Auschwitz Essay Research Paper Where Their Lives — страница 2

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number of Jews killed in the Final Solution. This claim is invalid. With a few notable exceptions, historians did not take the 4 million number seriously. Additionally, estimates for the number of dead were generally made by the overall European demographics and therefore would not depend on an error in a single camp even if it were made. Both of these points are demonstrated by the conservative estimates of Raul Hilberg who estimates that 1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and that 5.1 million Jews were killed in all. Hilberg first made his estimate in 1961 and reaffirmed it in 1985 with the “revised and definitive” edition of his seminal work, The Destruction of the European Jews. Murder by poison gas took place at several installations in Auschwitz-Birkenau:

On 3 September 1941 a trial gassing was conducted in block 11 [of Auschwitz I]. Later, one room of the base-camp crematorium was equipped as a gas chamber [Krema I in Auschwitz I]. After these trials, in 1942, two abandoned thatch-roofed cottages in a wood at Birkenau were transformed into gas chambers; they were known as “the bunkers.” In the spring of 1943 construction of four modern crematoria [Kremas II-V] was completed on the site of Birkenau itself. Each was divided into three parts: a section for the crematory ovens, a place for prospective victims to undress, and a gas chamber. The bunkers were no longer used except in emergencies. The gas chambers were at first, a place of hope. The Nazis told the people that were led into the chambers that they were to shower in

them so that they could go home clean. The gas chambers second, usually not widely known cause, came into effect here. The people would strip down and put their clothes into another gas room where the bacteria would be killed. The harsh living conditions caused Typhus to spread and the gas was used to get rid of the bacteria, while the chamber next-door had fake shower installations for the innocent. These showerheads had no water flow from them, they were props that added to the idea of showers for the people. The gas chambers were built with incinerators next to them so that after the people were killed, their bodies could be easily burned and disposed of. The smokestacks shed blood day and night while the ash fell upon the streets of the neighboring towns.The amount of

information that is available to write about is enormous. The Auschwitz camp not only dealt with murdering people in gas chambers, but there were other ways for those innocent people to lose their lives. The concentration camps put people to work and they were provided with little food. Many people starved to death or died of other reasons caused by the harsh living conditions. Other times, they would make people dig large burials to bury their own friends and family. There were other digging instances where the soldiers made men dig a grave, and then shoot the gravedigger in the fresh earth that he just uncovered. The men would literally dig their own grave. I feel that digging a grave while knowing that it is meant for you is the hardest way to die, but that is just my opinion

which is affected by my own imagination. Then there were death marches. The soldiers took thousands of people on a long march without food or anything. The purpose of the march was for them to die a horrible death.The Holocaust is remembered as a time when a man tried to exterminate a race . I put the word race in quotations because Judaism is wrongly interpreted as a race, not a religion. Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews, but he failed. However, his concentration camps succeeded in murdering millions of people, and the damage was done.