Horrible Conditions In Concentration Camps During The Holocaust

The conditions that the Jews and other were put through were super horrible. They were forced into boxcars that didn’t have anything in them and they wondered where they were and where they were going. They stood in the boxcars for days with no food or water to keep them alive. (Joseph)(Source 3) Along their way to the concentration camps they were exposed to harsh weather. In the summer it was scorching hot and in the winter it was freezing cold. Since they were shoved amongst each other they suffered from suffocation. Along their journey many young and old died along the way (“The Holocaust”)(Source 2). Inside the boxcars there was no windows or anyway to breath. It was also very unsanitary because of the abundance of people in them and they didn’t have any water to at least wash themselves with. All they could do was stand there in the dark and wait (Joseph) (Source

One of the worst things that happened constantly in the camps did not just have to watch people die, or eve seeing the massive piles of dead bodies but the Germans made the Jews burn their fellow prisoners bodies in the crematoriums. The Jews were taken out of their homes and thrown into camps, while watching people die all around them if cruel and violent conditions as the Germans heartlessly treated them like animals.

During the Holocaust Jews were often forced from concentration camp to concentration camp where they would only get a ration of bread and soup each day and were often whipped or even killed for doing something wrong or not being strong enough to work. They were also required, during the year of 1942, to wear badges so they can easily be recognized by the Nazis and other non-Jews. The Nazis treated Jews like animals causing them to lose faith in god.

The conditions of the concentration camps were beyond harsh. You had the unbelievable beatings alongside the food that they hardly ate and not to mention the weather they had to endure. These conditions compelled individuals to not only put them in a position to survive, but

The holocaust was a very horrific event that took place in the early 1930s that most people still remember to this day. Yet most people don’t know about the Ghettos and what happened behind there gated homes. The ghettos were first made in October of 1940 so germans established the ghettos just to keep jews in a place where they can be watched constantly. Diseases were one of the main reasons that made the Ghettos such a dreadful place to live. Most of the diseases in the ghettos were causes of poor living conditions.

The Holocaust was a horrible thing and these are only some of the reasons why. The Jewish people in the concentration camps were starved to almost skin and bones.

Typhus is a disease that went through the concentration camps. The disease is spread by lice which is a bug that lives in hair usually on the head. (Auschwitz Voices pg.60) Most children were affected by the overcrowding which made it easier to catch typhus and they frequently died from it. Almost 30 percent of the population of Warsaw was packed into 2.4 percent of the city’s area which caused there to be enormous amounts of overcrowding which made it easier to contract diseases.(www.ushmm.Org) It can cause inflamed vessels, which in turn can cause a dramatic drop in blood pressure as well as internal bleeding. (www.share.com) Typhus, in particular was rampant and prisoners were marched out of the camps and into the ghetto for mass disinfections. Disinfection baths were established in certain areas like on Balonowa Street. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

There was thousands of bodies stacked in rows upon rows, this was hard for the

Disease was one of the effect that affected the Jews in the holocaust. “One of the disease that caused the Jews to get sick was typhus” (“Typhus”). That shows how the Jews were living in poor conditions which caused people to get ill. “There are three different types of Typhus; epidemic/louse-borne typhus caused by rickettsia prowazekii ,murine typhus caused by rickettsia typhi and scrub typhus caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi”(Typhus) . In Auschwitz II Birkenau camp , there was no running water and unsanitary equipment which caused the spread of diseases”(Auschwitz:The Camp of Death).This shows how the Jews did not get clean water to drink and what they drink and eat were contaminated and infected. The contaminated water made more jews infected

The conditions of the camps varied from one to another, but from Stalags and Concentration camps, they were close to the same. A large portion of deaths in POW camps were from “lack of food” (Uhl 1). The recommended daily minimum was a 2,000 calorie diet (Rees 5).However this was impossible to do with the shortage of food. (Rees 5). Some of the food was “potatoes and moldy bread” (Uhl 1) which was part sawdust (Uhl 1). Many only got “5 grams” of bread (Solzhenitsyn 25). Millions of people were surely to die (Jones 11). Although the camps were harsh, the prisoners were allowed to do many activities such as sports, newspaper, musicals, and more (Uhl 2). Many camps featured musical and plays to entertain others and to be used as propaganda (Uhl 2). Even though the POW’s had better choices, they were still beaten and murdered like the others captured. (Uhl 2). In eight months, Nazis murdered 2.8 Russian Pow’s, exceeding the amount of mass murder during the holocaust. (Uhl 2). While in the camps, many died from the Baatan Death March that killed off all remaining prisoners of the Japanese (“Prisoners of War” 4). The weather was also a large aspect to the deaths. The prisoner’s “fingers were

It is estimated that Nazis established around fifteen thousand concentration camps throughout occupied countries. (Concentration Camp Listing, 2010) These camps, known as “DEATH CAMPS” spread throughout all of Europe under German ruling. It has been estimated to be around 15,000,000 concentration camps that were established from small to large ones. (Concentration Camp Listing, 2010) One of the most commonly known concentration camps was the one located in Auschwitz, this particular concentration camp was were diseases and epidemics prevailed due to poor living conditions. (living conditions, labor and executions) Examples of these

The conditions of the camp were unbearable. The prisoners were barely fed, mainly bread and water, and were cramped in small sleeping arrangements. "Hundreds slept in triple-tiered rows of bunks (Adler 51)." In the quarters that they stayed, there were no adequate cleaning facilities or restrooms for the prisoners. They rarely were able to change clothes which meant the "clothes were always infested with lice (Swiebocka 18)." Those were sick went to the infirmary where also there were eventually killed in the gas chambers or a lethal injection. The Germans did not want to have anyone not capable of hard work to live. Prisoners were also harshly punished for small things such as taking food or "relieving themselves during work hours (Swiebocka 19)." The biggest punishment was execution. The most common punishment was to receive lashings with a whip.

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

In the winter jews would get frostbite, colds, and pneumonia. Many people got sick because the camps were so crowded. Some illnesses that they suffered are, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, and meningitis. Some also got skin disease, rashes, and scabies that got infected. Starvation happened to most Jews because they didn’t get fed enough. They had tea or coffee for breakfast, watery soup for lunch, and a piece of black bread with a small piece of meat or cheese for supper. The bread they had for supper was meant to last for breakfast too. If the prisoners got too weak, they were sent to be