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The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave...

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The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps
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Page 1: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

The Camps

Holocaust Terms Notes #3

The Camps

Page 2: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Types of Camps:

• Concentration Camps - Dachau

• Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan

• Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

etc.

Page 3: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• The first killing center was Chelmno, which opened in the Warthegau (part of Poland annexed to Germany) in December 1941.

• Mostly Jews, but also Roma (Gypsies), were gassed in mobile gas vans there.

• In 1942, the Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers (known collectively as the Operation Reinhard camps) to systematically murder the Jews of Poland.

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Who were the Kapos?

• Kapos supervised the prisoners in the camps and carried out the will of the SS and camp guards .

• They were often as brutal as their SS counterparts.

• Many of the Kapos were hardened criminals taken from the prisons. However, some were Jewish, and even they inflicted harsh treatment on their fellow prisoners.

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• Failure to perform their duties would have resulted in severe punishment and even death. They too had to go through selection.

• After the war, the prosecution of Kapos as war criminals, particularly those who were Jewish, created an ethical dilemma which continues to this day.

Page 6: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Terezin

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• In 1941 Hitler’s policy changed. He now intended to kill every Jew in Europe. The Final Solution had begun.

• However, the Nazis were in a quandary as to what to do with their Jewish veterans from WWI.

• Another problem was what to do with their Jewish intellectuals, writers, composers, conductors, actors, artists, and other world-famous people.

Page 8: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• A final problem was how could they conceal what they were doing from the world and still kill every Jew in Europe?

• Himmler solve this problem by creating a “model ghetto” in the small village of Terezin in the Czech Republic, also known as Thersienstadt.

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• The “Model Ghetto” of Terezin:– It would be inhabited by Jews and ruled by

them.

– The Czech police would patrol it. No SS men would be allowed within its walls.

– It would have its own currency

– It would be a gift from “the Fuhrer to the Jews” to prepare them for life in Palestine.

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– The Nazis would invite the Red Cross inside to inspect it.

– Admission to Terezin would be sold to privileged and wealthy Jews, for tens of thousands of dollars.

– However, upon arrival to Terezin, the Jews did not find the “gift” that they expected.

Page 11: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Terezin was built to hold a population of 8,000 people. Instead, 60,000 people were squeezed inside its walls.

• Living conditions were poor and dysentery and typhus broke out and killed many.

• It became a crime, punishable by death, to write letters to people outside of the ghetto.

Page 12: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

The Red Cross inspected Terezin one time. For the inspection, the ghetto was cleaned up, consumer goods filled the store shop windows, people were nicely dressed and staged in strategic areas so they would be seen, and musicians played music in the streets. No prisoners were permitted to talk to the inspectors.

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• Before long, Terezin became merely a holding area for the trains that would eventually carry the residents off to death camps.

• Despite the wretched conditions, culture thrived there.

• The prisoners in this camp were Jewish scholars, doctors, engineers, singers diplomats, actors, composers, and artists.

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• Culture became a means to resist the Nazis.

• The people in Terezin created a library of over 60,000 books.

• There were so many musicians in Terezin, there could have been two full symphony orchestras performing simultaneously daily.

• • A number of distinguished composers created

works at Terezin including a number of chamber compositions which only now are being resurrected and played in Europe and the United States.

Page 15: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Art lessons were taught to the children by world renowned artists.

• The children created over 5,000 drawings, collages, and poems.

• On May 8, 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Terezin.

• One of the survivors, Willy Groag, was entrusted with two suitcases of children’s drawings and poems which he took to Prague.

Page 16: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

The suitcase sat on a shelf for ten years before they were opened and the children’s poems and art work were rediscovered. They were put on exhibition and published in a book entitled, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

Page 17: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• In the ghetto itself, tens of thousands of people died, mostly from disease or starvation. In 1942, the death rate within the ghetto was so high that the Germans built--to the south of the ghetto--a crematorium capable of handling almost 200 bodies daily.

• Before the arrival of the Soviet Army, the Nazis tried to destroy all evidence of what had happened there. The remains of the cremated victims which were stored in large vases were quickly emptied into the Ohre River which is still polluted from them.

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• Hundreds of thousands of victims passed through Terezin on their way to the various death camps.

• Over 97,000 victims died at Terezin.

• Of the 15,000 children incarcerated there, only 100 survived - none under the age of 14.

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Auschwitz

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• The Nazis’ largest concentration and extermination camp facility.

• Located near the remote Polish town of Oshwiecim in a swampy area plagued with mosquitoes.

• Established under the orders of Heinrich Himmler on April 27, 1940.

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• In September 1941, an experimental gassing was carried out at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 850 malnourished and ill prisoners were killed.

• After that first gassing, mass murder became a daily routine.

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• The largest killing center was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which by spring 1943 had four gas chambers (using Zyklon B poison gas) in operation. At the height of the deportations, up to 10,000 Jews were gassed each day.

• Over a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war were killed there by November 1944.

Page 23: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Over the following years the camp expanded to include these three main complexes that featured all three types of camps created by the Nazis:– Concentration– Slave labor– Death

Page 24: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Auschwitz I - a Concentration Camp

• Auschwitz II-Birkenau - a Death Camp

• Auschwitz III - Monowitz aka Buna - a

Slave Labor Camp

There were also 40 sub-camps.

Page 25: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Auschwitz I

• Similar to most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed to serve three purposes:

1) to incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime

and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time;

Page 26: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

2) to have available a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned,

construction-related enterprises (and, later, armaments and other war-related production);

Page 27: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

3) To serve as a site to physically eliminate small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany.

Like most other concentration camps, Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium.

Page 28: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Between the crematorium and the medical- experiments barrack stood the "Black Wall," where SS guards executed thousands of prisoners.

Page 29: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• At Auschwitz I, SS physicians carried out medical experiments in the hospital, Block 10.

• They conducted pseudoscientific research on infants, twins, and dwarfs, and performed forced sterilizations, castrations, and hypothermia experiments on adults.

• The best-known of these physicians was SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele.

Page 30: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Dr. Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death

Page 31: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Born in Bavaria before WWI to an upper middle class family.

• Sent to school in Munich, Germany where he was attracted to the popular racial theories.

• Received a medical degree from th Institute for racial Hygiene at the University of Frankfurt.

Page 32: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Mengele was a fanatic anti-Semite and he hated gypsies even more than he hated Jews.

• He served as a medical officer when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. After being wounded and found unfit for active service, he was appointed to serve as a physician at Auschwitz in May 1943.

Page 33: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Dr. Mengele met the trains as they arrived and supervised the first “selection” of the prisoners. He would survey his prey and a motion of his thumb to the left meant immediate death, while a motion to the right meant a life in Hell.

• Mengele became animated when he spotted a pair of twins on the trains.

• He performed numerous “twin studies” and the twins were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected.

Page 34: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Mengele performed horrific experiments on children. Once he had two Gypsy children sewn together to create Siamese twins.

• He injected chemicals into children’s eyes in an attempt to change their eye color.

• He often performed surgeries without anesthesia, injected children with deadly diseases, performed sex change operations, removed organs and limbs, and studied incestuous impregnations.

Page 35: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

The Daisy Game ala Mengele

Mengele would play this game with a child. “He loves me, he loves me not, etc.” If the last petal to come off of the daisy was an “He loves me not” Mengele would have the child skinned alive.

Page 36: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Block 11 of Auschwitz I - Torture Area

Page 37: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Page 38: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Auschwitz II - Birkenau

Page 39: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Built nearly two miles from the main camp, Auschwitz I.

• Large transports of Jews were brought from all over Europe in cattle cars and unloaded upon the dreaded ramp where SS officials, most notably Josef Mengele, made selections.

• Loved ones were parted, families were split. Some were destined for Birkenau's gas chambers and one of its four crematoria.

Page 40: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Those not selected to die immediately in the gas chambers were sent to a particular Block within the camp.

• These men and women worked long hours not knowing that their families had been murdered.

• Many of these prisoners died from overwork, hunger, sickness, or were chosen for the crematoria in one of the many selections.

Page 41: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Prisoners were sectioned from each other with sixteen foot high electrified barbed wire fences, living only feet from the smokestacks of the crematoria.

Page 42: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Page 43: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Mechanized Murder: The Process

• After the first selection upon exiting the train car, the healthy, if needed, would be taken to the work camp, and the sick, anyone under the age of 16 and over the age of 40 would be taken to the showers.

• The shower areas were disguised underground facilities. The victims were told to undress and hang up their clothes, remembering where they were hanging them as they ‘d be back to get dressed.

Page 44: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Entrance to Crematorium II at Birkenau

Page 45: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Once full, the chambers were sealed shut and Zyklon B gas was released through the fake shower heads. All were dead minutes after the induction of the gas. Rudolf Hoss, commandant of the camp, personally observed the killing and described the process:

Page 46: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• "It could be observed that those who were closest to the induction vents were killed at once. It can be said that about one-third died straightaway. The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air. The screaming, however, soon changed to the death rattle and in a few minutes all lay still.

• "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard, and it was clear that they fought for their lives.”

Page 47: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• The sealed door to the gas chamber was usually opened about thirty minutes after the gas was administered to be sure that there were no survivors. Ventilation was turned on and Sonderkommando prisoners were allowed to start moving the bodies to the mass graves and cremation area.

Page 48: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Remains of a gas chamber in Crematorium I

Page 49: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• The Sonderkommando prisoners worked in several teams. The first group was in charge of removing the bodies from the gas chambers with large tongs that grasped the heads of the victims and pulled them out of the shower. This could take several hours to remove 2,000 bodies.

• They wore gas masks so that unventilated gas would not harm them.

• Before they transported the corpses with trolleys to deep pits, gold teeth and and other precious metals or jewelry were removed from the bodies.

Page 50: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Gold Teeth Removed from Victims

Page 51: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• They also had a crew ready to shave all of the body hair from the victims which was then sold to furniture factories as stuffing or to make felt, a type of fabric.

• If in the course of the sporadic inspections it was established that not all gold had been extracted from the mouths, the Sonderkommando prisoner responsible was punished by being thrown alive into the cremation furnace.

Page 52: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Bales of Human Hair at Auschwitz

Page 53: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

Over Two Tons of Human Hair Remained at Auschwitz

Page 54: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Bodies were carted away and were stacked and layered like cord wood to await incineration.

• Since the entire area was floodlit, the work could be carried out day and night.

• Each time the gas chambers were emptied,

Sonderkommando prisoners whitewashed the walls and washed the floors. (Why???)

Page 55: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• The ovens were specifically constructed to turn human remains into ashes.

• Bodies were placed on a stretcher and slid into the furnace onto a grill.

• Most furnaces had the capacity of incinerating three corpses in 20 minutes.

• This process was actually accelerated to cremate four to five corpses in 25 to 30 minutes.

Page 56: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Overloading of the furnaces caused the camp authorities to improvise and burn corpses outdoors.

• This was done at the same rate as the collective use of all the furnaces: about five thousand in 24 hours per pit.

• Therefore the combined capacity of all the incineration installations reached a staggering number of 20,000 victims/day by the summer of 1944.

Page 57: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Hitler wished to remove the Jews from history; "to make them not" -- die Vernichtung was his ultimate goal.

• Incinerating them by the millions fulfilled his maniacal wishes.

• Cremation turned victims into ashes that were disposed of like unwanted garbage.

Page 58: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• The remains of corpses would fall through the grill into the ash pit.

• The ashes would be emptied into pits outside the crematorium, disposed of in nearby ponds or rivers, used to prepare compost, or used to fertilize the fields of the camp farms.

• Human ashes were used as plant food.

• With unimpeded operation, the furnaces were able to cremate a combined approximation of five thousand corpses daily.

Page 59: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Mass graves were camouflaged and isolated from the view of those still alive. Unless they were told by a Sonderkommando prisoner or an SS guard, new transports knew nothing of what was in store for them.

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• The SS guards could not handle the volume of work involved in the mass killings within the death camps. Therefore, they used Jewish prisoners within the camps. They were known as the Sonderkommando - “Special Commandos.”

• The Sonderkommandos had to clear the dead bodies out of the gas chambers, dispose of the bodies, and remove the hair and gold teeth from the corpses.

Page 62: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

The Sonderkommando

Crematorium oven at Birkenau with Sonderkommando.

Page 63: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• Who became Sonderkommando? Young males in good health were the obvious

choice.

For those at the death camps, the choice was simple - immediate death in the gas chambers or work for the SS.

However, belonging to the Sonderkommando only prolonged the inevitable.

The SS were determined to ensure that there were no witnesses to the crimes committed at the death camps.

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• The men in the Sonderkommando were condemned to die one way or another.

• If they refused to do what the SS required them to do, they were shot on the spot or sent straight to the gas chambers.

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The Perks of Being a Sonderkommando:

• At most of the death camps, the Sonderkommando lived 'better' lives than other prisoners.

• They were kept segregated from other prisoners still alive in the camps.

• The Sonderkommando usually got more food and could frequently wear their own clothing. However, they were always living on borrowed time.

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• Saturday, October 7, 1944, the men in Birkenau III Crematorium Sonderkommando rose up against their SS guards. They were joined by Birkenau Crematorium I Sonderkommando.

• The transports from Hungary were slowing down and there had been over 800 Sonderkommando to dispose of these victims.

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• The Sonderkommando knew that the SS would not let them live when they didn’t need them to work in the crematoria. After 300 Sonderkommando were gassed, the rest, who had managed to secure explosives, revolted.

• They blew up a crematorium and threw three SS guards into the ovens alive . In the ensuing shoot-out, 300 of the Sonder- kommando were killed although 27 cut through the barbed wire and did manage to escape and make their way back to Germany.

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• The revolt at the Crematoria was the only armed revolt in Auschwitz and had a profound moral impact. It encouraged the prisoners, aroused their faith and hope that they would be privileged to see the end of the war.

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“Canada” aka “Kanada”

A series of special warehouses known collectively as "Kanada." (Named this because the Nazis thought that Canada was a wealthy country!)

Located in Birkenau, it consisted of six storage barracks near the main camp.

Page 70: The Camps Holocaust Terms Notes #3 The Camps. Types of Camps: Concentration Camps - Dachau Slave Labor Camps - Mauthausan Death Camps - Auschwitz, Treblinka,

• It served as the central facility for sorting material looted from arriving Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners and preparing this material for future reutilization.

• From 1942 to 1943, between 1,000 and 1,600 male and female prisoners worked in two shifts, emptying the suitcases of the prisoners and inspecting clothing from the dressing rooms of the gas chambers for jewelry and money that could be sewn into hems and linings of clothing.

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• The prisoners considered the labor squads in Kanada as privileged, since there they had the chance to obtain food, clothing, and other valuables.

• Items pilfered from Kanada warehouses could be traded for other items on the black market within the Auschwitz complex.

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Suitcases at Kanada

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Spectacles taken from victims

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The Smallest Victims

Children were often killed upon arrival.

Children born in the camp were killed on the spot along with their mothers. This was considered to be a “humane” act by the Nazis.

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Auschwitz III - Buna (Monowitz)

Slave Labor Camp

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Auschwitz III

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• Of the three Nazi concentration camps located near the town of Auschwitz, the Auschwitz III camp, also known as Monowitz, was the most important to the Nazis because of its factories which were essential to the German war effort.

• The Monowitz industrial complex was built by Auschwitz inmates, beginning in April 1941.

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• The Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, and then assigned to work at Monowitz, had a much better chance of survival because the factory workers were considered too valuable to send to the gas chambers, at least while they were still able to work.

• Two famous survivors who worked at Monowitz were Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, both of whom wrote extensively about the Holocaust.

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• The factories at Monowitz were built by the IG Farben company, which was attempting to produce synthetic rubber, called Buna.

• Farben executives intended to exploit concentration camp labor to manufacture synthetic rubber and fuels.

• I.G. Farben invested more than 700 million Reichsmarks (about 1.4 million U.S. dollars in 1942 terms) in Auschwitz III.

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• Prisoners selected for forced labor were registered and tattooed with identification numbers on their left arms in Auschwitz I.

• They were then assigned to forced labor at the main camp or elsewhere in the complex, including the subcamps.

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• Conditions inside Auschwitz III were harsh and brutal, as you will see when you read Elie Wiesel’s book, Night.

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• On November 25, 1944, Himmler ordered the demolition of the Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria.

• Prisoners were put to work to take apart the installations. Openings were made for dynamite charges to blow up the entire structure.

• The last crematorium was blown up a day before the liberation of the camp. Some were to remove the ashes from the incineration pits and cover them with turf.

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• The Nazis were only partially successful in obliterating the traces of their crimes.

• They had no time to remove the ruins of the dynamited compounds. The underground "undressing rooms" and gas chambers of two crematoria remained relatively intact.

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In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps.

Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system.

Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began.

Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia.

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SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches.

More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz.

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying.

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• In the 1990s, it was estimated that at Auschwitz alone, there were 1.35 million Jewish victims and a total of 1.5 million Auschwitz victims.

• This is a staggering number since roughly 6 million died in the Holocaust.

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Wall at Auschwitz today

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Dachau

• Established in March 1933, this was the first concentration camp created by the Nazis for political prisoners.

• It was located at a former munitions factory about 10 miles outside of Munich, Germany.

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• In 1933 there were about 4,800 prisoners, but by 1937 it held over 13,260.

• The first prisoners were German Communists, Social Democrats, and other political prisoners.

• Over time Jehovah ‘s Witnesses, Gypsies homosexuals and repeat criminals were sent to Dachau. Very few Jews were sent to Dachau in the early years.

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• Dachau was a training camp for SS guards being sent to other camps.

• It was the model camp that the other camps imitated.

• The camp had 32 barracks, including one for clergy imprisoned for opposing the Nazis.

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• One barrack was also used for medical experiments on prisoners. Hundreds of prisoners died or were permanently crippled by these experiments.

• The camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers.

• A crematorium area was constructed in 1942, but prisoners that failed selection were sent to euthanasia killing centers for gassing.

• Executions at Dachau were by firing range or gallows rather than gassing.

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• Dachau prisoners were used for forced labor first in the operation of the camp and construction projects, as well as industry.

• The number of prisoners in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 was around 188,000. Of these at least 28,000 are confirmed deaths, but the total number of victims in Dachau will never be known.

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• On April 26, 1945, American forces were approaching Dachau.

• There were 67,665 prisoners: 43,350 political prisoners, 22,100 Jews, and the remainder from various other groups.

• On this day the Germans forced more than 7,000 Jewish prisoners on a death march to Tegernsee far to the south.

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• On this death march any prisoner that couldn’t continue was shot and many others died from hunger, cold, or exhaustion.

• Dachau was liberated by the Americans on April 29,1945. In early May the prisoners that survived the death march were liberated.

• The Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with decomposed bodies at Dachau.

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Mauthausen

• On August 8, 1938, soon after the Nazis occupied Austria, prisoners from Dachau were sent to the Austrian town of Mauthausen to build a granite fortress-prison.

There were 49 sub-camps built around the original “mother” camp.

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• Between 1938 and 1945 about 195,000 people were forced into these camps because they were considered dangerous to the Nazis.

• Prisoners were given primitive tools, or were forced to work with their bare hands in the granite quarry under Himmler’s policy of “death through work.”

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• The prisoners were divided into two work groups.

• One group worked in underground tunnels cutting rock.

• The other group carried the rocks up 186 steep steps to the top of the quarry.

• These steps were called the “Stairs of Death” because of how the Nazis sometimes used them for entertainment .

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The Stairs of Death

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• For “ fun” the SS often had prisoners carry a 45 kilo stone on their backs up the stairs.

• When a prisoner dropped his rock the prisoners behind him would be crushed.

• Anyone that survived the stairs would be pushed over the cliff at the top.

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• Mauthausen prisoners were subjected to medical experiments involving being injected with diseases to surgical procedures.

• Deaths were by shooting, hanging, beating, starvation, and disease.

• There was a gas chamber capable of killing 120 people at time but it was mostly used to demonstrate a mass killing for visiting dignitaries and for selection.

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• A popular form of torture was to spray a group of naked prisoners with water in the winter and then let them freeze to death outside.

• Prisoners were also beaten to death with picks.

• Food sent to the camp was given to civilians leaving the prisoners to die of starvation.

• The SS also used prisoners for target practice.

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• It is estimated that 65,000 prisoners were executed at Mauthausen.

• Mauthausen was

liberated by American

troops on May 6, 1945.

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The End of Part III

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Liberation of Auschwitz

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Lkfif4kpc


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