Understanding The Lifestyle in The Nazi Concentration Camps

Do you have memories of days at summer camp? Holocaust prisoners had memories from camp too, but not the kind you want to remember with your best friend the next summer. The Holocaust lasted from 1939 to 1945. During that time period, Nazi Germany targeted Jews and other outcasts including Romas or gypsies, mentally and physically disabled and homosexuals. Many of these people were put into concentration camps or death camps built by the Nazis in Poland. In Auschwitz, the largest of Nazi concentration camps, daily life included work, pain, misery and death.

The largest of Nazi Concentration camps, Auschwitz was the main killing center during the Holocaust. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment (Concentration Camps 1933-1939). Auschwitz was a network of concentration camps built and operated in Poland by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the largest of German camps consisting of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II – Birkenau (death camp), Auschwitz III – Monowitz (also known as Bena, a labor camp), and 45 smaller camps (Auschwitz Concentration Camp). One million three hundred Jews, two hundred eighty thousand Poles, forty thousand gypsies and twenty thousand Soviet Prisoners of War were sent to Auschwitz where Nazis killed them (Auschwitz; A Nazi Concentration Camp). Most all children, women with children, all the elderly and all those who appeared weak to the camp doctor were sent to be killed (Auschwitz Concentration Camp). Children were often killed upon arrival to Auschwitz. Children who were born in the camp were generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, to cut costs, children were placed directly into ovens or open burning pits (Auschwitz, Nazi Death Camps).

Daily life for Holocaust prisoners started early in the morning and was filled with agonizing work. The day began at 4:30 a.m. with roll call. The Kommandos (workers) walked to their place of work. The working day lasted twelve hours in the summer and a little less in the winter. The prisoners were allowed no rest periods during the day. After work, there was a mandatory roll call. If a prisoner was missing, the rest waited for him to show up or be found. After evening roll call, punishments were distributed and prisoners were allowed to retire to their blocks (sleeping quarters) to receive bread rations and water. Curfew was two to three hours later. The prisoners slept in long rows of wooden bunks, lying in and on their clothes and shoes, so they wouldn’t be stolen (Auschwitz Concentration Camp). When punishment was distributed, it was usually cruel and unusual. The method used to make prisoners obedient was brutal beating. Children were shown no mercy in camps; they were starved, dirty, and brutalized by guards (Saldinger 57). So called camp “doctors” including the notorious Josef Mengele, tortured Jewish, Gypsy and many other children by putting them into pressure chambers, testing them with drugs, castrated them, frozen them to death and exposed them to other traumas (Auschwitz, Nazi Death Camps).

Everyday, prisoners were put to work in hazardous ad painful conditions. Prisoners had jobs like building additions to the camp, laying roads, digging drainage ditches, making chemicals and guns that the Nazis used to kill other prisoners and built industrial plants (Auschwitz; A Nazi Concentration Camp). Prisoners also worked in the kitchens, food supply warehouses, clothing depositories, laundries, camp administrative offices, and bath houses. Prisoners could also be what was known as Sonderkommando. Sonderkommandos were the work team that hauled the dead from the gas chambers to crematoriums. Sonderkommandos hooked the crook of their cane around victims’ necks and pulled to untangle the “human web” (2, 57). “I have never seen anything like that. I was so horrified that I felt I could not continue working there. So I took a piece of glass and cut my arm, hoping in death to free myself from that fate.” – Shlomo Dragon, Sonderkommando. Sonderkommandos had better living conditions then other Auschwitz prisoners. They had decent food, slept on straw mattresses and could wear normal clothes. “Relatively speaking we lacked nothing; we had access to reasonable food, clothing and accommodations.” – Yosef Sackar, Greek Jewish Sonderkommando. Sonderkommandos were divided into several sub categories, each with a specific task. Some greeted new arrivals, telling them they were going to be disinfected and showered. They were obliged to lie or they died. These were the only Sonderkommandos to have contact with live prisoners. Other teams extracted gold teeth and removed clothes and other valuables after gassing. Then another team took the corpses to the crematoria for final disposal (Auschwitz, Sonderkommando).

Auschwitz may have been the main killing center during the Holocaust, but all death camps and concentration camps killed prisoners. In September of 1941, 850 malnourished and ill prisoners were killed in an experimental gassing at Auschwitz (Auschwitz; Nazi Death Camps). Prisoners were then regularly sent to gas chambers and killed with Zyklon-B gas. It takes about 10 minutes to kill 2,000 to 3,000 people in the gas chambers. Some prisoners were shot in the middle of the camp, and were then burned in nearby ditches. To show what happened if prisoners didn’t work hard or fast enough, the guards hung other prisoners in front of them. If prisoners were too weak, they were taken to the hospital to be killed by lethal injection if they weren’t expected to recover. Prisoners were also taken to bathhouses and killed with chemicals. Once, so many prisoners were dying that the guards could not keep up with the amount of bodies that needed to be incinerated, that they started throwing bodies in enormous piles outside and burned them in clear view of other prisoners (Auschwitz; A Nazi Concentration Camp).

Daily life included long work days and mass killing in Nazi concentration camps. The main killing center during the Holocaust was Auschwitz, the largest of Nazi Germany concentration camps. Daily life for prisoners was agonizing and full of work. Prisoners were put to work in hazardous conditions. Prisoners were killed in every camp across Poland. Remembering days in Nazi concentration camps was nothing in comparison to remembering days full of fun and games from your favorite summer camp.

Works Cited

1. Auschwitz; A Nazi Concentration Camp. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz
2. Auschwitz Concentration Camp. (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library.
3. Auschwitz, Nazi Death Camps. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz-nazi-death-camp
4. Concentration Camps 1933-1939. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camps-1933-1939
5. Saldinger, A. (2001). The Holocaust. ABDO Publishing.
6. Sonderkommando. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
7. Zyklon B. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.