Inside the Camps
8 Change/Winter 2014-15
Many people take what they have for granted. As you read, think about what it would be like if you were in their shoes.
What was a Concentration Camp
Concentration Camps were just a fraction of the Nazis horrible crime. They were first established as a result of Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. When the war was over, there had been 22 main camps and 1200 affiliate camps in operation.
The Nazis original purpose for the camps, was to use them for forced labor. Many of you may think that the main purpose of concentration camps was killing, well, it wasn’t. The type of camps that were made for the purposeful killing of the Jews were called extermination camps.
Concentration or Extermination
Most of the mass murdering that happened during the holocaust didn’t take place at concentration camps, it took place at Extermination camps. There, the Nazis would kill the Jews by either gas champers, shootings or burning. At concentration camps, there was limited killing. Only the risk of a random execution. The events that happened in Concentration camps were forced labor, mistreatment, hunger, and disease.
Camp System
In 1933, the German
parliament building was
burned in a fire that is
known as the Reichstag
fire. The German
government thought the
fire was an effort by the
communist to overthrow
the government. The fire gave the government
the power to put them into “protective custody” which eventually turned into a directed camp system. Under this system, there were different camps separated into categoreis according to their function and purpose.
The categories were forced labor camps, reformatory camps, POW camps, transit camps, women camps, and ghetto camps. There were many more but these were the most common.
On the inisde
Concentration camps were surrounded by barbed wire and had guards all around. Making sure there could be no escape. The agony that these people felt in one day at these camps is probably more than you have every felt in your life. The captives were working 12 hours a day of harsh, forced labor with little to no food and the constant worry of corporal punishment.
After they work from morning till dark, they get minimal sleep in overcrowded bunks in harsh weather conditions before they had to do it all over again.
Concentration camp in Majdanek
Reichstag Fire of 1933
- A.Scarborough