Transcript The Camp System

The Holocaust
The Camp System
Surviving Hitler-A boy in the Nazi Death Camps
An Introduction to Tolerance
Europe Pre-World War 2
Germany had lost WW1 and
had been made to pay back
France and Great Britain.
In addition, the Treaty of
Versailles forced Germany to give
up thirteen percent of its land.
Germany was in a bad
economical state. The currency
was worthless, many people
had no jobs.
With Germany at its weakest
and most vulnerable point, Hitler
took the opportunity to begin his
ascent to power.
Hitler used the Jewish people
as a scapegoat for all of
Germany's problems. With
disproportional numbers of
wealthy Jewish business
owners, Hitler convinced
much of Germany that the
Jews were to blame for the
poor economic state.
The Camp System
When the Nazi Party, led by Adolf
Hitler, came to power in Germany in
1933, it wanted to set up the
perfect Nazi state.
for holding people they saw as
“undesirables”. These camps would
re-educate prisoners to accept Nazi
ideas.
Prisoners had not been convicted of
any crime and there was no date set
for their release.
Who ran the camps?
• The camps were run by
the SS (short for
Schutzstaffel, or “security
staff”.
• This staff was set up by
Hitler’s private bodyguard
and swore an oath of
loyalty to Hitler, not
Germany.
• Led by Heinrich Himmler,
the SS grew to become a
powerful empire within
Nazi Germany.
Some of the earliest prisoners in
Dachau were political opponents of
the Nazis
Before long, the Nazis were using the camps
not only to hold political opponents
but also to imprison all kinds of people that
they did not want in their perfect state.
Jews were moved from being imprisoned to
being killed.
The mass murder of about 6 million Jews and
other so-called “undesirables” is called the
HOLOCAUST.
Ghettos
• Ghettos were areas
of towns walled off
from the rest of the
town.
• Jews were forced to
live in ghettos.
• They were crowded,
but families could
live together and
follow their religion.
In a camp…
• Families were split up
• All prisoners had to follow prison routine
from morning to night
• There were regular roll calls
• Prisoners…
- ate only camp food
– did the work the guards gave them
– could not follow their religion
Types of Camps
• There were 3
main types of
camps:
1) Concentration
2) Labor
3) Death
Similarities…
• They were fenced off from the outside,
guarded and run by soldiers.
• They gave prisoners the bare minimum of
food and shelter.
• People were imprisoned there without trial
and were given no date for release. They
were badly treated and harshly punished.
• Bigger camps had at least one
CREMATORIUM (to burn the bodies of those
that died.)
Concentration Camps
• Were started in 1933 (when the Nazi party
came to power)
• Used to re-educate to accept Nazi beliefs
• Most prisoners died in these camps
• 30,000 deaths recorded in DACHAU
between 1933-1945
By 1935, the Nazis had crushed most
political opposition, so fewer politicals
were sent to concentration camps, but
instead started sending different people
there.
The Nazi’s invented a pure “Aryan” race
for themselves-white, blonde-haired,
blue-eyed, and healthy. They viewed
other races such as the Slavs (Poles and
people from the Soviet Union) as subhuman and inferior.
Labor Camps
• Built near factories or workplaces such as stone
quarries
• Prisoners were used as cheap labor
• Living and working conditions were awful
“…dark and dirty and full of fleas and lice. There are 75
people in a room 5 meters by 6 meters sleeping on
the floor, without straw, lying on top of each other.
The roofs leak, the windows have no glass. 3 out of
10 have no shoes, trousers or shirts. There is no
soap or water.”
Death Camps
• Set up in 1941 to kill as many Jewish people
as possible, as efficiently as possible.
• Millions of Jews were already being killed in
concentration camps and labor camps. They
died from starvation, disease, and
exhaustion. They were worked to death and
executed for “crimes”.
• However, DEATH CAMPS were specially
designed with gas chambers for mass killing.
• There were 4 main Death camps:
Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and
Treblinka.
• Death camps could unload and kill
each transport of Jews within 2 hours.
• Barracks and buildings were not
needed because the prisoners were
killed right away.
• It is estimated that between 1941 and
1943 over 20,000 people were killed
each day, seven days a week.
Auschwitz
• Was the most
complicated of all of the
camps. It had a
concentration camp, a
labor camp and a death
camp. It also had about
40 sub-camps attached to
the labor camp.
• Finally, it had prisoner-ofwar camps, close to the
factories.
The Sick
• Sick people were always treated badly. If
they could not work, they were of no use.
• Prisoners tried to hide illness.
• Usually left to die with no medical attention
or food.
• Sometimes they were used for medical
experiments.
Medical experiments
• To help the army
• To help Germany after the war
• To prove racial ideas invented by the
Nazis
• To test new drugs for various companies
Examples of medical
experiments…
• 1. Prisoners were given frostbite by
exposing them, naked, to freezing
conditions. The frostbite was allowed
to develop to gangrene- a deadly
infection if untreated. Doctors
experimented to find the best
treatments for frostbite to treat German
soldiers fighting in the war.
• 2. SS doctors also used prisoners to
teach nurses how to perform
operations. After practicing on patients
that did not matter, the nurses could
use their skills to save the lives of
German soldiers.
Children used in experiments at
Auschwitz
• 3. Prisoners were injected with the
typhus and cholera germs to test various
new vaccines.
• 4. Nazis tested x-rays and chemical
injections to sterilize “unfit” people from
having children.
• 5. Prisoners were fed new meatless
sausage to test the safety of the new food
for German soldiers.
• 6. Ss doctors collected skeletons and
body parts of the dead to prove that the
Aryan race was truly a stronger race.
Camp Discipline
• How did the SS control prisoners?
 the death penalty to anyone who
discussed politics, had meetings, formed
groups, loitered with others, persuaded
others to commit a crime.
 they put prisoners in charge of prisoners
and encouraged hatred, to view them as
the enemy. Being an “informer” was
rewarded (better food, easier jobs)
 kept everyone moving around the
camps to stop resistance among
groups. They could not be with friends,
family, or settle into a routine.
Work groups were changed around
frequently.
 prisoners could be hanged to set an
example to others
Selling Tickets
• The Nazis insisted that
Jewish people had to
have a ticket for the
trains that took them to
the Death Camps.
• The tickets were paid
for by the people
themselves. This was
partly a Nazi trick to
make the people believe
they were being sent
somewhere worthwhile
but also to make as
much money from them
as possible.
Making Use of Everything…
• A prisoners hair was cut and
the hair was used to make
felt or yarn to make socks
for the German soldiers.
• Possessions that had been
taken from the Jewish
people when they were taken
was recycled or re-sold for
profit.
• Teeth and fillings were also
re-used.
• Babies and young children
were seen as worthless and
were sent straight to the gas
chambers.
The Records Keeping
• Everything from the amount of hair to the
amount of gold teeth fillings was
meticulously counted and recorded.
• Towards the end of the war, so many
prisoners were passing through the camp
that the recording system was falling apart.
• Items ended up being stacked up outside,
piled several feet high.
• The SS tried to destroy all of this evidence
when they knew the war was being lost, but
they had to leave Auschwitz in such a hurry
that many of the evidence was left to see.
Arrivals to Auschwitz
• Most arrived by train (80 or more crammed
into a car). No air in summer, no heat in
winter. No food, no water. People died I
almost every wagon, every day.
• Some arrived by truck. Armed SS guards
would greet the arrivals. Even though the
first orders to prisoners were given in
German not their language, they would be
beaten for not understanding.
People to numbers…
• The prisoners were shown that they were
worthless
• Families were separated into men and
women
• Prisoners heads were shaved to stop lice
and to humiliate them
• They had to take off their clothes and shower
as a group, they were given no towel to dry
off, but were herded off still wet to the next
stage.
• They were given a prison uniform, usually
full of lice, and did not fit. They had to be
registered, they were given a number. In
Auschwitz they were tattooed.
Prisoner Shirt
Prisoner Shirt
Prisoner bunks at Birkenau
Prisoner Bunks at Birkenau
•
• Concentration camps are marked in
red.
Concentration camps are marked in red.
Questions:
1. Who led the Nazi party?
2. What year did the Nazi party
come to power?
3. Why did they create
concentration camps?
4. Who ran the camps?
5. How were the camps used?
6. What were ghettos?
7. How were they different from
the concentration camps?
8. What were the 3 different
types of camps?
9. How were they similar?
10. What is the “Aryan” race?
11.
What were concentration
camps used for?
12. What were labor camps
used for?
13. What were death camps
used for?
14. What is Auschwitz?
15. How were the sick treated at
camp?
16. Describe one medical
experiment performed on
prisoners.
17. How did the guards
discipline the prisoners?
18. Why were tickets sold?
19. How did the camps make
use of “everything”?
20. Describe the “arrival”
process.
21. How were people turned into
numbers?
The Camp
System
Who ran the
camps?
The Holocaust
The Ghettos and the
Camps
The 3 types of
camps…
Concentration camps
Death Camps
Labor Camps
Auschwitz
Treatment of the
sick
Medical experiments
Camp Discipline
Selling Tickets
Making use of
everything
Record Keeping
Arrivals at Auschwitz
People to numbers…