Imagine celebrating your six-year-old birthday with family. Imagine that you’re blowing out your candles on your sixth birthday with family when an unknown man breaks through the door. He yells for you to all go outside. When he asks what’s going on, he shoots at you, Father. You know then to keep quiet. Your family is crammed into a cattle-car with 20 other people, and nobody knows what’s going on. All of you are forced into a strange, unknown building. He tells you that this is the ghetto and anyone who disobeys or leaves will be killed. Although there was little food available, many people perished. Your mother, your brother, and yourself were lucky to survive. After a short time, you become accustomed to the horrendous living conditions and are then forced back on the cattle train. You arrive again at Auschwitz. Your mother and yourself go left while your brother, who is older, goes right. You hear that you will be taking a hot shower. This is the first time you have had a shower in several weeks. Your mother and you enter the shower smiling from ear-to-ear, but never leave.
The word “holocaust” is used to describe mass destruction and slaughter, usually caused by nuclear war or fire. The Holocaust occurred during World War II. It was the time when the Nazi Party of Germany sought to eradicate all minorities. The Nazi Party of Germany targeted minorities for many reasons. During that time, Jews were the main target, but other races, like Poles, Gypsies etc., were also targeted. Over 11 million innocent men and women were killed in the Holocaust. The holocaust was a horrific event that saw many innocent people killed. This included nazi soldiers. They started by taking them out of their homes and putting them into overcrowded Ghettos. Minorities were crammed into overcrowded cattle car with 100 or more people in each one, which was only designed to carry 50. Many people died in the ghettos from starvation or illness. The crowded conditions made it easy for illnesses to spread. It was not uncommon for an individual to become ill and then spread the illness throughout their entire building.
Warsaw Ghetto in Germany was the largest ghetto of the Holocaust. This ghetto consisted of brick walls covered with barbed steel and guards towers. Anyone who was caught trying escape was immediately shot. Over 4,000 Jews were confined by the Nazis to a small area of land in Warsaw. The holocaust saw over 1,000 ghettos. These were of three different types: closed, open, and destruction. There were no walls, fences, or gates in open ghettos. Closed ghettos had walls or fences with barbed steel or bricks around the area. In the destruction-ghettos a barbed wire fence or wall was present for maximum security. The nazis killed most people who entered a destruction Ghetto.
The Nazis would then move them to concentration camps. Over 42,000 concentration camp were built. In some concentration camps, all prisoners were killed immediately upon entering the camp. In some concentration camps, the “fit for duty” people were spared death. The doctor who made the decision was Doctor Josef Mengele. He was also known by the minorities as “The Angel of Death” and was located near the Auschwitz entrance. Auschwitz was by far the largest of all concentration camps. Auschwitz had the highest concentration of people during the Holocaust. Auschwitz is where one out of six Holocaust victims died.
Auschwitz consisted of three sections: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. Auschwitz I was located in Oswiecim in South Poland. The camp was built to accomplish three major goals: to incarcerate Nazism and Germans perceived to be enemies, to provide slave labor for SS-owned building projects, and to act as a killing ground for small groups whose final fate was determined the SS. Auschwitz was run by Dr Mengele, who also ran the medical experimentation.
He operated on pregnant women, twins and everyone else who was in the camp. He concentrated on his own family in order to learn more about hereditary biochemistry. Doctor Mengele used no anesthesia, pain medication or other drugs on the test subjects. The tools he was using were also rarely cleaned. The dirty equipment often caused serious infections in those who survived the surgery. In addition, he kept meticulous records of every experiment he performed. He fled Auschwitz with his reports. He lived in Latin America until he drowned.
