The Atrocities and Liberation of Concentration Camps

The Atrocities and Liberation of Concentration Camps


If you combine sadistic Nazi soldiers, a "license to kill," and twenty-six million people

whom they took their aggression out on, you have the Holocaust. From torture to murder, the

concentration camp prisoners experienced almost every despicably, inhumane act one can

imagine. Hitler's Nazis will never be able to justify this ultimate example of cruelty and

unfairness. Although the Holocaust occurred nearly seventy years ago, the world will never fail

to remember the horrible acts that were committed against millions of innocent people in

concentration camps.

Whether the camps' establishments were for labor purposes, or simply because Hitler

despised the Jews, the prisoners could expect nothing less than being treated like pathetic

animals who were guilty of the "crime" of being born. According to Raul Hilberg, two principles

were used for deportation purposes: "One was the ‘security arrest' of persons suspected of

‘tendencies' against the state. The other was the ‘preventive' arrest of [potential] and ‘habitual'

criminals'" ( "Concentration Camp" 498). Among those deported were Jews, Poles, Gypsies,

Soviet POWs, socialists, Communists, homosexuals, priests, ministers, and many more. They

were deported to Vernichtungslager, or death camps, such as Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek,

Sobidor, Treblinka, and the most infamous, Auschwitz (Kornblum).

Suffering didn't start for the prisoners with their arrival at the camps. Deportees endured

many hardships on the trips to the camps, and some weren't strong enough to survive. Many





deportees had to walk up to eighty kilometers in the snow while the Nazi guards beat them.

Because they were given no foods for periods up to a week, many deportees had resorted to

eating snow. However, perhaps the most gruesome tragedies happened on the boxcars. Up to 140

deportees were crammed into... [continues]

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