concentration camps essays

concentration camps essays During the Holocaust, many labor and mass murder camps were built. Auschwitz and Birkenau were infamous for their heavy labor camps. Other camps also built were solely built for mass murders. At these mass murder camps, some used gas to poison the people. The Belzec concentration camp is an example of one of these camps. It was established in February 1940 and on November 1, 1941, construction began at this death camp. It was opened for only 9 months and is reported that 600,000 people died there. Belzec had the capacity to kill 15,000 a day. There are only two known survivors. The Belzec concentration camps were built on the orders of Hitler that were passed down to Heinrich Himmler. Himmler, in turn, ordered Odilo Globocnik, the SS commissioner occupying Poland, to construct a camp at Belzec. One of the first gas chambers that were built was at Belzec. Deportees from Cracow, Radom, Galicia, Czechoslovakia, Holland, as well as Belzec went there. Christian Wirth, formerly of the Brandenburg euthanasia program, built the gas chamber. His building contained three rectangular rooms, each about thirteen by twenty-six feet, with ceilings just over six feet high. A 240-horsepower engine from a captured Russian tank was installed in a shed just outside, and exhaust fumes were piped into the chambers. Many believed that carbon monoxide was a reliable form of gassing. However, this form of gassing, at the beginning, functioned very inefficiently. A report from a SS colonial concludes this. In it he says, [Sergeant] Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go up...My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and the diesel did not start. The people wait inside the gas chamber. In vain...After 2 hours and 49 minutes-the stopwatch recorded it all-the diesel started...the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were alive, four times 750 in four time...