Holocaust, defined in the American Heritage dictionary as great or total destruction by fire; sacrificial offering that is completely burned.  I am going to write about a part of the Holocaust that took place at a death camp called Auschwitz.

     Auschwitz was started on April 27, 1940 by orders of Heinrich Himmler who was second in command of the Nazi.  Auschwitz was located by a small town called Oswiecim, Poland.  It was a small camp at first and it was to hold Polish political prisoners, Soviet POW’s (prisoners-of-war), Gypsies and deportees of other nationalities. 

     This first camp of Auschwitz was soon to be known as the “Mother” camp.  Auschwitz II opened in October 1941 and was known as Birkenau.  May of 1942 Auschwitz III was built.

                                   “They expected the worst – they did not expect the unthinkable.”

                                                                      /Charlotte Delbo\

     Among the hundreds of thousands sent by the Nazis to concentration camps were anti-Nazis, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, mentally ill, and the chronically sick.  Also more than 250,000 Gypsies were murdered in an attempt by the Nazis to remove Gypsies as well as Jews from Europe.  All of these groups were considered a threat to the Reich-Empire.  A quote written in 1922 by Adolf Hitler, who was the leader in Germany at the time of the Holocaust, was “My first and foremost task will be the complete annihilation of the Jews”.

     Heinrich Himmler appointed Rudolf Hoss as the commander of Auschwitz.  Hoss was born in Baden-Baden.  Hoss volunteered for service when World War I broke out even though he was underage.  He joined the Nazi party in November of 1922.  In June 1923 he was arrested for killing a German teacher who collaborated with the French and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.  By 1928 he was pardoned.  After his release he recruited members for militant Nazi organization, mostly the SS.  Hoss was given the assignment of making the camp instead of holding 30,000 inmates to 100,000 inmates.  Only 25% were allowed to live a little bit longer, but were to work non-stop.  The other 75% were taken straight to the gas chambers to be killed.

     In June 1941 the commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, was to prepare for the “Final Solution”, which means a mass slaughter of the Jews.  The Jews were taken from their homes made to march to Auschwitz or jammed in cattle cars on the railroads.  The horrible smell from the overflowing urinal buckets made the air unable to breath.  After the Jews arrived at the camp they went through a “selection” process.  Men and women were sent to the camp to do labor.  Children, the sick, and elderly were immediately sent to the gas chambers.  The people who survived the selection often were victims of Dr. Mengele’s and other scientist’s horrible experiments on humans.  A lot of these experiments were done without anesthetics to satisfy the curiosity and sadism of the doctors.  Hundreds of healthy people were tortured and murdered during these experiments.

     The main item used to murder the Jews was Zyklon-B sent into the gas chambers that were disguised as shower rooms.  Although gas chambers were the main way of killing the Jews, a bullet in the back of the neck was also used, which sometimes didn’t kill the prisoners instantly.  Some of the prisoners after they were shot were still breathing, moving their arms and legs slowly and were trying to raise their bloody heads.

The lucky Jews that made it without going to the surgeons table were placed in barracks at Auschwitz.  Eight hundred to a thousand were crammed into a building and slept with one mans feet on another’s head, neck, or chest.  They pushed, shoved, bit, and kicked to get a few more inches of space to sleep better.  They were not allowed to sleep for very long because the guards drove the prisoners from their beds at three o’clock in the morning.  Role call was horrible and done 2 times a day.  It was taken at 3am and at 7pm.  The guards rearranged the rows of prisoners hitting them with their fist especially the ones wearing glasses.  They would do this for several hours recounting the prisoners as they went.

          Rudolf Hoss was ordered to burn the bodies after they were gassed.  He visited other camps to see how they burned the bodies.  In September of 1942 they began burning the bodies in open bonfires at Auschwitz.  The bodies were arranged in layers between layers of wood and they were able to burn about 2000 bodies in one bonfire.

                    “A society that burns books will eventually burn its people.”

                     Quoted by Heinrich Heine, German poet of the 19^th century.

     A Jewish survivor of Auschwitz named Eli Zborowski remembers January 17, 1945 as the day Soviet Soldiers entered the “Death Camps” of Auschwitz and gave us our freedom.

                                                                          The Aftermath

     65,000 of the 405,000 Jews who were registered survived.

     95 out of the 16,000 Soviet POW’s survived.

     After the war Rudolf Hoss was tried in Poland and executed in 1949 at Auschwitz.

                                “The one who does not remember history is bound

                                  to live through it again.”-George Santayana