The Main Symbol For The Holocaust

The Holocaust can be called one of the darkest sides and the biggest tragedies of the human civilization. The German concentration Camp has become a main symbol for the Holocaust. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established about 20,000 camps and killed 11 million people. There are three major concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, and Bergen-Belsen. These camps were very overpopulated and the prisoners did not eat well, wore cloth rags as clothing and were forced into labor for more than half of the day. “The first concentration camps opened in 1940 and Jews were gassed in mobile vans which brought around the idea of the gas chambers” (Holocaust Encyclopedia – Nazi Camps).
“Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest
In September 1941 the first extermination of prisoners took place. Auschwitz became a major site to the Nazi Final Solution. From 1942 to 1944 transport trains transported Jews from all over German controlled Europe to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. 1.1 million People were killed at Auschwitz and ninety percent of them killed where Jews. Others groups of people killed at Auschwitz included 150000 Poland’s , 23000 Romani, 15000 Soviet prisoners, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Approximately 1 and 6 Jews killed in the holocaust died in Auschwitz. “Children born in the camp were generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, cost-accountant considerations led to an order to place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits” (Gate to Hell Auschwitz). Living conditions in this camp were brutal, if you weren’t killed in a concentration camp you died from the forced labor, starvation, or infectious diseases. Some of the Prisoners were also to medically experiment on by Josef Mengele. Throughout the war 6,500 to 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel staffed the Concentration camp. Fifteen percent of the concentration staff has been
During the holocaust 500,000 Jews were killed at Belzec. The camp was located in German occupied Poland about a half a kilometer south of the local railroad station. Forty to sixty rail trucks holding about two thousand to twenty five hundred Jews would be dropped off at Belzec. They would then be quickly divided into groups which would be pushed into the camp. When they got into the camp they were assigned their jobs and the Men and the Women were divided. The men were disinfected and showered and the women had to get there head shaved and were marched off to large huts with their children. They were then brutally pushed into gas chambers which were disguised as showers and before they knew what had happen they were gone. The concentration camp Belzec was quite small, with a circumference of +- 1,220 yards” (Belzec Poland). Belzec was divided into two separate camps each camp was surrounded by barb wire and the first camp was in charge of sorting the prisoners into groups and the living places of the prisoners. “The second camp housed the gas chambers and burial pits. “It was reached by a long, narrow passageway with barbed wire fencing on either side, known as 'the tube” (Belzec Poland).This concentration camp ran from March 17, 1942 to the end December 1942. At Belzec they burned the dead bodies on an open air grid and crushed the bones. This