The Nazi Death Camps were places where Jews got taken to be imprisoned or killed. They were killed different ways like.... put into gas chambers, Zyklon-B, got shot, gas vans, or starvation. Thousands of  Jews were killed in different Death Camps. The seven main death camps that were used to kill as many Jews as quickly as possible were...... Treblinka, Stutthof, Auschwitz, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzek, and Majdanek.

THE CAMPS:
In the seven major camps there were over half of the Jews killed during the holocaust in between 1942-1945. The main purpose to these death camps were to get rid of  all of these Jews. In these camps you would be gassed or killed some way or another. If you were a Jew you would be sent to a death camp sooner or later. After the Jews were killed the remains of them would be used as soap, lamp shades, etc.
Treblinka- Death Camp. Treblinka was one of the most important camps in WWll. The construction on the camp began in late May 1942 and was ready for operation in July 1942. From July until September 1942 there were 300,000 Jews that were transported to Treblinka. Treblinka used Monoxide gas and killed 700,000 Jews.
Stutthof- Concentration Camp. Stutthof was made in June 1944. This concentration camp was using Zyklon-B gas which had killed 65,000 people. Stutthof was equipped to mass killing by gas chambers and crematoria. This camp was enlarged and surrounded by electrical barbed-wire fence. Most of these prisoners were non-Jews. Stutthof was mainly forced into a labor camp.
Auschwitz- Concentration Camp. Auschwitz was made in September 1941 and had used Zyklon-B which had killed 1,500,000 prisoners. Auschwitz was the main camp, and was used for slave labor. It was in the center of many big Polish cities. The shipping of prisoners from Germany and Europe. When you entered Auschwitz you would read " work will make you free" Truthfully the only real escape  from the camp would be death. As you would walk in the prisoners would be selected immediately to either go to be gassed or to have to go and work. The elderly and women with children would die within hours of arrival. The able bodied men and women are put to work right away. The workers at Auschwitz did medical experiments, and they used humans at their own guinea pigs.
Chelmno-Extermination Camp. Chelmno was made in December 7,1941. It used gas vans which had killed 320,000 Jews. A population over 200,000 Jews that were forced into vans, the doors were latched shut, motors were started, the hose (that carried carbon monoxide fumes), and was put into the van. This took right about ten to fifteen minutes to kill all that was in the van. The bodies were drove to pre-dug graves in the forest. When the vans returned they were to perform the same steps. Chelmno was a camp that barely anyone in Poland new about or new how many prisoners it happened to have.
Sobibor-Extermination Camp. Sobibor was built close to a forest in March 1942. It operated from May 1942 till October 1943. There were a total of five gas chambers which had killed a total of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews. Sobibor was known for the most prisoners escaping. Out of all of the victims that tried escaping, sixty actually survived, and 260,000 were killed. From May until June 100,000 Jews were killed. Gas chambers were the quickest way to kill as many Jews as possible. They had came up with a new way to kill besides the systematic method. The new way was to push the Jews off a roof and let hang from an umbrella to assemble parachuting. Sobibors systematic method was....... a train would arrive and victims were told that  they have arrived at a transit camp that was on the way to the actual camps. The victims were told that before they could leave they would have to take showers and their clothes would be disinfected. The men and women were separated, and ordered to take off all of their cloths and valuables off. They were marched to gas chambers (the shower rooms). There could be up to 450-550 people in the chambers at once. When the chambers were full, the doors were shut and sealed - gas was pumped in. To hide the terrified screams of victims standing in line for the gas chambers, they had kept geese which were let loose when something crucial would happen. The killing in the chambers took about 20-30 minutes to kill all of the people. They would be removed and buried after the gold teeth were taken off. This whole process took 2-3 hours. In the meantime railway cars were cleaned and the train  departed while another 20 cars entered. The tree branches wrapped around the barbed wire fence to disguise the camp. Some of the prisoners tried to stab the workers in the backs while bent over to pick up branches and the people that tried stabbing the workers got their trousers sewed up after rats are thrown inside. Sobibor had different ways to kill babies and some of these ways were to throw them in garbage pits or torn apart down the middle by the legs.
Majdanek-Concentration Camp. Majdanek was made in October 1942. This camp used monoxide gas and Zyklon-B  and killed 1,380,000 Jews. Construction of Majdanek was done by all Jewish prison labor. The gassing facility was made  with crude wooden barracks at first, to later be replaced by better concrete chambers with air tight steel doors.
Belzek-Extermination Camp. The Jews began arriving to Belzek in late May 1940. By mid-August the camp housed 11,000 prisoners. Conditions were deplorable and inmates died by the thousands. The causes of death were from overwork, starvation, disease, and execution. In March 1942 the camp was converted into a killing center. Carbon monoxide gas was used to kill 600,000 people.

Commanders:
Each camp had a commander, but the best known commander was Austrian Franz Stangl of Sobibor camp. In September 1942 he was transferred to the Death Camp, Treblinka. Stangl was able to conceal his identity even though he was imprisoned in 1945, he was released two years later. He escaped to Italy with Gustov Wagner from Sobibor.
For years it was his responsibility for the killing of men, women, and children. In 1961 there was a warrant issued for Stangl's arrest, which took place six years later. In Brazil, Nazi hunter, Simon, tracked Stangl down and arrested him. Extradition to West Germany was made  where Stangl was tried for the deaths of around 900,000 people. He finally admitted to all of his killings.

Killings:
Deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria began in September 1941. The killing centers were not yet ready so victims were dumped into overcrowded "ghettos" by the camps. By the summer of  1942 the chambers were working. The one purpose the camps were opened was to kill many Jews as quickly as possible. As they arrived the victims went went directly to the gas chambers. The causes of death for thousands of inmates in the death camps was from starvation, being worked to death, exposure to elements, epidemics, and disease. The first inmates were communists, democrats, socialists, political criminals, homosexuals, and of course Jews. Extermination in the first few months was by diesel fumes called Zyklon-B gas. By August 1942 more than 6,000 people died including 2,000 non-Jews. Death camps were the most vicious part of WWII. The Final Solution included mass killings of anyone considered sum-human by the Nazi Party. This was the beginning of the deaths of 11,000,000 people, mainly Jews.

Facts:
Reports coming from camps were horrific. Deaths in these camps were from disease or simply executed for crimes. The screams from the Jews could be heard while walking by a chamber or as they were shot and killed. It is interesting to some to hear of the history in those death camps. The killings of many different races in these camps totaled more than 11,000,000 people. The stories of these well known camps, leaders, and survivors of camps are important because each story pieces together the puzzle of WWII as being one of the most horrific times. Nothing could have prepared troops, or the world, for the devastation found in these Death Camps.
Being of the Jewish religion in Germany or surrounding areas in the early 1940's was a very life threatening time. The Nazi Germans headed by Hitler gathered together all of  these people and transported them to different camps to be killed. These camps were known as the Death Camps of WWII. There were seven main death camps which used different forms of killing. These were gas chambers, starvation, execution style shootings, and being worked to death. The purpose of these death camps were to get rid of all Jews.

 

Stephanie Garlock

7th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

2004

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