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How Jews Were Made to go to these Death Camps 

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How Jews Were Made to go to these Death Camps 

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According to the article provided below and the book "The Nazi Death Camps" authorities would pick out specific places and surround them with troops, looking inside each house for Jews. They would then be took to transit or assembly camps, where they would wait for available trains to go to death camps that would soon torture them.

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Early Camps (1933-38)

, and persons accused of "asocial" or socially deviant behavior. Many of these sites were called From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of incarceration sites to imprison and eliminate real and perceived "enemies of the state." Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were political prisoners-German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats-as well as Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses , homosexuals concentration camps. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.

After Germany's annexation [Anschluss] of in March 1938, Austrian political prisoners came into the Nazi concentration camp system. Following the violent Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms in November 1938, Nazi officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews throughout the country, the first time Jews were arrested en masse precisely because they were Jews. Over 30,000 German Jews were incarcerated in the , Buchenwald , and concentration camps in Germany, initially until each could provide proof of their ability to emigrate. Sachsenhausen

Types of Camps

Many people refer to all of the Nazi incarceration sites during the Holocaust as concentration camps. The term concentration camp is used very loosely to describe places of incarceration and murder under the Nazi regime, however, not all sites established by the Nazis were concentration camps. Nazi-established sites include:

Concentration camps: For the detention of civilians seen as real or perceived "enemies of the Reich."

Forced-labor camps: In forced-labor camps, the Nazi regime brutally exploited the labor of prisoners for economic gain and to meet labor shortages. Prisoners lacked proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest.

Transit camps: Transit camps functioned as temporary holding facilities for Jews awaiting deportation. These camps were usually the last stop before deportations to a killing center.

Prisoner-of-war camps: For Allied prisoners of war, including Poles and Soviet soldiers.

Killing centers: Established primarily or exclusively for the assembly-line style murder of large numbers of people immediately upon arrival to the site. There were 5 killing centers for the murder primarily of Jews. The term is also used to describe "euthanasia" sites for the murder of disabled patients.

Other types of incarceration sites numbered in the tens of thousands. These included but were not limited to early camps; "euthanasia" facilities for the murder of disabled patients; Gestapo, SS and German justice detention centers; so-called "Gypsy" camps, and Germanization facilities.

Concentration Camps

Concentration camps are often inaccurately compared to a prison in modern society. But concentration camps, unlike prisons, were independent of any judicial review. Nazi concentration camps served three main purposes:

1. To incarcerate real and perceived "enemies of the state." These persons were incarcerated for indefinite amounts of time.

2. To eliminate individuals and small, targeted groups of individuals by murder, away from the public and judicial review.

3. To exploit forced labor of the prisoner population. This purpose grew out of a labor shortage.

The First Concentration Camp

The major purpose of the earliest concentration camps during the 1930s was to incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime. The first Nazi concentration camp was Dachau, established in March 1933, near Munich.

In many of the concentration camps, the Nazi SS either installed or had plans to install gas chambers to assist in their daily business of killing prisoners who were too weak or sick to work. Before the widespread use of gassing in the concentration camps, weak, ill and exhausted prisoners selected by camp physicians were murdered at "euthanasia" (T4) facilities from 1941-1943 in a secret program called 14f13. Gas chambers were also to kill small targeted groups of individuals whom the Nazis wanted to eliminate (Polish resistance fighters, Soviet POWs, etc.). This was the purpose of the installation of gas chambers, for example, at Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Auschwitz I, Ravensbrück, Lublin/Majdanek, etc.

Camp Structure
All concentration camps were structured in the same way. Each had an internal camp staff that consisted of five sections:

1. Commandant's Headquarters (consisting of the commandant and his staff)

2. A protective detention office run by a Security Police officer who maintained prisoner records in terms of arrival, discharge, discipline and death and who received his instructions from the Reich Central Office for Security

3. Commander of the Protective Detention Camp

4. Administration and Supply

5. SS Physician

Forced-Labor and Prisoner-of-War Camps

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazis opened forced-labor camps where thousands of prisoners died from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure. SS units guarded the camps. During World War II , the Nazi camp system expanded rapidly. In some camps, Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on prisoners.

Following the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union , the Nazis increased the number of prisoner-of-war (POW) camps and subcamps. Some new camps were built at existing concentration camp complexes (such as Auschwitz ) in occupied Poland. The camp at Lublin, later known as Majdanek , was established in the autumn of 1941 as a POW camp and became a concentration camp in 1943. Thousands of Soviet POWs were shot or gassed there.

Transit Camps

Jews in Nazi-occupied lands often were first deported to transit camps such as in France, en route to the Westerbork in the Netherlands, or killing centers in German-occupied Poland. The transit camps were usually the last stop before deportation to a killing center.

Killing Centers

Killing centers first made their appearance in Nazi Germany in the execution of Operation T4, the so-called "euthanasia" program. It was the Nazi state's first program of mass murder, where disabled patients in German facilities were murdered in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas.

To help carry out the " Final Solution" (the genocide or mass destruction of Jews), the Nazis established killing centers in German-occupied Poland, the country with the largest Jewish population. Killing centers were designed for efficient mass murder. The first one, which opened in December 1941, was , where Jews and Roma were gassed in mobile gas vans. In 1942, the Nazis opened the , , and killing centers to systematically murder the Jews of the General Government (the territory in the interior of German-occupied Poland). Here Nazi planners borrowed the gassing technique from the "euthanasia" program to murder Jews in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas generated by engine exhaust.

At the Auschwitz camp complex, the Birkenau killing center had four gas chambers, known here as crematoria. Here gassing took place using the pesticide Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid). During the height of deportations to the camp in 1943-44, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed there each day. Over 2,772,000 Jews (or 46% of Jewish victims) were murdered at killing centers.

Millions of people were imprisoned, mistreated, and murdered in the various types of Nazi camps. Under SS management, the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than three million Jews in the killing centers alone. Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived.

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and persons accused of "asocial" or socially deviant behavior. Many of these sites were called From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of incarceration sites to imprison and eliminate real and perceived "enemies of the state."

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Forced Labor and Work By Daniella Krynsky

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Forced Labor and Work By Daniella Krynsky

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The labor and forced work endured by the prisoners was gruesome. The jobs were ways to occupy the Jewish during their days at the camp till liberation or their death. For example, at the Mauthausen concentration camp, emaciated prisoners were forced to run up 186 steps out of a stone quarry while carrying heavy boulders. This is just one example of what prisoners were forced to do.

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The Nazis subjected millions of people (both Jews and other victim groups) to forced labor under brutal conditions. From the establishment of the first Nazi concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor-often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest-formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen.

Even before the war began, the Nazis imposed forced labor on Jewish civilians, both inside and outside concentration camps. As early as 1937, the Nazis increasingly exploited the forced labor of so-called "enemies of the state" for economic gain and to meet desperate labor shortages. By the end of that year, most Jewish males residing in Germany were required to perform forced labor for various government agencies.

When Germany conquered Poland in the autumn of 1939 and established the Generalgouvernement, the German occupation authorities required all Jewish and Polish males to perform unpaid forced labor. The German authorities required Polish Jews to live in ghettos and deployed them at forced labor, much of it manual. For example, in the Lodz ghetto, German state and private entrepreneurs established 96 plants and factories that produced goods for the German war effort. Forced-labor practices escalated in the spring of 1942, following changes in the administration of concentration camps.

For Jews, the ability to work often meant the potential to survive after the Nazis began to implement the "Final Solution," the plan to murder all of European Jewry. Jews deemed physically unable to work were often the first to be shot or deported.

The Nazis also pursued a conscious policy of "annihilation through work," under which certain categories of prisoners were literally worked to death; in this policy, camp prisoners were forced to work under conditions that would directly and deliberately lead to illness, injury, and death. For example, at the Mauthausen concentration camp, emaciated prisoners were forced to run up 186 steps out of a stone quarry while carrying heavy boulders.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Germans allowed millions of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) to die through a deliberate policy of neglect (insufficient food, clothing, shelter, or medical care). However, in the spring of 1942, the German authorities also began to deploy Soviet POWs at forced labor in various war-related industries. From 1942-1944, the Germans deported nearly three million Soviet citizens to Germany, Austria, and Bohemia-Moravia as forced laborers.

At the end of the war, millions of non-German displaced persons were left in Germany, including some tens of thousands of Jews who had survived the "Final Solution," victims of Nazi policies of deportation for forced labor.

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The Nazis subjected millions of people (both Jews and other victim groups) to forced labor under brutal conditions. From the establishment of the first Nazi concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor-often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest-formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen.

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Nazi Medical Experiments By Daniella Krynsky

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Nazi Medical Experiments By Daniella Krynsky

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The Nazi Medical Experiments were concluded on Jews, Poles, Gypsies , political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Catholic priests, twins, and more.

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Other gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals were a series of sterilization experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck. There, scientists tested a number of methods in their effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilization of Jews, Roma, and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable.

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This is a picture of the numbers that Jews had tattooed on their arms in the concentration camps. It shows the serious disrespect the nazis had for the Jews and how they didn't identify them as people but as a number.

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Women and Children Forced to Gas Chambers

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Women and Children Forced to Gas Chambers

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Photo Below, is the Gypsies imprisoned at Belzec

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Photo Below, is the Gypsies imprisoned at Belzec

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What was the Holocaust of the Gypsies? By Daniella Krynsky

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What was the Holocaust of the Gypsies? By Daniella Krynsky

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The Holocaust of the Gypsies was the genocide of other ethic groups such as Roma and Sinti people or the "alien strain" as the nazis labeled them. The Gypsies in the Holocaust lived special ghettos that were created alongside Jewish ghettos. Within a few months of being moved to concentration camps more than 4,300 more murdered.
Source:  The Nazi Death Camps Book By David Downing.

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Processing at Camps: By Elora Kawasawa Source: The Nazi Death Camps By David Downing

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Processing at Camps: By Elora Kawasawa Source: The Nazi Death Camps By David Downing

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Once the Jews arrived at the camps they were separated into two groups. One group consisted of elderly, children, and women. Another group consisted of strong and hard working men. The elders, women and children were unknowingly sent to the gas chambers and the men were put to work. Those who were spared, were forced to undress and shave. From there they showered and were given prison clothes to wear. Each prisoner was given a number and then a triangle was sewn onto each prisoner's uniform to show what type of prisoner they were. In the first couple of days the prisoners were forced into barracks and told about how the camp worked and the rules. After this, they moved to different barracks which had very little space for everyone. Many people died from starvation because they were not fed well. The prisoners would start work at 6 a.m. and finish at 5 p.m. There were many jobs available for the prisoners. The jobs took a toll on many prisoners, some even died. Roll call occurred every morning. Many prisoners wound up dead from starvation, too much work, and diseases from the camp. If a prisoner made a mistake, they were beaten.  These camps were horrifying and as quoted from: The Nazi Death Camps by David Downing, "A Living Hell."

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What were the Death Marches? by Austin Quire

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What were the Death Marches? by Austin Quire

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Death marches were when Germans took prisoners out of the camps and had them walk to other camps. These Marches were long, brutal, and the prisoners were mistreated throughout the walk. They were taken throughout towns where some civilians gave them aid. The idea of the Death Marches was that the Germans did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to allied and Soviet liberators.

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In the summer of 1944, a massive Soviet offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center. Soviet forces then overran the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be forcibly evacuated toward the interior of the Reich. Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the emptying of the Majdanek camp. This had allowed Soviet and western media to widely publicized SS atrocities at the camp, using both footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving prisoners.

The evacuations of the concentration camps had three purposes:

1. SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to Allied and Soviet liberators

2. the SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments wherever possible

3. some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime.

In the summer and early autumn months of 1944, most of the evacuations were carried out by train or, in the case of German positions cut off in the Baltic States, by ship. As winter approached, however, and the Allies reached the German borders and assumed full control of German skies, SS authorities increasingly evacuated concentration camp prisoners from both east and west on foot.
Death Marches: Maps
By January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. Most of German East Prussia was already under Soviet occupation. Soviet forces besieged Warsaw, Poland, and Budapest, Hungary, as they prepared to push German forces back toward the interior of the Reich. After the failure of the surprise German Ardennes offensive in December 1944, Anglo-American forces in the west were ready to invade Germany.

The SS guards had strict orders to kill prisoners who could no longer walk or travel. As evacuations depended increasingly on forced marches and travel by open rail car or small craft in the Baltic Sea in the brutal winter of 1944-1945, the number who died of exhaustion and exposure along the routes increased dramatically. This encouraged an understandable perception among the prisoners that the Germans intended them all to die on the march. The term death march was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners.
Death Marches: Photographs
During these death marches, the SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following their explicit orders, they shot hundreds of prisoners who collapsed or could not keep pace on the march, or who could no longer disembark from the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced marches were especially common in late 1944 and 1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to camps deeper within Germany. Major evacuation operations moved prisoners out of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Gross-Rosen westward to Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in winter 1944-1945; from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg to Dachau and Mauthausen in spring 1945; and from Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme northwards to the Baltic Sea in the last weeks of the war.
Death Marches: Oral History Excerpts
As Allied forces advanced into the heart of Germany they liberated hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. This included thousands of prisoners whom Allied and Soviet troops liberated while they marched on the forced evacuations. On April 25, 1945, Soviet forces met US forces at Torgau, on the Elbe River in central Germany. The German armed forces surrendered unconditionally in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945. May 8, 1945, was proclaimed Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).

To almost the last day of the war, German authorities marched prisoners to various locations in the Reich. As late as May 1, 1945, prisoners who had been evacuated from Neuengamme to the North Sea coastline were loaded onto ships; hundreds of them died when the British bombed the ships a few days later, thinking that they carried German military personnel.

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In the summer of 1944, a massive Soviet offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center. Soviet forces then overran the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be forcibly evacuated toward the interior of the Reich.

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How did the Gas Chambers Work and how were they started? by Charlize Wood

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How did the Gas Chambers Work and how were they started? by Charlize Wood

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When the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews they used gas chambers. The gas chambers worked by releasing deadly Zykon B gas into large chambers where they would let the Jews die. Most died immediately the rest died within 20 minutes. These chambers started as a fast way to kill many Jews at a time. After they were dead they would take their hair and steal their valuables.

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SS men escorted the men, women, and children selected for death to the gas chambers-initially to the gas chamber in crematorium I and "bunkers" 1 and 2, and, from the spring of 1943, to the gas chambers in crematoria II, III, IV, and V.

Trucks carried those too infirm to walk, and the rest marched. These people had to disrobe before entering the gas chambers. In crematorium I, they undressed either in the yard (surrounded by a wall) or in the antechamber. Wooden barracks were erected for this purpose at bunkers 1 and 2. There were special undressing rooms at crematoria II-V.

When large numbers of transports were arriving in 1944, the people assigned to death in the gas chamber in crematorium V also disrobed in the open air. After the Sonderkommando was quartered in the undressing room in crematorium IV, the people sent to die there undressed in a specially constructed barracks.

The SS men kept the people fated to die unaware of what awaited them. They were told that they were being sent to the camp, but that they first had to undergo disinfection and bathe. After the victims undressed, they were taken into the gas chamber, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.

After they were killed, Sonderkommando prisoners dragged the corpses out of the gas chambers. They cut off the women's hair and removed all metal dental work and jewelry. Then they burned the corpses in pits, on pyres, or in the crematorium furnaces. (Until September 1942, some of the corpses were buried in mass graves; these corpses were burned from September to November 1942.)

Bones that did not burn completely were ground to powder with pestles and then dumped, along with the ashes, in the rivers Soła and Vistula and in nearby ponds, or strewn in the fields as fertilizer, or used as landfill on uneven ground and in marshes.

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The extermination procedure in the gas chambers / Auschwitz and Shoah / History / Auschwitz-Birkenau

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SS men escorted the men, women, and children selected for death to the gas chambers-initially to the gas chamber in crematorium I and "bunkers" 1 and 2, and, from the spring of 1943, to the gas chambers in crematoria II, III, IV, and V. Trucks carried those too infirm to walk, and the rest marched.

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What was the killing process? By: Daniel Choi

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What was the killing process? By: Daniel Choi

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Many Jewish people were killed in gas chambers and gas vans. The purpose of these were to kill people with mental illness or physical disabilities. Gas chambers and gas vans were a efficient way for mass killing.

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The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of patients with mental and physical disabilities in the Euthanasia Program.

Euthanasia Program

A Nazi euphemism, "euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed "unworthy of life" because of mental illness or physical disability.

Six gassing installations were established as part of the Euthanasia Program: Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. These killing centers used pure, chemically manufactured carbon monoxide gas.

Gas Vans

After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. Gassing also proved to be less costly. Einsatzgruppen gassed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and mentally ill people.

Killing Centers
Chelmno
In 1941, the SS concluded that the deportation of Jews to killing centers (to be gassed) was the most efficient way of achieving the " Final Solution." That same year, the Nazis opened the Chelmno camp in Poland. Jews from the Lodz area of Poland and Roma were killed there in mobile gas vans.
Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka
In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers began at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, all in Poland. These gas chambers used carbon monoxide gas generated by diesel engines. As victims were "unloaded" from cattle cars, they were told that they had to be disinfected in "showers." The Nazi and Ukrainian guards sometimes shouted at and beat the victims, who were ordered to enter the "showers" with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chambers. The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated.
Auschwitz
The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B (previously used for fumigation) by gassing some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941. Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz.

At the height of the deportations in 1943-44, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.
Gassing Operations: Oral History Excerpts
Concentration Camps

Concentration camps like Stutthof, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück, although not designed specifically as killing centers, also had gas chambers. The gas chambers were relatively small, constructed to kill those prisoners the Nazis deemed "unfit" to work. Most of these camps used Zyklon B as the killing agent in their gas chambers.

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The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of patients with mental and physical disabilities in the Euthanasia Program. A Nazi euphemism, "euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed "unworthy of life" because of mental illness or physical disability.

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Deon Cailles
Austin Quire
Daniel Choi
Charlize Wood
Elora Kawasawa
Daniella Krynsky