Auschwitz

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     Auschwitz was a concentration camp for Jews, located west of Krakow, following the defeat of Poland in September of 1939.  Auschwitz held up to 10,000 Jews.  The Jews were sent to Auschwitz in freight cars.  They were unloaded and examined.  After this, any women and men who were in good shape got tattooed with a number on their upper left arm and went to a line to get ready for work.  Women and men who were weak were immediately exterminated.
 

     This happened to all the children.  There was a brick wall about two meters high that separated the men and women.  After they had got tattooed, the prisoners had to undress completely and get all their head and body hair shaved off.  Most of the women suffered just from the humiliation of being naked and losing all their hair.  Next, the prisoners either got to take a short, ice cold shower or a short, boiling hot shower.

     The Jews had it really rough.  In the morning, they were awoken by loud whistles.  They had to make their beds perfectly.  Next there was breakfast.   It consisted of a ½ of a liter of unsweetened coffee or tea. Then there was roll call.  After roll call, they had to march to their working stations with the beat of music played by the NAZI orchestra.  They worked for 11 hours with ½ an hour lunch break.  For lunch, they got ¾ of a liter of tasteless soup made from potato peelings.  At dinner time, they were given 300 grams of bread with either 25 grams of sausage or 35 grams of margarine.  It was also joined with one spoon of jam or cheese.  Their food was often cold or spoiled.
 


For their clothes, They first started wearing blue and white striped drill garments.  Then later on, men got a shirt, long undergarments, a jacket, trousers, and possibly a coat during the winter.  Women seldom got underwear.
     At the beginning, pregnant women were sent straight to execution.  Some secretly had their babies in the camp overnight.  If the babies were discovered, which they were, the mother would soon die of blood poisoning.  The babies were taken somewhere to be shot by the S.S.
At night, they slept on beds made of straw with just
one blanket.  On a regular account, they had to put fifteen people on a regular bed.  When the camp was overcrowded, they put forty-five people per bed.
     Their rules were very strict.  They got punished for a lot of stuff.  Like, they would get punished for leaving lumps in their beds or the straw and blankets not being straight. 
Another thing they were punished for was if their shoes were dirty.  Their punishments were either getting gassed, poisoned, shot, or hung.  The majority  of people getting killed was by being gassed.  They would put a large group of people in a big chamber or room with a hole at the top.  The hole at the top had a lid.  They would open the the lid and  drop a poisonous gas called, Zyklon B, (also known as Cyclone B), into the chamber.  They would close the lid and wait for 10-15 minutes.  When they would open the lid, the Jews would be dead.  They would kill about 9,000 people per day.  After that they would cremate all the bodies.
 
     To poison them, they would give them poison injections.  They would cremate the bodies after that, also.  If the Jews tried to escape, they would be shot down.  Also, if they tried to run away or made another crime, they would be hung.
     Auschwitz was closed down and deserted on January 27, 1945 when the Red Army entered Auschwitz and freed about 7,000 remaining immates.  Most of them were ill or dying.  I think the Jews had the hardest life out of anybody.
 
 

-Darchelle 
Whitehead
 

My sources:

The Final Solution (handout)
www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/Auschwitz/HTML/AusGliederung.html (website)
www.almanac.bc.ca/faqs/auschwitz/index.html (website)