Sirri Akaya ELA-Vann 11/17/13

Auschwitz
Auschwitz changed the life of many in horrible ways. The holocaust was a horrible time of history revolving around hate. Auschwitz was a complex of three concentration camps (Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau (second built) Auschwitz-Monowitz.) At least 1.3 million people went though Auschwitz. The Nazis used many different ways to kill the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovahs Witnesses, Homosexuals and the disabled. The way that Shmuel and Bruno died was through a gas chamber, another one of the Nazis weapons. The way they treated the victims was horrible, they were starved worked and abused. Most of the people sent through Auschwitz were worked to death. Victims who were spared immediate death by being selected for labor were systematically stripped of their individual identities. The United States Holocaust Museum says. Some of the inmates worked inside the camps, working in the kitchens. Most of the woman workers sorted piles of shoes, clothes and other belongings that would be shipped back to Germany. Other forced laborers did things outside of the camps like mining coals, or shoveling snow or the roads, or digging tunnels and canals, shoveling rubble and other back-breaking work. Shmuel wouldve been too young to be sent as a forced laborer. Shmuels papa was a worker who had to go on duty outside of the camp. One day his papa left but never came back he had probably been shot or worked to death. In a realistic sense escape from Auschwitz wouldve been impossible, the barbed wire fences

were electrically charged and guards stood at watchtowers. A real boy in the camp wouldnt have been able to sneak pass the soldiers everyday for a year and never get caught.

The living conditions were appalling, horrid and had to be plain dreadful. The inmates didnt have showers or even a bathroom, just buckets. They were living in barracks with about thirty-six wooden bunks. Five to six inmates were squeezed together on one wooden plank. That meant there were around 500 of them all together in a barrack. The barracks had no windows and were not insulated. That meant you were all freezing together or all sweating together. They were always hungry. The small amount of food they were given consisted of watery soup made with rotten vegetables and meat, a few ounces of bread, a bit of margarine, tea, or a bitter drink resembling coffee. says the USHMM. Shmuel was always hungry, and Bruno brought him food every day. He was very skinny too, like all of the other inmates with sunken in eyes. When Bruno goes into the camp he sees many of the skinny people with sunken in eyes. Diseases were also very common. Especially diarrhea, the people who were weak from dehydration, hunger and labor caught many of the contagious diseases. Gas chambers were a very common way of killing off the inmates. The gas chambers could kill many inmates all at one time, which made it even more convenient to the Nazis. The chambers were used especially for the inmates that werent any use to the Nazis. The disabled were killed in gas chambers, most of the children and elderly people were killed in the gas chambers. The children to weak to put to work, the elderly to old and weak and the disabled could have many problems, and they might not listen or understand the soldiers. In Chapter 19 of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Bruno and Shmuel two, nine year old kids were killed in gas

chambers. Innocent people being treated so cruelly. Another thing that the Nazis did to the inmates was perform medical experiments on them. Men, woman, and children were used as the subjects. The reasons for the experiments were to find better ways to treat injured Nazi soldiers or to improve methods of sterilizing people the Nazi felt were inferior. Another reason was to see how much a person could withstand, which ultimately ended in death. Sometimes the experiments organs were removed to be examined further. During the 5 years of Auschwitz existence nearly 1 million Jews were killed, 70,000 and 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, and about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war. In total about 1,110,000 were killed in Auschwitz. When the camps were liberated on January 27, 1945 only approximately a few thousands of inmates were alive. Hitler gained power and used it to hurt and kill so many people. The Nazi soldiers had power over the inmates, and killed and abused them. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas the Commandant shows power over his own family by moving them over to Out-With then moving them back to Berlin, to get away from the horrors in the camps. He makes the final decisions when it comes to his family. Our world has been impacted by the Holocaust in a negative way; the imprint it made on the world will never fade away.

Citations:
Schwartz, Terese P. "The Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims." Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/NonJewishVictims.html>.

"Auschwitz."Auschwitz. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007718> Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . N.p., 10 June 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189>