Auschwitz Essay Research Paper The Nazi camp — страница 3

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process. With such a large amount of prisoners being killed each day, and the crematoriums not doing the job fast enough, Hoess ordered nine gigantic pits dug on a slant. The bodies were thrown into the pits and burned so the fat of the corpses would run down the slopes of the pits and could be used again to help burn the next set of prisoners (Friedrich 73). On January 12, 1945, the Soviet Armies, which had been stationed just outside the camp for more than a week, launched a full attack on Auschwitz. On January 18, the Germans ordered a full evacuation and everything burned. The prisoners were made to get into columns of five outside the camp. The prisoners, Kapos, and SS began their march through Silesia. Even as they tried to escape, the Russians opened fire on the Germans

(Friedrich 74). At the beginning of the march, over 60,000 prisoners started to head toward Gross-Rosen cap, which was a hundred and fifty miles to the west. Soon, they were made to run. Any prisoner who fumbled or fell was shot. One third of the prisoners died along the way (Friedrich 75). Auschwitz was the largest graveyard in human history. The number of Jews killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau is estimated to be over one and a half million men, woman, and children. Best said by Isreal Gutman, “The horrors of Auschwitz have become legendary, and the name itself has passed into international usage as a byword for all that is bestial in humankind.” (Gutman 117). Adelsberger, Lucie. Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story. Boston: N.U.P., 1995. Friedrich, Otto. The Kingdom of

Auschwitz. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Gilbert, Martin. Auschwitz and Allies. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1981. Gutman, Isreal. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan, 1990. Meltzer, Milton. Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry. New York: Oxford, 1990.