Auschwitz Camp

The gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camps represent the ultimate physical manifestation and implementation of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution”. These death traps fatally gassed close to a million Jews, hundreds of thousands of Poles (Polish individuals), Gypsies and others that were deemed undesirable. Their sole purpose – to commit mass murder – was accomplished with brutal efficiency; their utilitarian design stemming from a pressing “need” to systematically dispose of large quantities of Jews.

The gas chambers do not so much shock the conscience with menacing artifacts, as would a torture chamber’s chains, straps and crude metal tools, but rather disturb the mind with their coldly indifferent operation. The buildings that housed the gas chambers were built by a military bureaucracy and teams of civil engineers, not maniacal mobs or depraved dungeon keepers. There was no passion, no virulent hate evident in their construction, there was only a focused desire to accomplish the task at hand. It is this very lack of emotion that alienates our humanity, that defies our understanding. How could so many people, so many lives be so methodically, yet casually extinguished?

The birth of the gas chambers began in the 1920′s with the fabrication of a new and more effective cyanide-based insecticide, Zyklon B. This product, packaged in innocuous looking metal canisters, was never meant to be used as an accessory to murder. The Nazis first experimented with the insecticide as a means to induce death when they gassed 250 Gypsy children in 1940. The following year, similar experiments were conducted at Auschwitz; 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners became the first gassing victims at the camp. The successful trials – and necessity – spurred the building of two dedicated gas chambers and the conversion of an additional building for the same purpose.

The gas chambers would continue to operate at Auschwitz until the advance of the Red Army in 1944 forced the the SS to demolish the buildings. The structures that housed these gas chambers are were rebuilt and the entire camp in Auschwitz, Poland now serves as a Holocaust memorial and museum.

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Trying to describe an average day in the life of a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp would be like trying to describe an average day in hell. Each day brought about new horrors for the unfortunate victims of the Holocaust interred in this Nazi operated extermination camp. Just under one million Jews were killed over the five year history of Auschwitz.

The “lucky” few who weren’t immediately sent to the gas chambers after being shipped to the concentration camp could expect a life of degradation and random punishment. Barracks were overcrowded with not enough beds to house the prisoners. Only the luckiest would receive blankets to keep warm during the cold Polish nights. Days were spent working the prisoners to exhaustion in factories providing materials for the war effort or doing pointless labors such as digging ditches. The unluckiest would have to deal with the remains of their fallen friends, family, and prison mates. Even amongst the prisoners, these prisoners were often reviled although they had little choice in the matter.

Every day, the victims of Nazi cruelty would see their peers taken in front of firing squads, taken away for medical experimentation, starved, beaten, and otherwise tortured. The understanding that it was only a matter of time loomed large in the thoughts of every prisoner. Until Soviet forces freed the prisoners in 1945, it seemed there was no hope of rescue as Allied forces ignored the reality of the situation.

Although the camp conditions were specifically designed to break the spirits of its inhabitants, the fighting spirit of the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and Russians housed within the walls of Auschwitz did not falter. Over five years, nearly 300 individual prisoners escaped. Unfortunately, Nazis would terrorize inmates by publicly starving ten prisoners for each escaped prisoner. Every prisoner at Auschwitz had to face the hard reality that every moment could be their last and no amount of good behavior or cooperation could prevent an arbitrary punishment.

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