Auschwitz Birkenau Research Paper

Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Holocaust is considered one of the greatest tribulation in world history. Millions of innocent lives were taken in the hands of the Nazis in deadly compounds called death and concentration camps. Perhaps one of the most notorious of these camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau, known for its mass killing of Jews and other faultless civilians. The genocide of the Jewish race occurred thorough horrible and inhumane means in death camps all over Germany. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the pinnacle of Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jewish race and is considered one of the deadliest camps due to the inhumane killing of millions of innocent men, women, and children.

The Auschwitz compound consisted of more than forty concentration camps and sub-camps. Of these forty, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest and deadliest. Ninety percent of the prisoners that arrived at the Auschwitz compound died in Birkenau, making the death count more that one million (“AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU”). In its prime in 1941,

“The most frequently punished infractions included all attempts at acquiring additional food, various forms of shirking work or working in an unsatisfactory way, doing things such as smoking or relieving oneself at the improper time, wearing non-regulation clothing, or attempting to commit suicide.” (“AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU”). The most common punishment was flogging which means that the prisoner was whipped over a wooden block (“AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU”). If flogging did not stop the prisoner from continuing the infraction, they were executed through the means of shooting, gassing, hanging, and starvation. The prisoners were stripped of their clothing and either lined up to be shot, crammed in gas chambers, hung publically, or were not given any food until they passed away. Large piles of corpses accumulated around the camp and they were sent out to be decomposed or