Slave Labor In Auschwitz Essay

Auschwitz was the largest and most notorious concentration camp of the holocaust. It opened in 1940 in southern Poland. More than a million Jews died at Auschwitz. Many horrific atrocities occurred at Auschwitz including gas operations, slave labor, and medical experiments.

The first atrocity that occurred in Auschwitz was gas operations. There were a couple of different types of gas operations, such as gas vans and killing centers. At the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust Encyclopedia states, “the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC) According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazis performed trials for gas vans after the German invasion

Slave labor was a major part of Auschwitz and concentration camps. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust Encyclopedia states, “The Nazis subjected millions of people (both Jews and other victim groups) to forced labor under brutal conditions.”(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC) Slave labor/forced labor camps were under harsh conditions. Slave workers had to help build camps, factories, and tunnels. The work was hard and they were barely given any food so they were starving. Even though the slave labor was awful, it gave some hope of survival because as long as they could work they would not be killed. However, the life expectancy of a slave worker was no more than six months. Certain prisoners were to be “annihilated through work” or worked to death. In one instance they would have to carry heavy boulders up stone quarries until they collapsed. This labor was mortifying and pointless. In Holocaust Memorial Day Trust states “The earliest concentration camps forced their prisoners to undertake pointless physical activity like stone breaking” (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.) All slave labor turned into “annihilation through work” since the slaves were not provided enough food, medicine, clothes, or equipment. Slave labor was a major atrocity in

Josef Mengele led the medical experiments, he lived from 1911-79. Mengele was the chief perpetrator of these experiments, he was a German physician who began work at Auschwitz in 1943. In History.com it states about Auschwitz, “Mengele, who came to be known as the “Angel of Death,” performed a range of experiments on detainees.”(History.com Editors) Mengele was known as this because he painfully injected a serum into the eyeballs of numerous children to examine eye color. Also, he gave twins chloroform injections into their hearts to see if their deaths would occur simultaneously and in the same way. On the other hand, according to “NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS” in The Holocaust Encyclopedia, there were three main types of experiments, experiments looking at how military soldiers can survive, tests on medications and therapies, and experiments to further the racial and ideological goals of the Nazis, “Experiments centered around three topics: survival of military personnel, testing of drugs and treatments, and the advancement of Nazi racial and ideological goals.” Experiments that looked at how military soldiers can survive, included maximum altitude and freezing experiments. German scientists and physicians tested prisoners to see what the maximum altitude was for crews that needed to parachute from damaged aircraft. Also, these scientists and physicians tested for an effective treatment for