ExtErmiinAtiOn & COncEntrAtiiOn cAmpS

Concentration and Extermination Camps

« Locate the following camps in a map and explain if they are concentration or extermination camps:

« Bergen- Belzen: Concentration camp
« Auschwittz: Concentration and Extermination camp
« Dachau: Concentration Camp
« Treblinka: Extermination Camp
« Buchenwald: Concentration Camp

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holocamp.html

NiiGht'S SUmmAry*

Pg. 23-46
The train advanced for days and Jews couldn’t even sit. They were all tired, hungry and thirsty, but they didn’t know where they were taken so that was so much important. During that time a woman called Mrs. Schächter, kept on shouting day and night, she said she saw flames and fire, but when Jews went to the windows there was nothing but darkness.
Ellie thought he would be shouting like the woman in just few more days.
After a long trip they arrived Auschwitz, someone told that was their final destination. They were told there was job for everyone, food and family, God was again with them, or at least they believed so.
The train moved again and after some Mrs. Schächter began shouting, Jews saw through the window and after some false alarms it was true. There was fire rising form a tall chimney and a second after they were taken out from the train. They arrived Birkenau around midnight.
They were told to separate men from women, this was the last moment Ellie saw his mother and his little sister, but he didn’t even notice… he was shaking, he was afraid of the next step.
Someone told him and his father to lie about their ages, he “was” 18 years old and his father was 40.
They passed the first step, they were not sent to the crematoria, they were still useful for the Nazis, Ellie thought of running into the electrified barbed wire, but he had to stay with his father, he was all the family left for him. They were alive but in some way they feel sad and with no reason to celebrate they were not dead.
Ellie describes how the camp looked, he won’t forget that night until the day he stop breathing, all the images in his head were repulsive, he no longer believed in innocence, not even in dreams or hope.
The next day the SS officers looked for strong men, they were lucky for not being chosen; otherwise they would have seen all their mates dying in the chimney. They were sent to the barber, they were forced to take out their clothes. Then some friends met each other and they started crying, I don’t know if they were because of finding the others alive or because Death was living with them.
Next day, they wake up early and Kapos ordered them to run naked as the day before, then a hot shower came and finally they were given new clothes, better called uniforms, all of them were of different sizes so they began to exchange clothes. They were transferred to different barracks and finally they got out of the concentration camp, a great day of May, the sun was shining and they were walking to Auschwitz. The entrance had an inscription: Work makes you free.
The first impression about the new camp was not that bad, they got some black coffee and soup, new clothes and at least, the first night they got their first human words until all this mess began, the man in charge told them good and helping words. They ate the same always, but that was not a problem, the also took naps.
One day, some men tattooed numbers in on Ellie’s left arm, his new name was A-7713, he had no other name, after that they had a roll call, as always.
Days went by, and then someone started to ask for Wiesel from Sighet, Ellie’s father. Later they realized the man who was asking was their relative, Reizel’s husband. Reizel was the sister of Ellie’s mother. He asked for Reizel, and Ellie had to lie, he saw his relative’s face and he couldn’t say the truth, he said Reizel and the children were ok, but Ellie’s mother hadn’t received any letter from her sister since 1940.
After a long time, their relative decided to go for news and they didn’t see him again. Sometimes Ellie asked himself where might be his mother and his sister, his dad tried to tell him they were ok, they pretended to believe so but at the end they knew that couldn’t be true.
They left too, after few some days, they were sent to a new camp: Buna.

Ghettos
« What’s a ghetto?
The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to live. Various authorities, ranging from local municipal authorities to the Austrian Emperor Charles V, ordered the creation of other ghettos for Jews in Frankfurt, Rome, Prague, and other cities in the 16th and 17th centuries.
During World War II, ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in which the Germans concentrated the municipal and sometimes regional Jewish population and forced them to live under miserable conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
The Germans regarded the establishment of ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options to realize the goal of removing the Jewish population. In many places ghettoization lasted a relatively short time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years. With the implementation of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them, usually by train, to killing centers where they were murdered. German SS and police authorities deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.
There were three types of ghettos: closed ghettos, open ghettos, and destruction ghettos.
The Germans ordered Jews residing in ghettos to wear identifying badges or armbands and also required many Jews to perform forced labor for the German Reich. Daily life in the ghettos was administered by Nazi-appointed Jewish councils (Judenraete). A ghetto police force enforced the orders of the German authorities and the ordinances of the Jewish councils, including the facilitation of deportations to killing centers. Jewish police officials, like Jewish council members, served at the whim of the German authorities. The Germans did not hesitate to kill Jewish policemen who were perceived to have failed to carry out orders.
Jews responded to the ghetto restrictions with a variety of resistance efforts. Ghetto residents frequently engaged in so-called illegal activities, such as smuggling food, medicine, weapons or intelligence across the ghetto walls, often without the knowledge or approval of the Jewish councils. Some Jewish councils and some individual council members tolerated or encouraged the illicit trade because the goods were necessary to keep ghetto residents alive. Although the Germans generally demonstrated little concern in principle about religious worship, attendance at cultural events, or participation in youth movements inside the ghetto walls, they often perceived a “security threat” in any social gathering and would move ruthlessly to incarcerate or kill perceived ringleaders and participants. The Germans generally forbade any form of consistent schooling or education.
During the Holocaust, ghettos were a central step in the Nazi process of control, dehumanization, and mass murder of the Jews.

« Where did the Nazi Army settle those ghettos?
The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone. German occupation authorities established the first ghetto in Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski in October 1939.

The largest ghetto in Poland was the Warsaw ghetto, where over 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.

In some ghettos, members of Jewish resistance movements staged armed uprisings. The largest of these was the Warsaw ghetto uprising in spring 1943. There were also violent revolts in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and several smaller ghettos. In August 1944, German SS and police completed the destruction of the last major ghetto, in Lodz.

« What’s the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp?

Concentration camps: Initially these were designed to incarcerate political prisoners (enemies of the regime), criminals and security risks. While conditions were, predictably, horrible in these camps, and while the death rates were high, there is no evidence that they were used for extermination purposes. By the late 1930s there were literally hundreds of camps scattered throughout Germany and with the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Holland and France, camps were established throughout the Reich. The death rates were so high, from malnutrition, typhus and exhaustion that the disposal of corpses became a serious problem.

Extermination camps: These camps were built primarily or exclusively for mass murder. From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of detention facilities to imprison and eliminate so-called "enemies of the state." Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of "asocial" or socially deviant behavior. These facilities were called “concentration camps” because those imprisoned there were physically “concentrated” in one location.



http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005059
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005144

Elie Wiesel

He was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania. During the World War II, his family and he were sent to the German concentration camps where his parents and little sister died.
In his childhood, he spent a lot of time talking with Moshe in the synagogue.
In 1942, Elie hade his bar mitzvah and he continued studying the Bible and other Jewish books, he felt really attracted to Kabbalah. He learned a little bit about astrology, parapsychology, hypnotism and magic.
He and his two older sisters survived, they were freed from Buchenwald in 1945. He got in touch with them in 1947.
He was taken to Paris, he studied at the Sorbonne and he became a journalist, he is also a novelist and a Nobel Prize winner.
He lives in New York City, and he is a United States citizen.
A turning point in Wiesel’s life came when he interviewed the Catholic writer Fancois Mauriac. During the interview, everything Mauriac said seemed to relate to Jesus. Finally, Wiesel burst out that while Christians love to talk about the suffering of Jesus, "…ten years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more, than Christ on the cross. And we don’t speak about them."2 Wiesel ran from the room, but Mauriac followed him, asked Wiesel about his experiences and advised him to write them down.
In 1958, he published his first book “La Nuit”, a literary work about his experience in the concentration camps and how he lost everything, even the innocence. He was not ready to publicize his experiences, however, and promised himself to wait 10 years before writing them down in detail. He has written around thirty books, in many of his lectures he has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered as him.
In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize as “a messenger to mankind,” and “a human being dedicated to humanity.” He explained his actions by saying the whole world knew what was happening in the concentration camps, but did nothing.

He has dedicated his life to help persons who have suffered of racism and the ones who survived the Holocaust.In 1969, Wiesel married Marion Erster Rose, a divorced woman from Austria. In 1972, they had a son who they named Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, after Wiesel’s father.


nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-bio.html

Night

BAckgrOUnd

There are so many reasons for the Holocaust, but there’s not one single good answer to explain why this tragedy happened, the Holocaust was something terrifying!!! It would have never existed, so much pain, so much racism, someone who is capable to burn people alive is not human. Hitler must be burning in hell because of his acts, I hope so.
The main reasons are: racism, Germany’s humiliation following the Treaty of Versailles, hard economic times, international indifference and the great manipulative propaganda of Hitler’s Nazi Regime.

When Hitler came to have power in Germany he started giving speeches about the “inferior races” such as the Jews. He was supported by many politicians of that moment and that was the beginning of a great massacre.
They began with the media, anyone or anything who was opposing to the Nazi’s Rules were removed, like television, newspapers, radio and books. They burned a lot of books, mainly the one which were written by Jews, like Einstein.
According to Hitler, Jews were blamed of being the cause of the Germany’s problems, like economy.
Jews began to be treated well after the World War I, they had permission to work, to participate in any kind of activities, to have their own business, even they won a lot Nobel Prices, and fourteen of thirty eight prices were won by Jews.
Then, something changed, they were proclaimed as second-class citizens.
They were segregated from other people, Nazis destroyed their buildings, synagogues and they were not able to have business anymore. Jews were arrested every day, even women and children with no reason, just hate.
Jews were not the only race who was hated by the Nazis, black people, gypsies, scientists [who had the idea of changing the world in a better place], Jehovah’s witnesses and homosexual people were also burned and killed.
Many of them were put in concentration camps or prisons.
Jews tried to escape to other countries, they asked to be saved, but countries just made the escape more difficult, many of them made them harder to go out of Europe. Most of them weren’t able to get a visa.
The entire world criticized Germany because of Jew’s killing but they didn’t do anything to solve the problem.

Night

Places quoted in the book

▀ Sighet, Transylvania

▀ Birkenau, Poland

Night's Summary

Night’s summary (pp. 3-22)

The story begins with a boy telling us about a man, this man is called Moishe the Beadle. He was a poor man who didn’t like to be helped by the other Jews.
He liked to be alone and he was a good prayer, he knew how to pray, he prayed because he enjoyed asking God real questions.
This child had a family: mother, father and two sisters. He was the third and the only son. He wanted to study Kabbalah but his father tried to convince him of not doing that until he’s an adult. One day, he found Moishe and they started talking, they enjoyed wasting their evening talking about religion, Moishe decided to teach the boy the great and difficult Kabbalah.
One evening, all the foreign Jews were transported to another place, between all of them there was Moishe, and the days were sad for the boy, then it was all normal again. After a long time Moishe returned to Sighet, and tried to tell Jews that the situation in Europe was really bad, that his trip was a lie and that the ones who were in charge of his transportation let them die somewhere. Nobody believed him, everyone thought he had lost his mind, even the boy thought he was mad, nobody wanted to believe him, because it was the twentieth century, they thought those things were impossible to happen in a world like ours.
The days passed by and good news were present in Sighet, Germany was not entering in their territory; in less than 3 days German Army made their appearance.
Germans were kind with the Jews, everyone who was afraid, started to believe that German people was innocent, that they were not bad, Moishe was lying again. Then, they were forced to wear the yellow star, it was not lethal, that’s what they thought at the moment.
After that, ghettos were created and the boy and his family were sent to the biggest one, they were afraid again, but the days passed by and they recovered hope, the ghettos weren’t that bad, it was like a little city, they all know each other and they can be with their family. Everything was ok when something bad happened, a Jew policeman was called and after being nervous almost all the night, he came back, according to him they were going somewhere else, a journey.
They cannot take valuable objects with them, and they can just have some belongings, the family was scared but no one wanted to show any kind of weakness, even the girls were really strong, crying was not enough for the Germans.
Next day, all the Jews were forced to go out and stand in the ground with the sun, thirsty and tired some Jews were taken in the train, some others were staying at home until the next day.
Finally, the family was taken into the train, there were eighty persons by car, no one could escape from there, and if they tried to they would be shot.
The train started to walk to their cruel destiny.