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Jennifer Carlson Mr. Neuburger Eng. Comp 101-104 5 April 2013 Research Paper The Death Camps The Holocaust remains one of the most horrific displays of persecution and murder in our history. In 1933, when Hitler comes into power, the German Government begins removing the rights of Jewish people to remain citizens. This marks the beginning of an attempt to drive Jews out of Germany. However, over the next eleven years, over twelve million innocent Jews and people from other ethnic backgrounds are brutally murdered. Most people know of the Holocaust but cannot fathom how the Nazis systematically murdered so many people in such a short amount of time. There exists many layers to the Holocaust, but one of the major breakthroughs allowing the Nazis to murder so many was the development of extermination centers or death camps. There are many extermination camps, with AuschwitzBirkenau being the largest and most notorious; however, Chelmno is the first camp to be established in 1941. According to Yad Vashem,
Chelmno Death Camp http://bit.ly/JMkc8

murder operations begin there on December 8th, 1941 and continue

intermittently until January 1945. The Jews of the Lodz Ghetto and the vicinity are the primary victims deported to Chelmno, where they are murdered by means of gas vans. When the deportees reach the camp, they are ordered to undress, stripped of their belongings, and tricked into boarding a van whose exhaust pipe is actually connected to its interior. Furthermore, the

website explains how after the doors close, the van begins to drive toward a designated burial place in a nearby forest. No one survives. By using three gas vans, nearly 300,000 Jews and 5,000 Sinti and Roma gypsies are murdered in Chelmno. Only three Jews survived this death camp (The Implementation of the Final Solution). The second largest Nazi extermination camp is Majdanek. According to Majdanek(concentration camp, Poland), it receives its first prisoners in October of 1941, many of them Soviet prisoners of war, all of whom die of hunger and exposure. Within a year, it is converted into a death camp for Jews transported from Bohemia, and Moravia and then from Poland, The Netherlands and
Majdanek http://bit.ly/RvvcI

Greece. Like Auschwitz, Majdanek is not a death camp alone; its also a prison camp and a work camp. With seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, it is among the largest camps. In September 1943, the Nazis add a large crematorium containing five ovens. In the first months of killing, Nazi firing squads execute prisoners in a nearby forest, but afterward, victims are herded into the gas chambers for mass executions. The bodies are cremated. The website also explains how during its four years of existence, some 500,000 persons from 28 countries and of 54 nationalities pass through Majdanek. According to the most reliable estimates, about 360,000 die there. Of these, some 60 percent die of starvation, torture, or disease and some 40 percent are murdered by firing squad or in the gas chambers. Like those employed at Belzec, Majdaneks first gas chambers use carbon monoxide; later, on the Auschwitz model, the Nazis install gas chambers using Zyklon-B, which produce quick-killing hydrogen cyanide fumes (Britannica).

Treblinka is established in 1941. According to the Jewishgen, Treblinka adheres to a specific routine that supports the ruse of resettlement and which minimizes the chances of Jewish rebellion or resistance. Details are added in each of the death centers to support the lie of Jewish resettlement. The Star of David on the front wall of Treblinkas gas house, and the Hebrew inscriptions on the curtain that hangs at the entrance that reads, This is the gate through which the righteous pass, is just two examples. As train loads of five to seven thousand people arrive at the camp, the deportees hear a speech by an SS officer telling them they have arrived at a transit camp. Prisoners are then moved through a selection process in which women and children are separated from the men. Those too sick to walk on their own, unbeknownst to the others, are taken to a pit near the infirmary and shot. Furthermore, while the victims are being gassed, some of the male prisoners empty and clean the train cars of the corpses of those who died en route as well as any objects or dirt that is left behind. Not all of the deportees arriving at Treblinka meet their fate in the gas house. Some are forced to work jobs to keep the killing business in motion. They will be used as laborers for a period of days and then selected out for gassing. Opening for Business on July
Treblinka Station http://bit.ly/10hWEfh

23, 1942 with the beginning of the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto, some 245,000 Warsaw Jews and 112,000 Jews from other places in the Warsaw district are murdered in Treblinka by September 21. As the Allied forces got closer in the fall of 1943, evacuation of the camp has begun. Orders are given to destroy the camp so that no traces of its existence will remain (Treblinka,Poland).

Sobibor is the second extermination camp to be developed in March 1942. According to The Jewish Virtual Library, the first commandant is Franz Stangl, who presides over about 700 Jewish workers engaged temporarily to service the
Sobibor Death Camp http://bit.ly/4ZqFSU

camp. Operation at Sobibor lasts from April 1942 until the camp is destroyed after an inmate revolt in October 1943.

Approximately 250,000 people are murdered here, with the vast majority being Jews. Sobibor actually consists of two camps which are divided into three parts: administration section; barracks and storage; and finally the extermination, burial and cremation section. Initially, three gas chambers housed in a brick building using carbon monoxide and three more gas chambers are added later. The website also states how the first camp holds the Jewish prisoners required to service the SS men and Ukrainians. Within the second camp is an enclosed area entirely shielded by tree branches intertwined with the barbed wire, where deportees undress in the open before proceeding up a fenced in passage way called tube1, towards the shaving hut for women and the gas chambers. The third camp is the most remote area and is screened by trees. Inside, is the brick building housing three gas chambers, about 12 feet by 12 feet, each of which holds about 160-180 people. After being gassed, the corpses are removed from a second door and buried in huge, specially excavated pits. Carts, and later trolleys on a small track, are used to carry deportees who are too infirm to walk to the burial pits where they are shot so as not to delay the killing process. In addition, the Jews are told on arrival that they have arrived at a transit camp1. The platform and adjacent building is designed to reassure them. They are then separated according to gender and age: children go with women. They are divested of their luggage and valuables,

forced to undress and driven up the tube1, men first, to the gas chambers. Women are shaved at a hut situated along the tube1. The actual killing process takes about 20-30 minutes. The processing1 of a convoy of twenty wagons takes about 2-3 hours (Sobibor Extermination Camp). Another extermination camp forms by the name of Belzec. According to Killing Centers: An Overview, in 1940 the Germans establish a string of labor camps along the Bug (Buh) River, which until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, forms the demarcation line between German-and-Soviet occupied Poland. In November 1941, SS and Police authorities in Lublin District begin construction of a killing center on the site of the former Belzec labor camp. The facility is finished in the late winter of 1942 as part of what later
Belzec Death Camp http://bit.ly/oNjTN

will be called Operation Reinhard (also called Aktion Reinhard), the plan implemented by the SS and Police Leader in Lublin to

murder the Jews of the Generalgouvernement. The killing center is located along the LublinLvov railway line, with the killing center only 1,620 feet from the Belzec railway station. In addition, the website explains how Belzec begins operations on March 17th, 1942; the first Jewish communities to deport to Belzec are those of Lublin and Lvov. Trains of 40-60 freight cars with 80-100 people crowded in to them arrive at the Belzec railway station. Twenty freight cars at a time are detached and brought from station into the camp. The arriving Jews are then ordered to disembark at the platform of the reception area. German SS and police personnel announce that the Jewish deportees have arrived at transit camp and are to hand over all valuables in their possession. Initially, men are separated from women and children. The Jews are forced to undress and run through the tube, which leads directly into gas chambers deceptively labeled as showers. Once the chamber doors are sealed, the auxiliary police guards

start an engine located outside the building housing the gas chambers. Carbon monoxide is funneled into the gas chambers, killing all those inside. The process is then repeated with deportees in the next twenty freight cars (USHMM). Auschwitz-Birkenau is the largest killing center during the Holocaust. According to Gates to Hell, experimental gassing of 850 malnourished and ill prisoners starts in September 1941. Afterward, mass murder becomes a daily routine. By mid-1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B begins at Auschwitz, where extermination is conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running as high as three million persons eventually being killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning. At Auschwitz, children are often killed upon arrival. Children born in the camp are generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, cost-accountant considerations lead to an order to place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits. In addition, so called camp doctors, especially the
Auschwitz-Birkenau http://bit.ly/15gj5SL

notorious Josef Mengele, tortures and inflicts incredible suffering on Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others.

Patients are put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, frozen to death, and exposed to various other traumas. At Auschwitz, Josef Mengele does a number of twin studies, and these twins are usually murdered after the experiment is over and their bodies dissected. Mengele is almost fanatical about drawing blood from twins, mostly identical. Only a few survive. These terrors occur in Block 10 of Auschwitz1. Josef Mengele is nicknamed the Angel of Death for the inhumane experiments he conducts.

The website also stated how after WW2, in October of 1946, the Nuremberg Medical Trials begin. Twenty-three German physicians and scientists are accused of performing vile, and potentially lethal medical experiments on concentration camps inmates, and other living human subjects between 1933 and 1945. Josef Mengele was not among the accused (Auschwitzdk).

Works Cited Bulow, Louis. "Gate to Hell." Auschwitzdk/Auschwitz.htm. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. "The Implementation of the Final Solution." Yad Vashem. 2013. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. "Killing Centers :( An Overview)." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 11 May 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. "Majdanek (Concentration Camp Ploand)." Britannica. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. Niss, Caren K. "Treblinka (Poland)." Jewishgen. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. "Sobibor Extermination Camp." The Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.

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Content paper demonstrates understanding and confidence about topic Sources uses only primary and secondary sources In-Text Citations integrates sources within text with effective use of signal words and phrases Formatting properly uses MLA formatting Works Cited works cited page has the required number of sources and is properly formatted Pictures uses pictures to enhance the text with effective captions and source information Writing Mechanics Paper is free from errors in spelling, punctuation, etc.

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15 8

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Total = 100

Total Score 93