“Life” in the Camps

Camps were originally intended to imprison the people the Nazis most despised. But when World War II began, the camps changed to forced labor and outright murder. By 1942, extermination through work was official policy, and prisoners in all the concentration camps were—quite literally— worked to death.

Early on, gas vans like this one were used to exterminate victims Early on, gas vans like this one were used to exterminate victims. They used poisonous gas and took about half an hour to kill their victims.

Gas chambers: The main method of killing was using Zyklon B. Through a window, guards could watch victims dying and hear their screams.

Cremation Prisoners were forced to bury the corpses or burn them in ovens and bury the remains. Sometimes the ovens broke down or could not keep up with the volume of corpses. In the summer of 1944, when 20,000 people were gassed each day, cremation pits were dug outside.

Killings… Guards often shot prisoners for minor offenses such as disobeying an order or stealing food. If someone escaped, inmates in the camp were killed as punishment to discourage others from attempting to escape.

Toilets or buckets were arranged in long rows so inmates had no privacy. There were no toilet seats, and toilets often did not work, so water overran with feces.

Inmates often did meaningless work which was simply meant to belittle and humiliate the Jewish people.

In this image, a group of women can be seen marching from a concentration camp. Sometimes they were required to do hard work in gravel pits and rock quarries. Again, the work often served no purpose but to further humiliate the captured Jews.

Blood for Trucks? In 1944, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann and Hungarian Jewish activists Joel and Hansi Brand came up with the idea of “blood for trucks”: If the Allies sent the Nazis 10,000 trucks, the Nazis would spare one million Jews and evict them from Europe.

The Allies refused. The didn’t want to supply trucks to the Nazis, and they didn’t want one million Jews.

What should have they done?