Nazi Concentration Camps

• In a concentration camp you are generally just held there, somewhat like a prison, possibly doing hard labor for an indefinite amount of time and the name says it all for the extermination camp. It's merely a holding place where, although you may do labor as well, your ultimate destiny is execution. It's sad, but true.

• Most people think of the Nazis as having formed the first concentration/extermination camps. While they did in fact exterminate over 6.5 million Jews and over another 6.5 million non Jews they cannot begin to compare to the extermination attempts of 'the church' in the middle or dark ages. The church via the crusades put over 52 million people to death. All one had to do if one wanted someone eliminated was accuse them of some sort of witchcraft. It was not up to the accuser in most cases to prove it, it was up to the accused to disprove it. Unfortunately the only methods allowed to disprove it usually ended up the accused person's death. The first recorded group to use the 'camp' method of control and extermination was and is the US Government. In the early 1700s the US Government herded all the Cherokee tribe that they could find together and forced them to march almost 1400 miles from the eastern seaboard to what was later called the Oklahoma Territory. Almost 75% of them died en route. It came to be known as the trail of tears. The reason it is called the trail of tears is not because the Cherokee people wept at the loss of their family members. It was called this because people along the route when they saw the conditions that the Cherokee were forced to endure, and saw them carrying their dead on their backs to their new home in order to properly bury them wept at the sight. Military officers offered wagons for this use, but the Cherokee did not accept. Later and even today most native Americans reside in what is called -reservations-. All this was actually a means to the end of exterminating them. They were given blankets that were known to have disease bearing fleas in order to carry out this extermination process. Other concentration camps was used by the British on the 'Boers' or Afrikaners of South Africa, as they are known today. Boer war 1899 - 1902. Oh yes, let us not forget the 'concentration' camps (resettlement camps) that most of the US CITIZEN Japanese were forced to relocate to during WWII. To this day most of them have not received even a pathetic apology for this, much less adequate remuneration for the lost future value of the property and businesses that were stolen from them and given to someone else. One might ask how does this sort of thing come about. The best explanation comes with the question 'Why did GOD allow HIS people the Jews to be treated this way by the Nazis?' Many have said that this was GOD'S punishment for the Jews killing JESUS. The fact is it was the Romans that that physically put HIM to death, but it was our sin which caused HIS death. Actually it was because over ONE BILLION people whom lived on the face of the earth prior to and during WWII sat back in apathy and allowed not only a tyrant and his henchmen to run amok throughout Europe during the late 1920s, all of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, they also chose to ignore the millions of dispatches coming out of Europe about what the Nazis were doing. Know what? The same thing is going on today in the Sudan and much of South Africa. I cannot help but wonder if the USA is now paying the price of what it has put native Americans and others through in the name of liberty. What I do know is that GOD has blessed the USA with abundant freedom. I also know that when GOD gives an abundant blessing HE does so with the intent that the blessing be shared. If it is not shared it is very likely that the abundant part will be gone before long. If it is hoarded you can be assured that both the blessing and the abundance will disappear. Our US military whom are doing what they are able to share the blessing with others need to be supported and not disregarded simply because a bunch of do gooders don't like the politics that are necessary to accomplish this. AND what I have come to know is that when GOD'S people do not take the blessing to the poor, HE will bring the poor to the blessing. Could the reason for this be what is now called -illegal immigrants- after all no one seems to know what to do about that situation. If this is HIS doing, guess what, there will be no man whom can find the resolution.

• The Indians did reach Canada and were met by the Mounted Police. As the above poster said, people had tears in their eyes when they saw these proud people carrying their dead and were half-starved. The journey was hard for all. A great proud people were dwindling before every one's eyes. The Canadian Government had no problem giving land to the Indians and allowing them to stay, but the American Government kicked up such a fuss that they were forced back into the U.S. The Indians were forced onto reservations (a type of concentration camp) as the U.S. Government had promised to provide them with food and clothing, but many times the Indians did not receive this. In the Nazi extermination camps many different nationalities were held by the Nazis; some were exterminated in the cars of the trains; others did labor and then groups would be exterminated when they thought they were going to have a shower and cyanide was used to murder them. As sad as these stories are you can beat, torture, chase-down any proud group of people, but you can NEVER kill the spirit. All of us should learn from such stories of concentration camps or any form of human abuse and know that they still exist in other countries today. What about the forgotten country ... AFRICA! The Congo is brutal and people are dying so fast there are more dead than the living.

Yes. There are extensive testimonies and witness evidence of abuse of women by guards in concentration camps, as any internet search will reveal.

In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, there are many other accounts of concentration camp guards abusing inmates, including men and children, even in more recent times. For example, the link in Related links below spotlights the outrageous treatment of prisoners in such a camp in 1991/92.

Here are the name of the Major Concentrations in Poland during the Holocaust:

• Auschwitz
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek
• Sobibor
• Warsaw

The following extermination camps were destroyed by the Nazis:

1. Belzec (grassed over to look like farmland)
2. Chelmno
3. Maly Trostinets
4. Sobibor
5. Treblinka (grassed over to look like farmland)

The inmates of the Auschwitz camps were transported by train more than any other way. The Auschwitz concentration camps were built to handle large numbers of people very efficiently and that included a rail track that ran into Birkenau, one of the camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. Prisoners were offloaded directly into the camp from the train.

During the operation of the concentration camps, more than 7000 staff were assigned to them. They had rather more choice in their mode of transport than the prisoners and many may have traveled by road rather than train.

Kapos, Commandants, or diseases all took part in the deaths at concentration camps. If you want more specific, here are some ways people died:

• Starvation
• Malnourishment
• Lack of medical care
• Zyklon B (gas chambers)
• Fire
• Suicide

The killings were carried out by the SS.

Note that Treblinka was an extermination camp

The Jews arrived on trains that were 60 cars long with 100 Jews in each car. Twenty cars at a time were backed into the camp and the Jews got out, leaving their luggage in the car. The men were separated from the women and children and both groups were told to undress. Their clothing and the luggage was taken by the 1,000 Jews who worked in the camp. Then the naked Jews were herded through a path that was lined with tree branches to hide their nakedness from Polish farmers who might be looking into the camp. At the end of the path were gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. The Jews were herded into the showers and immediately gassed with either carbon monoxide or Zyklon-B gas.

The clothing from the previous train, which had been sorted by the Jewish workers, was loaded onto the empty train and taken to Majdanek, the camp in the city of Lublin, where the clothing was disinfected with Zyklon-B and then sent to Germany to be given to the civilians who had lost their clothing during Allied bombing raids on their homes.

The bodies of the Jews who had been gassed were removed by the Jewish workers and buried in mass graves. The graves were later opened and the Jewish workers had to carry the decomposed bodies to pyres where the bodies were burned, using wood from the trees surrounding the camp.

About 8%

For some reason, a wide range of different figures appear online, which isn't helpful.

It looks to me as if different definitions of "survivor" are being used. The word needs defining carefully, otherwise one ends up talking about quite different groups of people. The usual meaning of the expression "a holocaust survivor" is someone who was sent to a death camp (or equivalent), but was still alive at the end of WWII in Europe or when the camp was liberated. (In other words, Jews and others who had managed to flee to countries like the U.S., Britain, Sweden and the Soviet Union should NOT be included).

The highest figure I've found anywhere is 600,000 and the lowest figure 150,000. This may sound like a huge discrepancy, but of the total number of inmates found alive in Belsen when it was liberated on 15 April 1945, about one quarter died within four weeks. I don't think these unfortunate people should be numbered among the survivors, but others may have different views on this very difficult issue.

Assuming that about 5.7 million Jews were killed (a fairly common figure) and that 0.5 million survived, the percentage of survivors would be:

• 5.7 million + 0.5 million = 6.2 million. 0.5/6.2 x 100 = about 8%.

In the meantime ...

I have discovered that in Israel somewhat broader defintions of "Holocaust survivor" are in use.

The answer on the strict criteria that the question itself asks for is almost certainly closer to 150,000/5,700,000 = 2.63%.