death from since the labor was so harsh.

The largest of all these death camps was Auschwitz. The Jewish dead at Auschwitz totaled more than 1.1 million. Try to imagine one-third of Los Angeles being murdered. Those are the same numbers. Auschwitz is notorious for using science, technology, and industry for the use of mass extermination. It also became a location for medical experiments that used humans as the guinea pigs. Most notorious of the doctors of these experiments was Josef Mengele whose favorite experiments were on twins.

At these camps they would gas the Jews routinely. Most camps had carbon monoxide gas chambers, but Auschwitz used hydrogen cyanide for the gassings. This gas was much quicker than the carbon monoxide. To erase the traces of destruction, large crematories were constructed so that the bodies of the gassed could be incinerated. The Nazis would make the Jews who worked at the camps bury their own people in mass graves also.

Those who weren’t sent to be exterminated when they got off the train, were sent to work at the camp. These people were fed barely any food, and slept in bunks that were shared with three other people.

The Jews who “disobeyed” the camp rules, or tried to hide in the camp were severely punished, tortured, or simply killed. A punishment for inmates who tried to hide in the camp was to drag them along the camp roads until their head was wounded. If they did not punish them, they would kill them by drowning them in water-tubs, hanging, throwing them down stone quarries, beating them to death with an ax or shovel, or bathing them to death – which was exposing them to cold water until they died after some 30 minutes.

Thinking of these situations is terrorizing. It is unthinkable that a human being could treat another human in such a way. The Holocaust should never have to happen again.

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