Imagine, everyday waking to no food or water, the stench of dead bodies all around you, and not even knowing where your family was, or if they were even alive. Well this is how it was for 11 dreadful years. The holocaust. Adolf Hitler was in power 1934-1945 before and during World War II in Germany. Hitler’s main priority was to establish one superior race and eliminate the others. Although he had brown hair and brown eyes, he wanted the world to be occupied by only people with blonde hair and blue eyes. He made it clear that he was going to do whatever needed to be done for this to happen, and that’s how concentration camps evolved.
One of the three main camps was the labor camp. Men, women, and older children were forced to work hard labor of all sorts depending on their skills. They were given a variety of exhausting jobs. Some of the tasks involved something as simple as carrying bricks from one place to another, yet other were as tough as being a part in inhumane experiments. Working from dawn to dust, they were often worked literally to death.
Another brutal type of camp was the prisoner of war (POW) camp. The Germans had established many POW camps throughout the western allied countries. The causes of them being captured was for obvious reasons. First of all since the Germans were at war with them, it would be one less enemy to kill. The bigger reason was so they could get valuable information from them, such as where their camps were located and where ammunition was located. The POW’s were also treated very badly, only getting one small meal a day, given hard labor, and sometimes even tortured to death. Even tho there was no way to escape death anyway, considering they would have been sent to the extermination camps afterwards and put in the gas chambers.
Last, but definitely not least, were the extermination camps. Systematically killing millions, these camps were set up to kill mostly jews but also the mentally retarded, physically impaired, the elderly, and people belonging to other ethnic groups. These camps not only tricked innocent men, women, and children into believing they were taking a shower when they were really being led into a gas chamber and given false hope of humanity. They also performed various medical experiments on them which was very painful. Very rare and difficult, but possible, some people managed to escape, but most all would be killed on the spot if found trying to escape. For this reason, they thought they had a better chance of survival staying there and enduring the pain and suffering.
As you can see, the holocaust was a very difficult time for many. It also continues to be a difficult time for the family members who are still alive. Killing an estimated 6,000,000 just because they were different goes against the saying “all men are created equally.” (I just want to have one last REALLY good sentence but im having trouble thinking of one…)
