Brainerd 1

David Brainerd

Mr. Neuburger

English Comp 101-129

05 May 2011

Annotated Bibliography

Death Camps

“Concentration Camp System: In Depth.” Holocaust

Encyclopedia.

U n i t e d S t a t e s H o l o c a u s t M e m o r i a l W e b . 4 May 2011.
G e r m a n y , u n d e r t h e f o u n d a t i o n o f National Socialism system and in the
earliest years of the third Reich created a series of camps that were used for political,
ideological and racial discrimination. In 1933 the SS created the mold, or blueprint camp
called the Dachau concentration camp, which represented the centralized established
model, as the author described, of all camps during the war used by the Germans.
Through a systemized project, levels of authority were established with certain
responsibilities for the orders of incarceration, release, execution or other forms of
punishment, including the almost immediate execution of most European Jewish peoples.
After 1933, when the systems were launched with Dachau, the personnel, including
guards, were not subject to “review by any judicial or administrative authorities outside
of the SS and police apparatus.” This was based on the extra implementation of laws by
the Fuhrer, which guaranteed the acts of atrocity to be protected under German rule of
State. Anyone who was a threat to the German State or to the German peoples, including
breeding practices were subject to incarceration. Furthermore, the subjugation of a crime
could be predetermined rather than innocent until proven guilty compared to US system.
This was called a preventative arrest, or known as Vorbeugungshaft.

This article was useful in describing the overall system of the concentration camp by a
general examination of who executed the orders on which level, as well as acting as a
precursive curiosity towards the extermination camps.

“Nazi camps” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museums.

4 May 2011.

During the years between 1933 and 1945 the Nazi regime created close to 20,000 camps
that held hostage and executed millions of people. Some were detention centers in
preparation of forced labor; others were elaborate facilities where pure extermination
took place. Aside from European Jews, German communists, socialists, social democrats,
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gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, and homosexuals, were deemed social deviants and forced
to work or die. The death camps were a specified camp designed for efficient genocide
to take place. Gas chambers were established to make this possible and used to make this
type of killing more digestible for those pulling the trigger so to speak. At its peak,
according to this source, the chambers could sustain the killing of more than 6,000
prisoners each day. The number of camps increased after the Germans began invading the
Soviet Union after 1941.

This article was useful to get a grasp of how many camps were set up the types of peoples
collected during the holocaust. Moreover the article included the soviet invasion and the
increase in occupied territory. The number of deaths per day differs from other sources.

Adler, Jerry, and Andrew Nagorski. "The last days of Auschwitz.

(CoverStory)." Newsweek 125.3 (1995): 46.Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.

Web. 4 May 2011.

The most widely known death camp, Auschwitz, “owes its prominence to its size and its
special role as both a death camp for Jews and Gypsies,” and actually served as the
“administrative centers” for a network of concentration and extermination camps
Originally polish artillery bunkers Auschwitz I was used for a multitude of functions,
including but not limited to, horrific medical experimentation in an attempt to build the
perfect German soldier. The prisoners were classified between two groups. Those to be
worked, and those who were to be exterminated. Transportation and treatment varied
with function but generally speaking, those who survived immediate death were sent to
labor camps where they were literally worked to their death or close to it. Prisoners were
transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys.

This article provided a large amount of information concerning daily life in Auschwitz
particularly an abstract painted picture of the conditions.

Newman, Cathy. "zyklon b and the camp of death." National Geographic 207.5 (2005):

22-25. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 May 2011.

The summer of 1941 a man named Himmler informs Rudolf Hoss, the commandant at
Auschwitz that a final solution has been made concerning “the question of the Jews.”
They were to be exterminated in a new way using a new method. Rudolf Hoss chose
Auschwitz for the purpose of sustaining a massive killing, which was proving impossible
within the existing extermination sites in the east. The new method involving Zyklon B,
a pellet form of hydrogen cyanide, was to replace the pumping of exhaust fumes into
closed vehicles and firing squads. This method was very effective because the pellets of
Zyklon B changed to gas upon reaction to the air. The sub camp Birkenau, was host to
the upgraded death chambers which were used for up to 8,000 deaths a day. This was the
final solution that was Hitler’s Jewish Problem.
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This article was very helpful in identifying the actual name for the chemical agent used to
gas people. Until this article I wasn’t sure how it was followed through.

Bogod, David. "The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments: Forbidden Data." Anesthesia Dec.

2004: 1155+. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 May 2011.

Death Camps are synonymous with German firing ranges and gas chambers, but some
mortality was carried out through medical experimentation. In Auschwitz, Joseph
Mengle, an academic psycho, carried out unimaginable experimentation on prisoners.
Mengle worked with twins in an attempt to create the perfect race of humans using
practices like amputation without anesthesia, chemical injections using gasoline as well
as other harmful substances that were injected directly into the eye in an attempt to
change phonotypical traits such as eye color. Women had their uteruses injected with
substances to force necrosis; men were castrated just to have their testes examined
following death. These experiments were carried out in the name of racial purification.
Another Scientist, Sigmund Rascher, had a more useful vision, by testing hypothermia
using human subjects, of course, in order to save more pilots shot down over the ice-cold
waters of the North Sea during winter. Some 300 prisoners were put under ice-cold water
while a series of measurements, including rectal temperature and heart rate were
examined. He also took 200 prisoners from the camps and placed them in decompression
chambers to examine nitrogen in the cerebral blood and the ejection of pilots at high
altitudes. Most cases resulted in a horrific death.

This source painted a picture through an anesthesiologist’ point of view. His research
went into great depth of several alternative devices of terror that weren’t mentioned in
other readings.

Downing, Taylor. "Auschwitz: the forgotten evidence."  History

Today 55.2 (2005): 26. Web. 4 May 2011.

What if the Allies could have stopped the genocide at the death camps of Auschwitz in
August of 1944 instead of waiting for the Soviet invasion in late January of 1945?
Mosquito aircraft of the 60th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron flew roughly 1200 miles
over Poland and snapped some 50 photos from 30,000 feet up at 400 mph and gathered
very useful intelligence, however due to a mixture of disbelief and ulterior motives, the
killing continued untouched for many more months. The Allies were suspicious of the
expansion of a chemical plant near Krakow in Southern Poland. The plant was producing
a crucial ingredient for the German war machine and the destruction of this plant was
under serious consideration. The photographs were examined for date collection purposes
on this one area and then archived for examination years later. The plans for the
Auschwitz-Birkenau structures were started by late 1941, by the time the photos were
taken, close to 250 Barracks and almost 100 support buildings were counted. In the
photos you can clearly see the massive crematoria and gas chambers. The article even
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mentions that it wasn’t just once that the planes flew overhead taking pictures, but several
times during the summer and fall of 1944.

This article, along with the photos, provided a detailed overhead of the area where the
12,000 acclaimed deaths occurred each day. This total is the highest number of deaths
found in record per day.

“The Auschwitz Album: Story of a Death Factory” USA Today March 1 2006,

The Second World War had a devastating impact on the human race, physically as well
as mentally. The atrocities following the German perspective, led by Dictator Adolf
Hitler, piloted unbearable acts of genocide and tremendous suffering. During its five
years of operation an estimated 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz, comprised of
mostly Jews (1.35 million), Poles (70-75,000), and Gypsies (20-25,000).

This source was helpful in providing raw numbers to compare with others sources

Hitler, Adolf, Personal memoirs/interview. Print 1924-25

“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their
power of forgetting is enormous.” He spent a short stent in prison, after becoming a
decorated veteran of the First World War. Within his confinements, it is said, that his
plans to build a new world order were born and scribed in a book known as the Mein
Kampf. Amongst his memoirs, he set plans to build the largest military machine the
world has ever known, and a significant change in German foreign policy on conquest
were to be made, including the extermination of the Jews and the annexation of the Polish
region. This was and remains an almost incredible act, but with careful planning, brute
force and swift action along with the use of concentration camps, Hitler did, to an extent,
what he set out to do.

His personal writings definitely set the stage to the atrocities that I would find in all the
research. The chilling words from his own hand echoed through my head as I read each
account from his destructive path.

“From the Testimony of Zanne Farbstein about surviving the Holocaust.” Yad Vashem

The Holocaust Martyrs’, 2011 Web. 4 May 2011.

“We were the first Jews in Auschwitz.”

Zanne Farbstein survived a dreadful 3 years at Auschwitz beginning in March of 1942.
Zanne and her 2 sister’s (Edith and Sarah), along with 1000 other girls, were the first
Jews to arrive in Auschwitz. Zanne quickly learned of the 5 crematoria that existed at
there that ‘remained so full that the small children were forced into pits and burned alive.’
Zanne's time at Auschwitz escaped death due to her Aryan features and instead was
issued roadwork, digging trenches and sorting the clothes and possessions of new
arrivals.
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This testimony complimented the earlier findings of survivors based on their appearance.

“From the Testimony of David Gur about Surviving the Holocaust.” Yad Vashem The

Holocaust Martyrs’ 2011 Web. 4 May 2011.

“It is probable that every 2nd Jew who survived in Budapest produced something in our
workshop”
It was Hungary 1944 and a team of Zionist had moved underground and required forged
documents. While working as a building apprentice , David Gur aided in the supplying of
not only the forged documents for the Zionists youth movement, but later for the
movement in general and eventually the Jewish public and finally those of non Jewish
decent who were against the Nazi regime. The idea was to get the Jews out through
Romania and into Israel where it would be safe.
20 years later he and friends create a commemorative organization that brings to light the
methods and the dangers involved through series of books, film and lectures.

This testimony brings to light the will of a people who are willing to stand up for what
they believe in regardless of the risks.

Sites for the Testimonies

Zanne Farbstein
(http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/2007/video/farbstein.asp?
height=520&width=650)
David Gur
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/2007/video/gur.asp?
height=520&width=650