Auschwitz

The Nazis either worked them to death as slave labor. Some Jews died from starvation, disease, and torture. Most of the Jews at Auschwitz were gassed soon after arrival. About 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz. It is the best-known killing center because of it was the largest, with the greatest number of facilities, survivors, and surviving paperwork.

Many Jews and others were killed at this extermination camp. If one was not immediately killed one would have a very hard life as a slave laborer while trying to survive on a starvation diet designed to kill you within a few months.

Evil things, like killing Jews.

On arrival, the trainloads of Jews would be met by SS doctors on the ramp. Those who were fit for work were sent to the slave labour camps to the right. Those who were unfit for work (usually, visibly pregnant women, children under 15 and the elderly) were gassed as soon as practical after arrival. The fit and able-bodied were 'selected' for work.

Those who were "lucky" to survive the initial selection were then under constant threat of being chosen for medical experiments by the Nazi Doctors who worked at the infamous block 10 at another part of the camp. Those who were chosen underwent brutal surgeries by Doctors Josef Mengele, Carl Clauberg and Horst Schumann. Those who were lucky enough got Dr Eduard Wirths who although took part in selections was nice to the prisoners and saved many lives. He was however in charge of the other three sadists mentioned above. Most SS doctors were forced to make selections of new arrivals and many turned up drunk to cope with the trauma of having to decide who lived and died. Dr Mengele however loved the selection process and often bribed other doctors to allow him to do their selections for them. Twins were his favourite and he did horrendous experiments on them, too many to list here.

So as the other contributor above says many evil things happened there. Auschwitz still exists today. It is at the side of a main road yet an eerie silence transcends over the place. The birds don't sing and the sun doesnt shine properly. I would urge everyone to visit it at least once as it is a monument of Nazi evil, and an example of what human beings are capable of when consumed by blind hate racism and bigotry.

If you were labeled as unfit for work you were killed as soon as practical.

On the long train ride their you were crammed in cattle cars (train cars for animals) for trips that took nearly four days. Only a small bucket was given to hold bodily wastes. After these horrible trains stopped the Nazis at the camp stripped them down naked. Then, their hair was cut off painfully. If you were not to be killed immediately then you had a serial number tattooed on to you . If you were to be killed, "nice" people approached you saying " Hey everything will be alright, just come with us into these showers". Victims were even give towels and pieces of soap, so that they wont be alarmed. And then, you went in. Pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped. For about f10-20 minutes you would slowly and painfully die. Some children whose faces were covered by their mothers survived the Zyklon-B attack. After that the gas was pumped out. Any survivors were given lethal injections.

Of course there some survivors of Auschwitz; including some children.

showers were showers, normal inmates would only have one shower during their stay.

But you might be confused with the fake shower heads that were in the gas chambers of extermination camps. They were not showers.

For the jews it was no longer than 24 hours, for the people who worked in there about 2 months, many lasted longer but many laster shorter.

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Three weeks was standard, in winter this would be much shorter.

Those that survived past the three weeks would most likely last much longer as they would have secured a better job, one inside, away from the elements.

The Jews were transported by train in boxcars, and it was dark and packed full. Also, many died due to starvation, thirst and weather conditions.

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They were transported by slow freight trains, with no breaks for food or water and only one bucket per cattle truck for sanitation. The journey often took 3-4 days or longer. They were packed tightly. In winter it was bitterly cold; in summer it was often very hot. On arrival at the camp, some of the victims were already dead. Occasionally, some corpses got left in the cattle trucks ... There are documents still in existence in which the German railways (Deutsche Reichsbahn) sent bills to the SS for having to arrange funerals for these!

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Jews were sent to concentration camps in small little train carriages in some people died in the train before they even got to the concentration camp!!

Summary: physically leaving the camp was not too hard, compared to modern prisons. It was just some barbed wire and a few guards. The difficulty was in staying free. After escaping, you would need help from the resistance and other trustees.

There was no legal or factual way out. There were normal prisons in wartime Germany, which like any other prison you could leave once you had served your time. The camps were a one way prison.

There were however a few ways out. Usually, camp guards were vastly outnumbered by prisoners, and though paradoxically it was safer to be inside and 'hide' in the crowd, escape was not altogether that difficult. The problem was staying out. People managed to cut through or dig under the wires, sneak out in the trunks of trucks and cars or wear costumes and disguises. Others bribed their way out or simply ran for it. All these methods had varying (low) degrees of success. Most survivors simply survived inside until the war was over.

Once escape was detected, there would be punitive actions against the remaining prisoners, another deterrent for would-be escapees.

By far the most difficult aspect was to stay free once outside. After escaping, people found themselves alone and hungry in the middle of occupied territory, hunted down by everyone. Local residents in nearby towns were rewarded with money and food when they turned in escapees.

Look up "Witold Pilecki" on Wikipedia. He is the only man in history to have volunteered to go to a concentration camp. He found it harder to get in than to get out.

Another good reference is 'the way back', a movie about escaping a Siberian concentration camp.

In at least one incredible instance, resistance people managed to smuggle a camera in and out to take pictures.

The height of the smallest and tallest fences of the concentration camps is from 6f 10 inches to 8f 6 inches but the size wont matter because the fences were electrical fences and the fences has 600v at least in them, so any escape attempt on the fences will end would be lethal.

From May 1944 at age 15 till January 1945, after that he and thousands walked a death march to Buchenwald until he was liberated on 11 April 1945 at age 16. (according to his autobiography "Night")

Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. It contained no gas chambers, but some 35,000 prisoners died there, including Anne Frank, between January and mid-April 1945. This camp is where Jews from Germany were sent.

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It contained a large range of nationalities in 1944-1945 as large numbers of Jews were moved there from Auschwitz. It was not, in fact, specifically for German Jews, many of whom were shot in the killing-fields of Latvia and Belarus or gassed at Auschwitz.

Anne Frank was at Auschwitz for approximately 7-8 weeks. According to records, she arrived at Auschwitz at the beginning of September, and was transported to Bergen-Belsen at the end of October.

well the little kids drew and the parents tried to scrape up scraps to make enough dinner for the family. but they didnt have alot of free time. i hope that helps!!!

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there was only one camp where Jewish families were allowed to live together, otherwise they were too tired to do much in their time off.

From early 1942 onwards, there were three camps on the main site at Auschwitz and the number of sub-camps (off the main site) grew to 45. The main site included the extermination camp at Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

In the early stages of the Counter Reformation (Council of Trent, 1545-63) there was a renewed wave of persecution, mainly in some Roman Catholic regions, especially in the City of Rome itself.

The conditions were horrible. The prisoners were fed very little. they would work people very hard and in the end all of them would be killed. A lot of the time when the women amd chilldren arrived they were automatically killed because they didnt think that they could live up to the work standards. The conditions were horrible. The prisoners were fed very little. they would work people very hard and in the end all of them would be killed. A lot of the time when the women amd chilldren arrived they were automatically killed because they didnt think that they could live up to the work standards.

If you mean after the gas chambers they had the bodies taken through to an incinerating room that had a couple of large incinerators The ovens Inside the crematoria were Banksof ovrns, each large enough to accommodate a human body. The fires were kept stoked up day and nightas body after bodywas loaded in and terned to ashes.

The three camps made up Auschwitz I, II, and III


Aushwitz 1 - was mainly a prisoner of war camp
Aushwitz 2 or Birkenau - functioned as an extermination camp for Jews.
Aushwitz 3 - was a work camp

The concentration camp and extermination camp were well outside the town and surrounded by an exclusion zone.

Also because if they did, they would probably be captured and sent to the camp as well as the person they tried to save. Not to mention when they got captured, they probably would have been whipped.

Very little, if anything. A prisoners diet usually consisted of a watered-down soup or some stale bread, maybe once or twice a week. Sometimes no food was given until a large task was accomplished.

Block No. 11 was known by the prisoners [of Auschwitz] as "the death block." It filled several roles, of which the most important was that of central camp jail. Here, the SS placed male and female prisoners from all over the camp who were suspected by the camp Gestapo of belonging to the underground, planning escapes or mutinies, or maintaining contact with the outside world. Poles from outside the camp were also held here after being arrested for such offenses as offering aid to prisoners. They were subjected to brutal interrogation that usually ended in a sentence of death by being shot or hanged.

In the first years of the camp, the penal company (Strafkompanie) and corrective company (Erziehungskompanie), assigned to the harshest labor, were quartered here. Almost all newly arrived Jewish prisoners and Polish priests were initially placed in the penal company, where the number of victims was highest. The special group of prisoners assigned to burn corpses in the crematorium (Sonderkommando) was temporarily quartered in this block.

So-called police prisoners (Polizeihäftlinge) were imprisoned here after 1943. These were Poles, suspected of resistance activity and held at the disposition of the Katowice Judicial District Gestapo. They waited in this block for the verdict of the German summary court, which usually sentenced them to death.

The SS incarcerated prisoners guilty of violating the camp regulations in the punishment cells located in the basement. Prisoners sentenced to death by starvation were also placed here in 1941. Among those who died in cell no. 18 in the basement of this block was St. Maksymilian Maria Kolbe.

In connection with SS operational plans for beginning the total extermination of the Jews, a trial of the use of Zyklon B gas for mass killing was carried out in the basement on September 3-5, 1941. In this test, 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Polish patients selected from the camp "hospital" were murdered.

From 1941-1943, the SS shot several thousand people at the Death Wall in the courtyard between Blocks No. 10 and 11. Those who died here were mostly Polish political prisoners, and above all leaders and members of the underground organization, people involved in planning escapes and aiding escapers, and those maintaining contacts with the outside world. Poles brought from outside the camp were also shot here. They included hostages arrested in reprisal for Polish resistance movement operations against the German occupation authorities.

Men, women, and even children died here. Cases are also known in which prisoners of other nationalities were shot here: Jews and Soviet prisoners of war. The SS administered floggings in the courtyard, as well as the punishment known as "the post," in which prisoners were hung by their wrists, which were twisted behind their backs. The Death Wall was dismantled in 1944 on orders from the camp authorities, and the SS carried out most executions by shooting in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

The Museum reconstructed the Death Wall after the war.