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Aaron Ellenburg

Larry Neuburger

English Comp 102

4/13/11

Death Camps Research Essay

The death camps were designed by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler for the sole purpose of

mass murder of Jews and other undesirables. While most took advantage of using their prisoners

for forced labor and spared their lives of some for a brief while, the majority of people sent to the

camps were sent straight to the gas chambers. Those that weren’t gassed were used as forced

labor and were literally worked to death. These camps were built throughout occupied Poland.

There were six death camps: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

Forced Labor: During WWII thousands of Jews were captured and sent to camps to be

used in forced labor. “The SS Central Office for Administration and Economy defined the new

goal: labor exploitation of concentration camp prisoners, who would be taken to hundreds of

labor camps for service on behalf of the German war machine”(Overview).

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Jewish laborers at a Forced Labor

Camp.

The Nazis still intended to kill the Jews they employed but they did it in a different

manner. They killed them by placing them in inhuman living conditions with little food while

forcing them to work mercilessly. The Nazis accomplished to goals with this: exploitation of

the Jews by forced labor, and extermination by forced labor.

Life in the camp began with a daily lineup; it was “was one of the horrific aspects of the

prisoners’ lives in the camps. They were forced to stand completely still, often for hours at a

time, exposed to the elements in the cold, rain, or snow and to the terror of sudden violence by

SS men, guards or kapos”(yadvashem.org). These prisoners weren’t treated any differently than

the ones who were selected to die in the gas chambers.

Auschwitz: The Auschwitz concentration camp was the largest camp of its kind. It was

made up of three main camps: Auschwitz, Auschwitz II- Birkanau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz.

All of them used prisoners as forced labor, while one also functioned as an extermination center.
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“Auschwitz I, the main camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Construction began

in May 1940 in an abandoned Polish army artillery barracks, located in a suburb of the city. The

SS authorities continuously deployed prisoners at forced labor to expand the physical contours of

the camp” (Auschwitz). The first prisoners were primarily repeat German criminal offenders and
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Polish political prisoners. Auschwitz I served three main purposes:

Inmates at Auschwitz

http://bit.ly/dNTJ1P
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“1) to incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German

occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time; 2) to have available a supply of

forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned, construction-related enterprises (and, later,

armaments and other war-related production); and 3) to serve as a site to physically eliminate

small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police

authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany” (Auschwitz).

The infamous medical experiments occurred in Auschwitz I. The victims included

infants, twins, and dwarves.

Auschwitz II had the largest prisoner population and had the facilities for the killing

center. These first were two converted farmhouses experimenting with Zyklon-B gas. The

farmhouses were dismantled and four large scale crematoriums were built in its place; these had

three sections, a de clothing area, the gas chambers, and the crematorium ovens. Auschwitz III

“was established in October 1942 to house prisoners assigned to work at the Buna synthetic

rubber works, located on the outskirts of the Polish town of Monowice” (Auschwitz). Inmates
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were forced to work anywhere from farms to coal mines. All prisoners were registered with

tattooed I.D numbers on their left arms.

Liberation of the Camps: As the war drew to an end, the Allied armies drew nearer to

the Nazi death camps. “The Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by

demolishing the camp. Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of

murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing”

(Liberation). Soldiers found several thousands of prisoners left behind by Nazis, several die

from disease, exhaustion, or malnutrition after liberation.

As the allied soldiers liberated more and more camps they saw more of the horrors that

occurred during the holocaust. Survivors resembled walking skeletons from the physical

demands of forced labor and lack of nutrition. Several of the survivors died even after they were

liberated.
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Works cited page

Auschwitz. N.p.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. N.p.: isurvived.org, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.

Gates to Hell. N.p.: deathcamps.info, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.

Inside a Nazi Death Camp,1944. N.p.: EyeWitness to History.com, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.

Liberation of Nazi Camps. N.p.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 13 May

2011.

Overview: How Vast was the Crime. N.p.: yadvashem.org, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.

War Crime Trials. N.p.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 13 May 2011.
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