In November of 1944 came our time, we had to be taken out. The entire population of our hospital was walked to the place where the cattle cars were, and we were loaded. It was a horrible thing because people had to stand. There was no place to sit or squat. If somebody was sick or even dying, he died on his feet standing up. It was just unbearable. Water was the worst…the lack of water, the thirst was the worst.
-- Blanka Rothschild
In less than ten minutes all the fit men had been collected together in a group. What happened to the others, to the women, to the children, to the old men, we could establish neither then nor later; the night swallowed them up, purely and simply.
-- Primo Levi describing his arrival at an extermination camp in his 1958 book, Survival in Auschwitz.
If a prisoner attempts to escape, he is to be shot without warning If a unit of prisoners mutinies or revolts, it is to be shot at by all supervising guards. Warning shots are forbidden on principle.
-- SS Service Regulations for Prisoner Escorts and Guards, 1933
What is a Concentration/ Death Camp?
"The Nazis built two types of camps: concentration/labor camps and death camps. In concentration camps, prisoners were forced to become hard laborers and were given very little to eat. They were forced to wear striped uniforms and armbands or labels to identify the type of prisoners that they were. Due to disease, starvation, and harsh treatment by the Nazis, most people died in the concentration camps or were deported to death camps where they met with the same fate. Death camps, on the other hand, were set up specifically for mass murder." (Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
Death camps were not used as much until the making of the "Final Solution."
"The Nazis built two types of camps: concentration/labor camps and death camps. In concentration camps, prisoners were forced to become hard laborers and were given very little to eat. They were forced to wear striped uniforms and armbands or labels to identify the type of prisoners that they were. Due to disease, starvation, and harsh treatment by the Nazis, most people died in the concentration camps or were deported to death camps where they met with the same fate. Death camps, on the other hand, were set up specifically for mass murder." (Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
Death camps were not used as much until the making of the "Final Solution."
What is The Final Solution?
In January of 1942 at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, the Nazis orchestrated "The Final Solution" a policy to murder every Jew in Europe. They created the death camps of Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka and the largest camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau to carry out the plan. Auschwitz-Birkenau contained two gas chambers as well as four crematoriums used primarily to burn corpses of victims murdered in the chambers. From the outside, this camp seemed like a fortress with barbed wire fences and guards on towers stationed all across the camp. It was nearly impossible for the Jews held in captivity to retaliate.
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
Zyclon B, a poisonous gas, was released until everybody suffocated to death. Prisoners who exhibited useful strength were made part of the sonderkommando, inmates forced to collect the dead bodies and put them in crematoriums to be burned.
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
In January of 1942 at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, the Nazis orchestrated "The Final Solution" a policy to murder every Jew in Europe. They created the death camps of Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka and the largest camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau to carry out the plan. Auschwitz-Birkenau contained two gas chambers as well as four crematoriums used primarily to burn corpses of victims murdered in the chambers. From the outside, this camp seemed like a fortress with barbed wire fences and guards on towers stationed all across the camp. It was nearly impossible for the Jews held in captivity to retaliate.
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
Zyclon B, a poisonous gas, was released until everybody suffocated to death. Prisoners who exhibited useful strength were made part of the sonderkommando, inmates forced to collect the dead bodies and put them in crematoriums to be burned.
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
What is the Sonderkommando?
The sonderkommando were a group of Jewish men who carried all the bodies to the crematorium or ditches to be burned after they were gassed. They were also responsible for cutting off the hair and taking the gold teeth out of the victims. The sonderkommando group would work for three months, be exterminated, and a new group would replace them. This was done so that the world would not find out what was happening in the buildings, and the cruel deaths the Jews were given.
The sonderkommando were a group of Jewish men who carried all the bodies to the crematorium or ditches to be burned after they were gassed. They were also responsible for cutting off the hair and taking the gold teeth out of the victims. The sonderkommando group would work for three months, be exterminated, and a new group would replace them. This was done so that the world would not find out what was happening in the buildings, and the cruel deaths the Jews were given.
Hungarian Jews arrive in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland the spring of 1944. Nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in the spring and summer of that year. Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after their arrival. (USHMM, courtesy of Yad Vashem)
Nazis would use cattle cars to transport Jews to the camps. They were smushed into the cars with no food or water for days. Once they arrived, the Jews were taken out of the cars and put into groups, some would live and work, others would be sent to the gas chambers.
Nazis would use cattle cars to transport Jews to the camps. They were smushed into the cars with no food or water for days. Once they arrived, the Jews were taken out of the cars and put into groups, some would live and work, others would be sent to the gas chambers.
With a flick of his wrist, the SS Guard decided the Jews fate- Work to Death or Immediate Death.
We are lined up in one of the courtyards. About thirty women: political prisoners, Jews, criminals, prostitutes, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Female guards from the SS circle us like gray wolves. I see this new ideal type of German woman for the first time. Some have blank faces and some have brutal looks, but they all have the same mean expression around their mouths. They pace back and forth with long strides and fluttering gray capes, their commanding voices ring shrilly across the court, and the large wolfhounds with them strain threateningly at their leashes...
-- Lina Haag
Shown here, they were forced to sleep on bricks and flea infested hay, and use pots as pillows.
Crematorium I (II) at Auschwitz-Birkenau: The bodies would be taken to this room and placed in the ovens and disposed of, making it impossible for the world to realize what was happening and their responsibility to stop it.
Working as a roofer, Szmulewski had more access and freedom to move around the camp without being suspected by the guards. Szmulewski succeeded in taking three photographs without being observed. One photograph was of a group of women on the way to the gas chamber. The other two were of gassed bodies being burned in open pits. Cyrankiewicz said he took the photographs, "to convince the outside world that what we said was happening in Auschwitz was really true."
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
Outsiders did not want to believe that such horrors and inhumanity were real; stories from escapees helped convince them of the truth. Additionally, many victims in other camps had no way of knowing what was happening.
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
(Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh - Holocaust Center)
The Vatican also intervened diplomatically in Slovakia (1942), Romania (1942), and Hungary (1944) in favor of the Jews. On the other hand, the Catholic Church approved of anti-Semitic actions in France, and Pope Pius XII refused to condemn publicly the Nazi murder of the Jews. (World History ABC-Clio)
"Stirred by the first reports of the mass murder, the Allies warned the Nazis in 1942 that the criminals would be punished. However, in April 1943, American and British diplomats met at Bermuda and decided not to do anything to rescue Jews, beyond opening a camp in North Africa that in the end accommodated a few hundred people. In early 1944, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a special War Refugee Board charged with implementing the rescue of Jews and others whose lives were threatened, and some action was taken, but most Jewish victims of the Holocaust were no longer alive. By June 1944, the Allies had received detailed information about the killing center at Auschwitz from the report of four Jewish escapees, but they refused for various reasons to bomb it. Jewish leadership groups in Palestine, Britain, and the United States tried to persuade the Allies to negotiate with the Nazis to keep the Jews alive or enable some of them to escape, but the Allied policy of non-negotiation with the Germans thwarted those attempts." (World History ABC-Clio)
Nobody ever really gets out of the Crematorium.
-- Shlomo Venezia
Here, they put the deceased Jews into a ditch or would burn the bodies in open air.
"As the war neared its end, the Nazis began evacuating the camps nearest to the advancing fronts. In January 1945, they evacuated 58,000 inmates of Auschwitz; they were followed by hundreds of thousands of more Jews and non-Jews. So that they would not fall into the hands of the Allies, the inmates were marched, without food or water, for weeks on end, or they were transported in open carriages in European winter conditions. About 60% of them died.
When the war finally ended, 200,000 surviving Jews emerged from the Nazi camps."
(World History ABC-Clio)
When the war finally ended, 200,000 surviving Jews emerged from the Nazi camps."
(World History ABC-Clio)
Holocaust: Estimated Deaths of Jews and Gypsies
Group Number Dead
Czechoslovakian Jews 200,000
German Jews 160,000
Gypsies 250,000
Hungarian Jews 300,000
Polish Jews 2,700,000
Soviet Jews 1,250,000
Other Jews 1,390,000
Group Number Dead
Czechoslovakian Jews 200,000
German Jews 160,000
Gypsies 250,000
Hungarian Jews 300,000
Polish Jews 2,700,000
Soviet Jews 1,250,000
Other Jews 1,390,000