Holocaust Research Paper:

An Overview of Hell

Jordan Byrum

Dual Credit College English

Mr. Larry Neuburger

September 10, 2008

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As the nineteen twenties were coming to a close a new decade arose that gave rise to one

of the worst chapters in the history of humanity. It became known as the Holocaust worldwide.

During twelve long, gruesome years, six million Jewish people were killed, along with five

million people who either were homosexual, gypsies, or mentally and physically disabled. One

of the biggest problems the Nazis faced was how to go about killing twelve million people in the

most efficient and expeditious means possible. In addition, it is important to understand the

atrocities faced by those targeted by the Nazi regime. However, it is also important to understand

resistance to the Nazis usually met an instant fate in the form of a bullet to the head. If one was

lucky enough to make it through the killing, they were often placed in ghettos and concentration

camps.

The massacres started when Adolf Hitler came into power, he believed the Jews, gypsies,

disabled people, socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses and homosexuals were inferior to the German

race. Hitler planned to kill as many of these people as he could; he instituted a plan called the

“Final Solution”. This plan included many stages in which he would kill the non-German people.

One of the first things he did was to produce anti-Jewish legislation. Many would boycott buying

from Jewish owned stores. Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) was aimed to isolate Jews

from society and to have them driven out of the country.

To make things go faster they invented mobile killing units, concentration camps, and

ghettos. Mobile killing units were paneled trucks, which had the exhaust pipe reconfigured to

force carbon monoxide gas into sealed places, which would kill those people locked inside.

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website, “Concentration camps

were originally established to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents.”

(Paragraph 5) In order to concentrate the Jews and to maintain the numbers the Nazis created
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ghettos, theses places forced Jews to live in fear everyday of their lives. They never knew when

they would have enough food to go around or when they would be digging their own mass

graves. Often people were deported to killing centers where they would meet their fate.

These tragedies happened in a number of ways, some of which were by shooting and

gassing. The Nazis began gassing operations in which they experimented with fatal gases for the

purpose of mass murders. Mental patients were the first to go when these pitiless experiments

started. When the new people would arrive at the camps they were sent immediately to the

showers, where they were told they would be sanitized. When their hands were raised more

people could fit in, so the Nazis forced them to do this. Some had the most misfortune to be shot

in mass graves they had to dig themselves. These people were required to strip of their garments

and lay face down in the ditch, this was known as “sardine packing”. Shooting soon became the

most widespread form of murder.

After seeing this go on for so long, the Jews started their own resistance. It mainly

consisted of smuggling groceries, medication and weaponry across the walls of the ghettos

without the consent or awareness of the Nazis and Jewish council. Members of the resistance

staged uprisings, the largest of which was at Warsaw ghetto in August of nineteen forty-four. The

rumors of the ghetto residence being deported to the Treblink killing center were strong, so

instead of standing there and doing, nothing a large number of Jews began to attack German

tanks. Since they did not have much, their weapons consisted of stolen hand grenades, molotou

cocktails, and a handful of smuggled arms. Although the Germans were taken aback by the

fierceness of this resistance they were able to bring to an end the major hostility within a couple

of days. It took the superior German forces almost a month before they were able to calm the

ghettos.
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Conditions inside these places were very hard to imagine. Often times the Jews were

packed into cattle cars for ten days at a time with no food or water. By the time they arrived at

the death camps many of them were already dead. These people were thrown to the side and any

survivors were ordered to separate into two lines, men and women. From there they were further

separated into the nearly dead from everybody else. The dieing people were immediately sent to

the gassing chambers to be killed. Those who were strong enough to work were sent to work

camps. This process was called the selection process. From there they each were given individual

identification numbers (tattoos) on their forearm.

Ruth Webber, from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website, can recall

when she was sent to one of these camps when she says “I have seen a lot of dead people around,

all over, and I guess when you see so many, it doesn’t really make that much of an impression.

One of the times in Ostrowiec Lager [camp] I was in the, uh, outhouse, in the bathroom, which

was in the corner of the, uh, uh, area where like it was a big area in the center of the camp, and

then all the barracks were around it, mostly actually on two sides, and the outhouse was at the

corner. And I happened to have gone into the outhouse and, uh, all at once there is a commotion

and everybody is rushed into the barracks, because that’s where they were supposed to go, and,

uh I got stuck in the bathroom. Well, I got up and I looked out of the little window on top, and

what had happened is some people tried to escape, and they were caught. And I guess they were

wounded, and there was some shooting going on, and they got about, I think, four people to dig

graves just outside of the wire fence of the camp. And they brought these, uh, people that tried to

escape, that were, uh, shot already, but they were not dead. And they made the other Jews bury

these people that were not really dead yet, and they were begging not to be buried, that they’re

still alive, that they should do something to kill them. But they didn’t do anything, they just
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buried them alive. And these people had to do it, or else, these poor people who that were been

picked to do it, because otherwise they themselves would have would be in—dead. That was a

very, very traumatic experience. I can still hear them screaming.” (Personal Stories, paragraph 1)

Now that one can understand how horribly these people were treated and the conditions

in which they lived, one can be better related to how they might have felt and the horrors that

these people had to go through everyday. By the end, the Nazis found the most efficient ways to

kill as many people as they could in the least amount of time. In conclusion, even though their

fate would be horrific if they revolted, some had the spirit to stand up and fight back against the

people who made their lives hell everyday. These people were made silent heroes by everybody

who was a prisoner at the time.

Bibliography
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "The Holocaust." Holocaust Encyclopedia.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?ModuleId=10005143 (accessed September 8, 2006).

USHMM. "Nazi Camps." Personal Stories. 1992. United States Holoaust Memorial

Museum. 3 Sept. 2008

<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&moduleid=10005144&mediaid=1209>.

"Final Destination Treblinka." The Holocaust History Project. 5 May 2006. 5 Sept. 2008

<http://www.holocaust-history.org/operation-reinhard/final-destination-treblinka>.