The Horrors of the Hatred - Concentration Camps

One of the horrors of WW2 came in the form of concentration and extermination camps. There is a clear and very important separation between the two types of camps. The concentration camps were intended to keep prisoners all in one area, forcing them to do hard labor. The health conditions of those in the concentration camps were often ignored so tens of thousands of people died. The extermination camps were very different. As the name suggests, the camps were designed to mass murder those labeled as "degenerate" by the Nazis, particularly Jewish and Roma people. The extermination camps were described as "enthuanasia", killing disabled patients.

Concentration camps were often compared to the prisons of modern society, however, they are very different. One, the Nazi concentration camps were independent of judicial review and they served three main purposes. One, they incarcerated people perceived as “enemies of the state." These people were incarcerated for indefinite amounts of time. Secondly, they murdered individuals or groups of individuals away from the press and public. Lastly, they were used as laborers because Germany was running short of laborers during the war.

Extermination camps served a completely different purpose for the Nazis. They were used to kill and murder mass amounts of German Jewish men, women, and children. When the captured arrive at these camps, some were not killed immediately. They were forced to sort through the other prisoners' belongings and not long after, killed or starved to death or overworked to the point of death. The Nazis used gas chambers, using Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid) as the gas of choice for killing. One of the most notorious extermination camps, Auschwitz, utilized 4 gas chambers as a means of killing. Over the course of the Holocaust, over 3 million people were killed at extermination camps. An estimate shows around 17 million died in the holocaust, 6 million of which were Jews.

Many Jewish people tried escaping to other nations to seek refuge and hide from the Nazis. However, America restricted its immigration policy and so did many other nations such as Britain. Much of the news about the Jewish concentration camps was not taken seriously and in the Bermuda conference, America and Britain barely made an effort to aid in European Jewry. It was only until the allied forces liberated the concentration camps where they witnessed the horrors. The American public was shocked at the discovery and many historians today are struggling with the debate of why the US and other countries denied efforts to save the Jewish people from this mass genocide.

Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response-to-the-holocaust
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camps
https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/types-of-camps/concentration-camps/
https://www.thoughtco.com/concentration-and-death-camps-chart-4081348