Auschwitz, specifically the branch Auschwitz-Birkenau, was the largest of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. A concentration camp was a place where diverse groups of people were imprisoned and slowly eliminated due to intentionally harmful circumstances, making survival unfeasible. A direct extermination center was a place where Jews and other groups of victims were exterminated, through the use of gas chambers. Most of the prisoners who were sent to the Auschwitz complex died in Birkenau. The two perspectives of Auschwitz-Birkenau that I will be analyzing are a diary entry from Helga Weiss, a Holocaust survivor and the other from a website created by the Memorial and Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each source displays a different …show more content…
The manner in which Weiss describes the living conditions within the concentration camps is terrifying. She uses words such as “horrid,” “filthy,” and “awful” to create a mental image in the reader's mind, so they can envision what she went through and the pain she felt. Helga and her mother experience endless nights of hunger and distress, and could not do anything about it. They were helpless. Brought to the camps only for one sole purpose -- to die. Contrarily, the Memorial has a different take on explaining the living conditions within Birkenau. Instead of including the emotional state of the prisoners living in the terrifying conditions, the Memorial explains the physical structure of the camp itself. Stating, “Two types of barracks, brick and wooden, housed prisoners in the second part of the camp, Birkenau.” (Memorial, Para. 4) This website goes into great detail giving explanations, similar to the one above, about the capacity each barrack can hold, the type of material each barrack is made of, and what each barrack contains inside of …show more content…
Although each source is similar in explaining the food that prisoners consumed, however again the way in which The Memorial explains this horrendous place is distant and meaningless. Helga Weiss has so much emotion towards the food that was given. Food was the only thing that kept Weiss and her mother going. Even though the food was not pleasant, the prisoners still ate every single scrap of it because they were starving. She writes, “Each bunk received a pot with scrapings in it. They said that we’re new here so there was no more left for us. I was utterly miserable. If that’s how they’re going to feed us, then it’s the end for us. Although it wasn’t at all edible—cold, thick, and bitter—we forced it down.” (Weiss, Para. 25) No matter how awful the food they were given was, every single prisoner forced it down one way or another. Contrarily, on their website, the Memorial refers to the prisoners as “organisms,” saying “the combination of insufficient nutrition with hard labor contributed to the destruction of the organism”(Memorial, para. 2). That quote indicates how even though this site is German based, the German people are still disturbed about this part of their history. The prisoners were fed the bare minimum. Three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This section of the website goes into explicit detail of the nutritional aspect for the
(pg. 113) For them, food was equivalent to freedom. They fought aggressively like animals for a crumb of bread. It was unfair that prisoners were given a bit of soup or a slice of bread and shot at for being outside on sight .
The reason for this would probably be that the Jewish overwatchers were way more sympathetic than the Germans. The camp was not extremely sanitary, but there was at least plenty of food. This is a big piece of information, because most camps had very little food, sometimes not enough for the prisoners. There wasn’t only the regular barracks in the camp, but instead there were two types of camps, the regular prisoners, and the “permanent” barracks which were for the higher thought of prisoners, mostly the people that were overseeing the camp (“Westerbork”). These people were safe for the most
Each soldier was promised a decent amount of food daily, but sometimes they did not follow through with their proposals. When the rations each soldier were promised would run dry they would resort to eating things they could make with flour such as fire cakes. The men would carry on something awful until their shortages were again replenished. Life was very hard for the soldiers of this time and they experienced many hardships. There were camps all over during the revolutionary war though that experienced the same shortages and some even harsher winters.
The Jews would not get fair rations of soup, and eating the same thing every day and having very little portions is not good for your health. “We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.” They weren’t treated as human beings so they forgot their basic needs to live. In their mind, this was bigger than starvation or death, they were the only men on
The prisoners, “had not eaten for nearly six days except for a few stalks of grass and some potato peels” and as a result, were on the verge of starvation. It can be expected that the prisoners would not think of revenge purely because of their desire to eat. In fact, their desire to eat was so strong that their “first act as free men, was to throw themselves onto the provisions… no thought of revenge… only of bread” (Pg. 115). This scene immaculately portrays how the Jews were robbed of their basic needs, such as sustenance; and as a result, did not think about either their parents or revenge. Furthermore, “even when [they] were no longer hungry, not one of [them] thought of revenge… a few men ran into Weimar to bring back some potatoes and clothes… but still no trace of revenge” Even clothes were robbed from the Jews, showing how even the basic requirements of clothing were stripped from them.
So no animals or people were eating enough food because the camp had to many prisoners so there wasn’t enough food to go around between all of the prisoners. Also the prisoner were “regularly chained” (Center for Prison Reforms). Sometimes they were chained in a closet and they were left there for a long period of time without food and water. If a prisoner was mentally ill, they were “held in the general population with no treatments available to them.” (Center for Prison Reforms).
The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. It was a war fought within the newly born United States of America, between the Confederacy (South) and the Union (North). Jefferson Davis was the president for the Confederacy and Abraham Lincoln was the president for the Union. The southern economy was largely based on slaves and the crops they produced. On the other hand, the northern economy depended on industry.
Lucky prisoners would find food lying around the camps or they would have people in their workplaces sneak them food. At night, prisoners would be given bread and a small piece of meat or cheese. The bread they were given was supposed to last them all night until the morning, so people would try to hide them in their beds, while they were asleep. The small rations were just meant to keep the prisoners alive so they weren’t completely starving. Many thousands of prisoners died from starvation or the illnesses caused by the lack of nutrition.
This was one of the many ways the Nazis dehumanized Jews. The Jews in concentration camps were given only small portions of unsubstantial food. This made the prisoners weak and exhausted, while they were expected to still perform hard labor. “Bread, soup-these were my whole life. I was a body.
Elie Wiesel Wiesel had to overcome many adversities such as death, cruelty, and starvation. These adversities made Elie Wiesel become the man he is today; he is truly a humanitarian. Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania, on September 30th, 1928. He was 15 when he and his family where sent to a camp by the Nazi’s, seperating him and his father from his mother and sisters. His mother and younger sister were murdered, his two older sisters survived; as did he, and his father died shortly after the both of them were sent to Buchenwald.
The picture of the holocaust survivors shows how little they ate. They had to eat as much as possible, though because if the Nazis thought they were weak they would execute them. “Food was scarce, and the daily meal amounted to a piece of bread and what Mandelbaum describes as soup made out of grass.” From the text “A Holocaust Survivor, Spared by Gas Chamber By A Twist Of Fate”. The starvation impacted the prisoners maybe more than anything
Having bread with every meal as a side is a given, having a fire in the fireplace on cold winter nights is considered relaxing; however, bread and fire are not what they were to the men in the concentration camp as they are to us in 2016 in America. Bread was viewed as a meal, sometimes a prize. Fire was viewed as torture, not a way to keep warm. In the book, Night, by Elie Wiesel is a story about a young boy fighting with everything a young boy has to survive in the depths of the Holocaust.
The prison camps were acompanied by about 120 soilders per camp. They were fed but, the camps were not sanitary. Prisoners enjoyed playing sports while at the camp but, soon the camps started to flood with people. Over10,00 people flooded into the salisbury camp. With all of the overflow of men lack of food came.
This was such a tragic time in history and we should all be thankful that our world isn 't like this. The Concentration Camps were made because Hitler hated the jews and wanted to kill all and they were kind of brainwashing them to tell them it is a wonderful place to live. When they were making the camps the Nazis would go around just shooting people for no reason. So Hitler and the Nazis captured the majority of the Jews and put them into these camps saying they should be here and that they deserve to died and it is all their fault.
Daily Life at Concentration Camps Starving, cold, unclothed, sick, and hard working people were all put in concentration camps and treated horribly. The Jewish workers worked hard all day everyday or else they would get killed. The way the Nazi’s treated the Jews was extremely bad, the Jews would not get food, clothes, beds, and other necessities. There were all types of camps that had all kinds of jobs, you were assigned a job and didn 't get to pick a job. The Jews had a very compact schedule, they were busy all day, never any time to waste.