What really happened behind the closed gates of Auschwitz? It seems there is not enough words to describe the tragedy that happened inside, but but do we truly know the horrors inside. It is said all you could hear inside of Auschwitz was the screams of prisoners and the smell of burning flesh. In my paper I will be demonstrating the effects of what happened behind the closed doors of Auschwitz. There were many Holocaust camps ,but Auschwitz is world renown because of the especially cruel treatment of Jewish Prisoners inside of it. A comprehensive work cited page will conclude the research.
The History Behind Auschwitz And The People Who Worked There Auschwitz was split into 3 main complexes and 44 subcamps from 1940-1944 near the Polish City of Oswiecim. People began getting deported to Auschwitz- Birkenau the second Auschwitz complex in early 1942 to the late summer of 1944. Subcamps were used to force prisoners to produce Agricultural goods and were subordinate to the second complex, Auschwitz Birkenau created in 1941. They were also administratively subordinate to Auschwitz III when it came to industrial and armaments production.
Auschwitz I created in 1940 was created to make prisoners do forced labor in order to expand the camp. The most renown of the three created in 1941 is the second complex Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz II ,the killing center. The third and final camp Auschwitz III or Auschwitz- Monowitz was created in 1943 and it housed prisoners assigned to work at the synthetic rubber works. Once the Soviet Forces started approaching the Concentration camp in 1945 the SS panicked and began evacuating around 60,000 prisoners from Auschwitz and its subcamps.
This began the notorious death marches which resulted in 3,000-15,000 prisoners death. The prisoners who survived the marches were put on trains and transported to various Concentration Camps in Germany. The remaining 7,000 prisoners from Auschwitz- Birkenau and Auschwitz-Monowitz were liberated on January 27,1945 when the Soviet Army entered the camp and saved them. It is estimated from 1940-1945 ( The years the camp the was in session) 1. 3 million people were deported to Auschwitz and 1. 1 million were murdered. One of the cruel leaders who initiated Auschwitz to be created in the first place was none other Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler became Germany’s Dictator after their defeat in WWI , he promised to make Germany great again and he blamed the Jewish people for Germany’s problems which ultimately lead to Holocaust Camps. He committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun the day after his wedding on April 30th,1945 after he realized him and his wife were in trouble of falling into the enemy’s hands. A week later on May 7th , 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies. Another notoriously famous leader directly from Auschwitz was none other than Dr. Josef Mengele.
Dr. Mengele was a doctor at Auschwitz- Birkenau where he and his staff selected Jewish people for labor or extermination and where he supervised medical experiments on inmates to discover the means of increasing fertility of the German race. “Dr. Mengele was known as the Angel Of Death because of the cruel treatment he made the people endure and later escaped imprisonment after the war and moved to South America. Dental records later revealed he took his friend Gerhard’s identity as protection and he died of a stroke while swimming.
Another famous Nazi leader was Reinhard Heydrich he was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and he ordered the arrest of thousands of Jews by the Gestapo and their imprisonment in Concentration Camps. He was attacked in 1942 by agents who tried to assassinate him and he later died of his injuries. The last and final leader I would like to speak about is Adolf Eichmann was the coordinator of logistics for the final solution to the famous Jewish question. He traveled through Nazi Territory in hopes of finding Jewish Populations.
He was later executed in 1962. The Release of Jewish Prisoners from Auschwitz and Survivors Accounts. On January 27th, 1945 the Soviet Union arrived and helped 7,000+ prisoners become liberated. The Soviet Union discovered pieces of clothing, shoes, corpses and seven tons worth of hair that had been shaved off Detainees before their liquidation. ”These are some accounts of people who experienced what is was like to be apart of Auschwitz. ” Erzsebet Brodt, 89, was 17 years old when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with her family.
Remembering the journey to the camp, she said that those who were “sick or about to give birth were forced out and put into one wagon. When the wagon was opened in Auschwitz we saw that everyone was dead inside. ” This was not uncommon for people who were pregnant or sick were killed or found dead , they were found to be useless since their condition limited them. ” Former Auschwitz concentration camp inmate Laszlo Bernath, 87, credits his survival of Auschwitz to his father being a practical man. He was 15 when they were taken, but his father told him to lie about his age so that they would not be separated.
Even while in the camp, Bernath had no idea about the gas chambers. ” This was not uncommon either , I have read several stories of young men lying about their age so they would not be killed or separated from their fathers. People were often separated by gender and age, or women and children and then men. Women and children were often killed off because they were thought to be useless and unable to do the same amount of labor as men. “Dr. Mengele would point at the people in the line, as if to say “You and you go to the left side, go burn a little bit.
Once thousands of kids came in from Lodz, Poland, and some girls were hiding under our bunk. Mengele took something out of his pocket, and hit the four girls. ” All four of them died—what a monster he was. One day, he befriended a little gypsy boy and dressed him like his own son—dressed him up in a Nazi uniform—and the next day he threw the boy into the gas chamber alive; that’s what Mengele did. ” One day we saw a woman who worked in the kitchen, she wanted to give her child a little soup, she put the child on a piece of wood to slide him under the wire—the guards shot the mother.
The little girl fell on the wire and was electrocuted. Many people would go to “touch the wire” and then they were lying there dead—they looked so beautiful. ”. The amount of cruel punishment these people had to endure has no words to explain it. The Nazi leaders were not only cruel ,but they would make people suffer to the point where they would have to do something they were not supposed to do in order to stay alive. It was a game for Nazi’s they would trick innocent people into thinking they were being rewarded and then kill them an instance.
You were not worth being alive if you were not in average condition. The bodies were disposed by prisoners in a giant pit and were burned the smells stuck with people years after . “We had to dig the bodies out and burn them. A big fire was made here with wood and petrol and we were throwing them right into it. There were always two of us throwing the bodies in, one holding the legs and one on the arms. The smell and the stench was terrible. The bodies were not only bloody but rotten as well. We were given some rags to put over our faces.
The treatment the people endured at Auschwitz was not only cruel ,but resulted in 1. 1 million deaths. In the entire holocaust 6 million people were murdered and out of that 1. 2 million children were murdered. Auschwitz remains in tact till this day besides the crematorium and gas chambers knocked down to destroy evidence. It is a memorial site now for all those who are departed and some survivors claim when they visit you can still smell the flesh burning and the screams and cries of those who are departed.