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Auschwitz and Buchenwald Auschwitz and Buchenwald were the most terrible concentration camps. They were known under the names the Death Factories, the death conveyors, and the death machines, to mention a few. As any other definition, these are still far from exactness to make the picture complete. In fact, the most monstrous government with its own authorities, hierarchy, value system, economy, governors, executors, victims and heroes was created in Polish Silesia. Less than three thousand people out of more than several million inhabitants managed to survive in Auschwitz. Who were all those people, those created the government of death?
Who were those, who tried to oppose them? The Executors They are hardly known by sight. They had the most ordinary features. They smiled into the photograph object glasses when they were making photos inst the background of murdered people. They wore white coats and uniform that became usual to the European citizens. When they were under arrest, they readily answered questions, and provided detailed answers concerning what they saw and heard.
They explained their participation in mass executions and mockeries by German orders and their desire to be conductive to the blossom of the Third Reich. They simply did their jobs, hard and dirty jobs they were asked for by their honorary Fuhrer. The facts about Auschwitz Auschwitz occupied a territory of 4675 hectares. It consisted of 40 concentration camps. 180 - 250 thousands of prisoners lived in 620 barracks on a permanent basis.
The first prisoners were entered Auschwitz in 1940. No one of 728 inhabitants of Krakow survived. According to rough estimates, 1. 5 - 3. 5 million people were murdered in Auschwitz. About 1. 2 million Jews, 140. 000 Polish, 20. 000 Gypsies, 10. 000 Russians and dozens of thousands people belonging to other nationalities. During one of the Soviet Army's attacks (January 18, 1845) 58. 000 able-bodied prisoners were driven away as captives to Germany. The vast majority of them died in numerous German concentration camps.
On January 27 the First Ukrainian Army under commandment of Marshal Kong released people, who managed to survive. There were less than three thousand people left. The Executors and their Victims Rudolph Ho? Rudolph Ho? served in Data until Himmler offered him to take charge of a new concentration camp near Auschwitz. Rudolph Ho?
eagerly approved the offer. He was the first person who conducted thousands of tests of Cyclone gas on prisoners (Adorno 16). Until the mid- 1941 the prisoners were murdered with carbon monoxide, hydrocyanic acid that was the result of reaction between sulfuric acid and solid cyanide's. However, in summer 1941 Himmler reported to Ho? concerning the final solution for the Jewish question, and Ho? turned the concentration camp into the death factory.
In September 1941 the first group of Soviet prisoners arrived. Ho? used them in capacity of test material for conducting the Cyclone B gas experiments. By the end of 1943 the leaders of the Third Reich appointed Ho? the chief inspector of concentration camps.
In one of the reports Ho? was called the first pioneer in the sector, the author of new ideas and methods. Joseph Kramer Joseph Kramer or the Belsen monster worked under Ho? s commandment about half a year (Adorno 31). He was the head of Auschwitz-II, or Birkenau that was known as the most monstrous concentration camp.
Kramer's wife was proud of her accessories, especially by the handbag made of tattooed human skin. Gas chambers and crematorium furnaces were the subjects of his special attention. Maria Mandel When Maria Mandel was appointed the head of the women concentration camp Birkenau, she was in her 30 s. However, the young woman has an extensive experience of work in concentration camp of Lichtenburg. The colleagues gave high praise to her genius and professionalism. The prisoners called her the monster that sincerely enjoys the process of selection of prisoners (especially children) for gas chambers.
She even took care of one of such children; she liked him, gave him tasty food, and played with him. However, when she got bored with him, she immediately put him in the list of candidates to the gas chambers. It was Mandel, who organized concentration camp orchestra that met exhausted people near the camps gates by merry music. The music accompanied the process of selection and the short way to gas chambers. Joseph Mengele Joseph Mengele or the Angel of Death started his career in Frankfurt University, where he studied genetic biology and race hygiene under the aegis of one of the well-known geneticists who was famous for his study of race inferiority and potential danger of Jew race. The diligent student was interested mainly in anthropology and genetics.
He published several articles and defended a thesis. In 1939 Joseph Mengele changed his white doctor's smock into a military uniform. He spent several months in the Eastern front in Waffen SS (Bukiet 82), but after he was wounded he was appointed to Auschwitz. According to his colleagues, he was met as a hero. He was ubiquitous: he made the primary selection of the prisoners and sent the prisoners to gas chambers with no slightest doubt; he selected the prisoners for different experiments; he took the lead of a number of experiments and personally run thousands of tests using the prisoners in capacity of experimental animals. The doctor was interested in tissue transfer and various transplantation's, studies in the sphere of oligogenics or birth control for inferior races, and increasing fecundity for Germans.
Joseph Mengele also studied the consequences of impacts of various chemical and poisonous substances on people. He was especially interested in studies of twins. He developed a special program of scientific research that wasnt over even after the experimental twins died. Although there is no exact data concerning the Mengele's experimental victims, it is known that less than 200 out of more than three thousand children managed to survive after the experiments. The noble themes of scientific studies can give no justification to the fact that the experiments were conducted on people. Naturally, the experiments were conducted with no anesthesia.
Mengele was taking organs from animals and transplanted them to people. He documented the agonizing death during the graft-versus-host reactions. After several experiments he decided that the best way to conduct the policy of birth control for the inferior races will be surgical castration and carried out several hundreds of surgical operations to develop the most efficient and quick method of surgical castration. In support of hypothesis concerning the possibility to change color of eyes in Jews, he was injecting different chemical dyes into the prisoners eye-babes. He came to conclusion that it is impossible to make an Aryan from Jew. The mere description of his methods is able to make a person feel faint.
However, his colleagues claimed that the Angel of Death was affable, friendly, easy-going, clean (Bukiet 59); he didnt shout on children, he was smiling, and during the spare moments he preferred visiting barracks, where the womens orchestra was located in order to listen to classic music. The Angel of Deaths Assistants Karl Klauberg was a luminary in medicine. By the beginning of the war he was a famous gynecologist (Adorno 115). In 1942 he came to Auschwitz to continue his experimental studies. There he got in disposal the barrack no. 10.
According to the documents, the experiments were conducted on thousands of Jewish and Gipsy women. The women were subjected to painful experiments: Karl Klauberg conducted uterus amputations, tested different reagents for X-ray radiography of the uterus and tuba uterine, he conducted operative sterilizations by way of X-ray irradiation of the pelvic area with the subsequent laparotomy and ovary operation. He also studied the impacts of different chemicals on human by German companies orders. After the final stage of experiments the women were brought to gas chambers, because after the series of painful operations the major part of women was unable to work.
Johann Paul Kremer came to Auschwitz in 1942 after the years of work in Munster University (Bukiet 91). He replaced the doctor who suddenly fell ill. Kremer was responsible for reception of patients, who tried to get exemption from work and to get an appointment card to an infirmary. Kremer predominantly prescribed mortal injections to such patients with only few exceptions. Herta Oberheuser studied complications and aftereffects during the treatment of severe wounds (Bukiet 73). During the experiments that were aimed to simulate military conditions, she placed into the prisoners wounds foreign particles and objects mud, glass, chips, silvers, insects, etc.
Besides, Herta Oberheuser tested tranquilizer on children in order to determine the fatal dose of substances. Buchenwald The concentration camp was built in 1933. It was located on the northern slopes of the Ettersberg (Buchenwald), not far from Weimar. Right after the gates there was Appelplatz the place, where the prisoners were brought for inspections.
Appelplatz was supposed to accommodate about 20, 000 people. To the right of the gates there was an isolation ward, where the prison guards questioned the prisoners. Each of the barracks had its own number. The concentration camp consisted of 52 barracks, with 43 dwelling barracks and 9 workshops. Crematorium was the most terrible place in the camp.
The prisoners were invited there under the pretext of the medical inspection. The prison guards killed the prisoner, when he was taking his clothes off. Buchenwald was the male concentration camp. Although there were 52 barracks, several hundreds of Polish prisoners were placed into the camps during the winter time. Naturally, no one survived. There was also a so-called lesser camp the quarantine area.
The conditions of life in the quarantine area were inhuman and brutal even compared to the main camp. In 1944 the total quantity of the prisoners, who came to the camp as new admissions was 97, 867 (Admissions and Deaths in Buchenwald). 13, 000 prisoners were placed into the quarantine area (approximately 38 % of total quantity of the prisoners). More than 6, 000 people had to live in camps. From January 1945 Germans were bringing up to 4, 000 people per day. At the same time, there were only 12 barracks with no windows in the quarantine area (the former stables, 40 x 50 meters). More than 750 people lived in each barrack. 50 - 100 people were dying per barrack per day.
The prisoners were bringing the dead bodies of their co-barracks to the roll call in order to get their daily portions of food. Those prisoners, who were able to keep on their legs, were forced to work for the camp area improvement, despite the fact that prisoners portion hardly made up a piece of bread per day. The relations between the prisoners in the lesser camp were more hostile than in the main camp. People killed their co-barracks for a piece of bread.
There were also the cases of cannibalism. The death of a prisoner was considered a grand occasion because his neighbor on the left or right had a chance to occupy more space until the new prisoners arrival. The clothes of the dead person were immediately shared between the prisoners and the prison guards were taking already naked body to the crematorium. As well as in Auschwitz, there were a group of doctors, who conducted their inhuman experiments. They conducted surgical operations under no anesthetic. The prisoners were tested on capacity to withstand low atmospheric absolute pressure and low temperatures of the body.
Some doctors killed the prisoners by phenol injections. The experiments were also conducted to investigate the effect of poisons upon human beings, where the poisons were secretly administered to experimental subjects in their food. The victims died as a result of the poison or were killed immediately in order to permit autopsies (Experiments with Poison). However, the main goal of doctors in Buchenwald was the creation and testing of the anti-typhoid vaccine. However, among the experiments on creation of the anti-typhoid vaccine, the doctors run a number of tests involving infections of yellow fever, variola vera, paratyphoid fever, and pseudo membranous inflammation, to mention a few.
There were also many experiments involving the poisonous substances. Finally, the most monstrous tests were conducted for the alleged purpose of the study of homosexuality (Reed 27). The group of doctors under the commandment of Poppendick made numerous transplantation's of genitals and implantation of synthetic hormones in order to find a scientifically-based solution for homosexuality. The death conveyor in Auschwitz and Buchenwald took away dozens of thousands human lives.
The concentration camps were the places where the human spiritual values were lost under the pressure of totalitarian ideas. Works Cited Admissions and Deaths in Buchenwald. 8 April 2007 < web >. Adorno, Theodor W. Can One Live After Auschwitz: A Philosophical Reader. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Auschwitz. 8 April 2007 < web >.
Buchenwald. 8 April 2007 < web >. Bukiet, Melvin Jules. After. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Experiments with Poison. 8 April 2007 < web >. Reed, London D. Behold a Pale Horse: A Novel of Homosexuals in the Nazi Holocaust. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1985.
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