What did people do in the concentration camps?

Answer 1

in concentration camps they would have been working for people like the nazis until they would be put into gas chambers to die. However they would be told to work if they wanted be free and go home.(but they were lyin to them.) Some people would have been let free if they were in a good state so that it would incourage more people to want to go.

Answer 2

People mostly died.

Really, they were death camps. There was no return. It was not like a prison which you leave after you serve your time.

Upon arrival, people were subjected to the infamous 'selection'. After the final solution was implemented, most were sent to the gas chambers, especially women, children and the elderly, as well as men who were either too weak or too strong to work. Too strong meant a security risk.

If you survived the selection, you average life expectance was one week to three months. There was random violence, random murder, torture, hours of standing in the cold while the guards did their count. There was little water, even less food. Nights were spent hurdled together in cramped spaces with no heating, often seeing five people or more in the space you would call a bed, but which was really nothing more than a few wooden planks.

There was work to do though. You could do odd jobs like taking apart batteries for recycling to help the German war effort. Or even more senseless jobs of hauling huge stones on your back up a staircase just to drop them off at the end and carry them up again, to amuse the guards with your suffering. Or you could become a Kapo, a Jewish prisoner selected by the guards to keep other prisoners in line. If you were too cruel to your fellow inmates, they would hate you for it, when a crowd was the main tool of survival - to hide in it - and leave you standing alone. If you were not cruel enough, the guards would beat you. On average, Kapo's were changed every three months. So you knew that no matter what you did, if you were a Kapo, you would die in three months, unless the allies would come and free the camp. But then the other prisoners would not have forgotten you were a Kapo, even though you might not have elected to be one, but rather have been selected by the guards.

In all, life in the camps was gruesome. There was less than a shimmer of hope, since so much depended on chance. And if that was not enough, disease was rife among prisoners. Tuberculosis, lung infections, muscle atrophy from malnutrition, even a simple cold could kill you.

Day and night you were surrounded by impending pain, terror and death. Survival hinched on luck, and you had a better chance at winning the lottery.