Concentration Camps: The Holocaust

The Holocaust The Holocaust was a mass murdering of millions of people. Most of the people killed were of the Jewish population. The number of people killed was so high they had to make a new word for it, genocide (Rice 11). The leader of this genocide was Adolf Hitler. Hitler is a German dictator (Fremon 7). Hitler appointed a leader for the SS, that leader was Heinrich Himmler (SS Timeline). Together, with the help of the Nazis, they would take over all of Europe. The Holocaust took place during World War 2 (Rice 11). As a result of the war, they also had prisoners of war they had to take care of. The Jewish, the Russians, the Polish, and even the Gypsies were all put into concentration camps (Kornblum 927). The camps were all over

The reason for concentration camps is because of the Jewish faiths and customs (Yeatts 14). Even people with their own political views and social attitudes were sent to the concentration camps (Kornblum 927). The camps were meant for people suffer in many ways. One way was hard labor, the Nazis would make the people in the concentration camps work very hard while starving them. Another way was very deadly science experiments (Yeatts 14).

Jewish people were moved to concentration camps almost as soon as Hitler became the German dictator. The first camp opened 1933 and was called Dachau (Rice 8). More concentration camps were made to fit as many Jews as possible. In 1940 more Jews are deported to concentration camps in Poland (Yeatts 12). Germany created 8 concentration camps from 1939-1940 to hold all types of groups (Concentration Camps, 1932-1942).

At the camps, many horrible conditions were experienced. The Nazis were very cruel (Yeatts 13). The camps were scary, you never what was gonna happen and when. Especially since the Nazis would lie to the people. An example is when they told the Jews, they were going to take a shower instead they would be sent to the gas chambers (Yeatts 14). In the concentration camps the Jewish people would be

The US troops first liberated Buchenwald Concentration camp and found 15,000 Jews (Rice 88). Russian troops also liberated the Warsaw ghettos and found 80,000 Jews (Rice 88). The British troops also liberated Bergen-Belson which had 40,000 Jews (Rice 88). Many more camps were liberated eventually. Liberation was a sign of the end of war. Liberation occurred in late 1944 to early 1945, just before the end of World War 2. Soviet Forces were the first to reach Nazi camps in July of 1944, those camps were Majdanek and Poland (Liberation of Nazi Camps). America liberated multiple camps in April of 1945 (Rice 88). Russia liberated many camps as well in January of 1945 (Rice 88). When liberation finally occurred the troops were very shocked to see what was inside all these camps. The troops found millions of dead and dying people (Rice 88). The troops saw all the cruelty that went on in the camps and were scared, many said they hadn’t seen something more horrifying (Ayer