Life in a Concentration Camp

They were taken from their homes, all their belongings of value stolen.  They were packed into box cars like they were animals.  They were then shipped away to foreign lands, most  likely never to be able to see their families again; or there freedom.  They were starved, abused, and even slaughtered.  And if anyone were to speak up they would of died instantly.  All of this sounds like a horrible hell of some sorts but this was the life of the Jewish people who were sent to the concentration camps.  What was life for the Jews who lived in the concentration camps?

The concentration camps were established in 1933 to confine Jews in large quantities where they could be managed easily.  They were designed to bring the Jews in and work them to death.  Those who resisted to work or could not work anymore would be lined up and the Nazis would then shoot them and put the bodies in landfills.  They later stop doing this because this became too emotionally scarring for them.  They then started experimenting with poison gases and then found a most effect gas called Zyklon B (Gassing Operations).  Then they incorporated this gas in one of there other sick inventions, the gas chambers.  They were designed for anyone who they felt were unable to work in the fields anymore.  And they would get the people in the gas chambers by having them take showers and then they would gas them.  After that they would then through the dead bodies in the incinerators also called the ovens.  This made fear in the eyes of the Jews.
Starved.  Barely enough food to stay alive if even that.  They were served three meals a day.   The workers that were engaged in hard labor activities received approximately 1700 calories.  While still barely enough for them to survive the workers who were involved in less physically demanding jobs were given only 1400 calories a day (Living Conditions, Labor and Executions).  After weeks of these workers in these rations of starvation most of the workers started  to experience organic deterioration that then led to the so-called Muzulman” state, extreme physical exhaustion that then led to death (Living Conditions, Labor and Executions).

It was cold, cold in there rooms.  The only warmth they had was the body heat of the 700 men and women that were there sleeping in the same barrack with you.  These barracks were originally meant to hold 52 horse and then they added three-tier wooden bunks.  The rooms were filled with disease.  There were rats scurrying between the bunks.  The rooms were very damp and of course, the roofs leaked.  They had excruciatingly painful straw mattresses.  And they did not even have enough water to clean themselves (Living Conditions, Labor and Executions).

What I have said about the concentration camps is just the tip of the iceberg.  I cannot begin to say enough of the events that had happened there.  In Auschwitz only 100 children survived (Cochrane, Kira).  And those people will never forget what they experienced there and what they had to do to survive.  The sacrifices those people had to make are unthinkable.  The question I asked was what was life for the Jews who lived in the concentration camps?  And this can be answered many ways it was dark, cold, depressing, unthinkable, tragic, and revolting.  But for  the Jews that were actually in the concentration camps this can be said in one word.  To them it was Hell.

Cochrane, Kira. "My Diary of a Nazi Death Camp Childhood." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 24 May 2013.

"Holocaust History." Concentration Camps, 1933–1939. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2013.

"Holocaust History." Gassing Operations. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2013.

"Living Conditions, Labor and Executions." Living Conditions, Labor and Executions. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2013.