The History of Nazi Concentration Camps

What is the most well-known fact about the Holocaust? Many would answer this with. “The Nazis killed six million Jews.” People might be amazed with this tragic fact, but its hard to comprehend each individual death. In order to better understand this atrocity we must put ourselves on a more persona level with the victims. We can do this by reading personal accounts or by talking with survivors of the Holocaust. Hitlers many victims died horribly for their religion, nationality, sexual preference, or even their beliefs.

We will remember and honor these brave people for surviving discrimination of the worst degree, extinction. We must realize that those persecuted by Hitler are not much different than ourselves. Many of us are or know Jews, homosexuals, or handicapped people. These victims could easily have been a family member, close friend, or ever ourselves. Hitler and his executioners had no mercy.

They would murder anyone regardless of age or gender. Hitler had a sick dream of creating a perfect, or “Aryan”, race.

To create this race, he would destroy all those he considered imperfect. These imperfect persons included Jews, homosexuals, and the handicapped. Hitler came to power in 1933. His divine mission was to purity Germany and create a true racial community. He believed he could achieve this by eliminating the Jew. While Hitler grew from childhood to adulthood, he noticed an increasing hatred towards Jews. He described Jews as having “The brains of a monster”, causing “The national illness”. He finally made a pledge to himself.

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“By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lords work.” This obviously proves how sick Hitlers mind truly was. We may know that Hitler cose the Jews for his genocide, but we will never know why.

They may possibly have just been the scapegoat for all of Germanys troubles (Feig, 9). After World War I, Germany suffered a great drop in population. Hitler sought out to increase the population. He wanted an entire “Pure blood” generation to follow and secure the Nazi group. Hitler did not hate the homosexuals for who they were, but rather their lack of reproductive capabilities. Hitler was not the homosexuals main problem, though. Heinrich Himmler, Germanys “Grand Inquisitor” hated homosexuals with a vengeance. He believed them to be mentally diseased, feminine, cowardly. liars, and blabbermouths. He has some men killed for simply looking at another man. He ordered his SS generals to seek out and destroy homosexuals without mercy.

Yet again, another large population of Germany is nearly destroyed due to unreasoned hatred (Feig, 81). Hitler targeted yet another group for being born handicapped. Since Hitler wanted an “Aryan” race, he could not tolerate any physically or mentally imperfect people. He beleived that the genocide of handicapped would not only relieve him of these imperfect people, but also prevent any more from being born into his Aryan race. Depending on personal opinion, the handicapped had been lucky and unlucky. Since they could not work at Hitlers concentration camps, they were immediately put to death. Even though their lives ended early, they did not have to survive the horrible madness at the concentration camps. We only wish that these three groups were the only to be persecuted by Hitler. Unfortunately, many others including gypsies, women, and children were also treated harshly or executed. Hitlers reign left a long path of death, destruction, and emotional distraught. All of this came about through the cruel executions and experiments which were performed on these many persecuted groups. Jews, for instance, were brought to concentration camps by the town-full.

The Nazis would come into the towns, and throw all the Jews out onto the street. With no food and water, they were forced to march extremely long distances. Once they arrived at, the first of many, their destination, they were packed into trains in great numbers. It was common to have anywhere from 80-100 people in each train car. These train trips, to the concentration camps, were long and gruesome. With no way to clean themselves, or any other kind of personal hygenics, they atmosphere was vile. What seemed to be unimaginable to them at the time had just begun, they were on their way to torture. On arrival to the concentration camps, several things might have happened, depending on which concentration camp they arrived at. Typically, on arrival, they had a determination to decide who could “work” at the camps. Anyone who was decided to not be able to work, or simply anyone they chose, was exterminated. This, seemed relatively merciful compared to the alternative. Medical and Scientific experimentation. Prisoners were subject to extremely painful experiments. Almost all experimentation resulted in death. Some of these experiments, were even done on young children (Feig, 55-60).

The Nazis executed other experiments. Eye experiments, for example, were especially gruesome. Chemicals were put into people’s eyes. Others had their eyes poked with needles. The results of this testing sometimes left people blinded for days at a time, if not permanently. Hair coloring was also tested, the objective; to be able to genetically change one’s hair and eye color to make them appear as the perfect Aryan. Others include blood transfers from one twin to another. Bizarre psychological tests-to measure mental endurance. Small children were isolated in small, cage-like rooms either by themselves or with their twin. Some would be exposed to certain stimuli while their reactions were recorded. Horrible surgeries, murderous operations (Feig, 50-60).