auschwitz research paper-final
TRANSCRIPT
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Rachael Raymond
Mr. Neuburger
English Comp 129-101
12 April 2011
Research Paper
Auschwitz
The Holocaust was a horrific time period where unthinkable crimes were committed
against the Jews, Gypsies, and other racial groups. No one would have imagined the thousands of
helpless people that were massacred during Hitler's reign. Jews' silent pleas and prayers would be
unheard until the liberation day came. In the mean time, thousands of Jews and other racial
groups were sent from ghettos to concentration camps, one of them being Auschwitz. There were
three death camps located at Auschwitz. Several forms of extermination came about over time to
speed up the killing process. Life at a death camp was either cut short or they squeezed every
drop of life out of you. On top of all this, experiments on dwarfs, twins, and other misfits were
carried out by Joseph Mengele.
Before the Nazis started extensively shuffling Jews into ghettos, political investigations
took place. Supposedly everyone was jealous of the Jews. Many of them had prosperous
businesses. According to Alfred Caro, Nazis began breaking into houses and stealing items for
political investigation. To continue their investigation, one member from a household had to
report to Berlin. Unable to hide any longer, Alfred Caro went to save his family members from
any harm. He stayed in Berlin for two days before being transported to the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp. No investigation ever took place. At the camp they were kicked, degraded,
and lucky to be alive. They had nothing and the Nazis "did everything to make life misery,"
Closed off GhettoSource: http://bit.ly/i3Gqq2
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stated by Alfred Caro. Surprisingly enough, he was only at the camp for six weeks before they
let them leave. Some people from Sachsenhausen were later transferred to Auschwitz. While
Alfred Caro was taken for political investigation, Joseph Morton experienced a ghetto firsthand.
According to Joseph Morton, "The Nazis spared no time in rounding up all the Jews. They
started putting Jews in a ghetto on a Wednesday and arrived on a Friday." As a child, Joseph
Morton was put in a ghetto, although he does not recall its name. Approximately 250,000 Jews
were in a ghetto starting in 1940. Gypsies were also put into a separate ghetto. Upon arrival,
there were three or four dead guys hanging. This set the example of what would happen to you if
you did not listen and what the Nazis were capable of. Once they rounded up the majority of
Jews, the ghetto was closed off with wired walls. People
were taken frequently from the ghetto to work on the
crematories for Auschwitz or to be tortured just for being
a Jew. Some form of torture involved sticking Jews
heads into barrels of crap. Other Jews were assigned as
police officers and were to enforce the laws inside a
ghetto. Joseph Morton's dad was a Jewish police officer. It was interesting that the Jews
themselves were in charge of each other instead of the SS guards. Besides being caged up like
animals, they were fed poorly. As stated by Joseph Morton, "There was no problem with getting
a Jew to work for the Nazis. What kind of rules could they have, everybody was interested to
have a meal in front of them, to have something to eat." In September 1944, trucks started
blocking off streets and taking Jews away to work. According to Mr. Morton, "Fifty or sixty
Jews were loaded into each kettle car." When the cars arrived to the destination, no one knew
what to expect. They were told to go right or left, not knowing what each side meant. Morton
Original Gas ChamberSource: http://bit.ly/hBW76L
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was on the right side and one of the lucky ones. They were told to undress and put into striped
uniforms. At night, the SS guards would go around hitting them to see if they were hiding gold
or diamonds. Around the same time, Auschwitz was sending Jews to other concentration camps
to work. Joseph and the remaining portion of his family were checked out to see if they could
work and were shipped off to Germany. They spent four years in a ghetto and could not stand
two weeks in Auschwitz. Joseph replied, "We wanted to get out of there as soon as possible."
Auschwitz was comprised of three death camps. In May 1940, Auschwitz I was built and
equipped with a gas chamber and crematorium to start eliminating small groups. This is where
medical experiments by Joseph Mengele took place. Auschwitz II, also called Auschwitz-
Birkenau, came about in the early part of the year in 1942. This camp was designed solely for
killing only. There were four main crematoriums and several gas chambers surrounded by
electrical barbed-wire fencing. In October 1942, the last Auschwitz death camp was built.
Auschwitz-Monowitz, Auschwitz III, housed prisoners assigned to work at Buna where they
made rubber and fuel. There were forty-five sub camps under this factory. In July 1944, around
426,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Approximately 320,000 of them were sent to the gas
chamber at Auschwitz II and 110,000 were used for labor ("Auschwitz", par. 12). Altogether, 1.1
million Jews were deported to Auschwitz and at least 960,000 Jews were murdered
("Auschwitz", par. 13 & 15).
Crystalline Hydrogen Cyanide gas, otherwise known as
Zyklon B, was used as the major extermination method.
Before Zyklon B came about, the Nazis first form of
execution was the firing squad. A line was formed near
a huge pit and one by one, each prisoner was shot. This
Tattooed Identification NumberSource: http://bit.ly/icQBWj
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proved time consuming, so they moved onto other torturous and easier methods. Crematories
were the next stage. Smoke hung over the camp like a thick blanket with the smell of burning
flesh filling the air. At one point, the Jews working at one of the crematoriums managed to blow
one up, slowing down the killing process for a short time. Needless to say, everyone running that
crematorium was gassed. No matter how many more Jews were killed with this method, Hitler
was not pleased. Zyklon B's purpose was to kill dozens of people in a small time frame. This
insecticide was used on prisoners in Auschwitz I in Block 11 on September 3, 1941 for
experimentation ("Auschwitz: Chronology", par. 4). With the success of Zyklon B, it was
decided that on February 15, 1942 the SS camp authorities would kill all of those who arrived
with this insecticide ("Auschwitz: Chronology", par. 6). The Nazis accomplished this by making
it look like the Jews were going to take showers. They even had shower heads in there so no one
became suspicious and would be able to revolt before entering into their doom. Once in the small
confined cubicle, Zyklon B was the ultimate weapon.
Confusion spreads like a virus once those kettle car doors
slid open. Men, women, and children were ripped apart and
ordered to go to the left or right side. No one knew what was
going to happen to them until it was too late. The few lucky
people that survived round one of the gas chambers had an
identification number tattooed on their arm. Everyone sent to
the chambers were told to undress and shoved in a so called "shower," awaiting their fate.
According to the article, Testimony on the gassing of Auschwitz, it took five to seven minutes
for the gas to kill each and every one of them (par. 3). Once everybody had the life sucked out of
them, the SS guards took their bodies out of the cells, so they could scavenge out any gold teeth
The Ovitz Family of DwarfsSource: http://bit.ly/eh0UiU
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and dentures the victims had. Afterwards, they were sent to crematories or large burning pits.
The ones that lived were held in inhumane conditions and did back breaking labor until they
died. A prisoner's day consisted of waking up early for roll call, working, waiting in a line for
food and evening roll call (Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2). During roll call you were required to stand
for hours until everyone was accounted for. Groups of Jews kept rotating, replacing old and worn
out laborers. A normal life expectancy was only a couple of weeks. By August 1944 there were
105,168 prisoners in Auschwitz and was killing around 6,000 people every day (Auschwitz-
Birkenau, 3).
Joseph Mengele was a SS physician and captain at the Auschwitz killing centers
beginning on May 30, 1943. He conducted experiments on hundreds of people with disabilities,
such as dwarfs, identical and fraternal twins. He was fascinated with their genetics that were
associated with various diseases. Another group of people he was interested in were
heterochromias. These people had different eye colors. Mengele was hoping this was the start of
his medical career. He had thirty physicians at his hand for all his experiments. Eva Mozes Kor
and her twin sister Miriam were one of Mengele's two guinea pigs. "The Nazis made me feel like
I was nothing more than a mass of cells, a piece of meat" (Kor, par. 1). They were taken three
times a week to a room, so that Joseph Mengele could measure their bodies. "A minimum of two
blood vials were taken from their arms. Each week they were given fifteen injection which
contained chemicals that are still not identified to this day" (Kor, par. 5). Mengele wanted to see
how much someone can lose and still had the will power to live. Another family Joseph Mengele
experimented on was the Ovitz. The Ovitz family was a
family of twelve who lived in Northern Romania. What
made them so special to Joseph Mengele was that five of
Joseph Mengele“Angel of Death”
Source: http://bit.ly/gQoP19
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them were dwarfs. Upon arriving at the selection process, the Ovitz family was immediately split
up. The other seven claiming family members convinced him that they were related to the
dwarfs. Sparks were flying in Mengele's head as he realized he could compare them for one of
his experiments. This family would be added to his 'human zoo' collection. Since Mengele did
not want the dwarfs to be trampled, the family was given their own living quarters. They enjoyed
some pleasures, such as being able to keep their original clothes and having individual fleece
blankets. Some of the first tests were done on their baby Shimshon Ovitz. They tested the baby's
blood plasma because it supposedly contained all of their genetic traits. Stated in the article
Mengele and the Family of Dwarfs, "other tests on the family members included extracting bone
marrow, putting drops into their eyes that would leave them blind for a certain amount of time,
and dropping boiling or freezing water into their ears" (par. 7). When he was not consumed in his
experiments, he was on the ramp determining who was going to be saved for labor or sent to the
gas chambers. Mengele was given the nickname "Angel of Death" since he decided all of the
prisoners' fate. Joseph Mengele died of a stroke and drowned somewhere
around Bertioga, Brazil, on February 7, 1979 ("Joseph Mengele", par.
13). For all the thousands of people he sent to the gas chambers and
hundred he experimented on, his death was not painful enough.
The Nazis slaughtered thousands of helpless Jews and other racial groups for no apparent
reason. They were monsters capable of inflicting incredible pain and fear into their clueless
victims. Besides being killed, these people were tortured and degraded. They made the last
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moments of their life complete misery. No person should have ever been treated the way the
Nazis were to the Jews. Most of the killing was done at Auschwitz. There were three specific
camps under Auschwitz, each designed for a major purpose. With the new finding of Zyklon B,
the execution rate kept increasing. By the end of the Nazis' reign, a total of 1.1 million Jews were
held at Auschwitz and of that group 960,000 Jews were executed in inhumane ways. We cannot
take back what the Nazis did to several racial groups, but we can make sure we never forget how
many lives were lost and the ultimate sacrifice these people made.
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References
"Auschwitz." Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 6 Jan. 2011.
Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
"Auschwitz-Birkenau." Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs', 2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
"Auschwitz: Chronology." Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 31 Mar. 2011.
Caro, Alfred. "Holocaust Survivor Alfred Caro Testimony." Interview by Robert Cooper.
Anniston. USC Shoah Foundation Institute, 31 July 1997. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.
"Joseph Mengele." Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 6 Jan.
2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
Koren, Yehuda. "MENGELE AND THE FAMILY OF DWARFS." database. History Today,
Feb. 2005. Ebscohost- Academic Search Elite. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
Meadows, Bob, and Lorna Grisby. "From The Flames." database. Time Inc., 15 Dec. 2003.
Ebscohost- Academic Search Elite. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
Morton, Joseph. "Holocaust Survivor Joseph Morton Testimony." Interview by Dan Gelfond.
Mortongrove. USC Shoah Foundation Institute, 4 Aug. 1997. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.
"Testimony on the gassing at Auschwitz." database. Great Neck Publishing, Jan. 2009.
Ebscohost- Academic Search Elite. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
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