Five Crematoria Gas Chambers At Birkenau example essay topic

... sought after job because workers sometimes found scraps of food in the box cars, however the workers were searched by guards after every shift. Under the direction of the SS, prisoners formed columns of five across, men on one side, women and children on the other. This is where the process known by the German word "selection" meaning selection took place. The selection team consisted mostly of doctors and was headed by the now infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death".

Those sent to the left were marched to the gas chambers and crematoria, generally mothers with small children, the elderly, or sick people. On the other hand those send to the right had passed inspection, and were fit for work. Little did they know about the long traitorous journey they had ahead of them. Other random selections took place inside the c this was usually to get rid of prisoners called "mussel mann", which is the term for a prisoner emancipated to the point of mere death. After the selection process women were marched to the women's part of the camp and men to the men's. Each group went through a delousing process where the prisoners were stripped completely naked and were thoroughly searched for any remaining possessions.

Their hair was cut and their bodies were shaven before they entered the sauna for disinfection. After disinfection they received uniforms and were ready for work. There were five crematoria / gas chambers at Birkenau; however II, , IV, and V were primarily used because I was a small provisional test chamber. Crematoria IV and V were built on the surface of the ground and were much smaller than II and that had subterranean gas chambers and reception areas with the most advanced design anywhere in the world.

They were about 102 meters long by 51 meters across. Victims were forced to climb down the steps into the basement. Those who could not walk were pushed down a concrete slide in to the dressing room or reception center with numbered clothing pegs driven into the walls. The SS ordered the victims to undress and to remember which number peg their clothes were hanging on.

This was yet another deceitful statement made by the SS who told the victims they were being disinfected. The SS then drove the victims through the corridor to the heated gas chamber that was necessary for the evaporation of the gas, not for the comfort to the prisoners. The gas squads packed around 2,000 victims into the about 225 square foot room with imitation shower heads on the ceiling to further deceive the victims. The doors were closed and the crystallized form of Cyclone B, or hydrogen cyanide was poured in through the roof. Hydrogen cyanide is a very poisonous gas that causes death by internal suffocation.

In sufficient concentrations, it causes death almost immediately. But because of leaks in the ventilation and the fact that the SS did not bother to calculate the proper quantities, death took anywhere from three to twenty minutes. Following the execution, members of a specific group of prisoners, called, assigned to emptying the gas chambers and burning the bodies, were ordered to remove the bodies from the gas chamber and take them to the crematoria. Crematoria II and both had 46 retorts that each held 3-5 bodies. It took approximately half an hour to cremate the contents of one, and one hour per day to empty them. This became the bottleneck of the extermination process and in late 1944 led to "pit burning".

Six huge pits were dug beside Crematorium V and gassed prisoners were thrown in the pits and set on fire. To keep the pits burning the stokers poured oil, alcohol, and boiling human fat into them. "Blisters which had formed on their skin burst one by one. Almost every corpse was covered with black scorch marks and glistening as if it had been greased.

The searing heat had burst open their bellies and there was the violent hissing and sputtering of frying in great heat. Boiling fat flowed into the pans on either side of the pit. Fanned by the wind, the flames, dark-red before, now took on a fiery white hue. The corpses burned so fiercely that they were consumed by their own heat". (Muller) The process of incineration took five to six hours and what was left filled a third of the pit.

To finish the job the ashes were cooled with water and shoveled out into marshes or the Solo River. The SS set up a gold-melting room inside Crematorium II and. There two dental technicians soaked gold teeth they extracted from prisoners for hours in acid to remove bone and flesh, and used a blowtorch to melt the gold into molds. From that, they produced as much as 5 to 10 kilos a day. (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) Dr. Josef Mengele preformed sadistic experiments on the prisoners. Experiments which consisted of the dissection of live infants and the castration of male prisoners were primarily performed on twins.

Experiments trying to change the eye color of twins and injecting them with infectious agents to see how long it would take for them to succumb to various diseases were quite common, as well as the removal of organs and limbs in macabre surgical procedures. Nearly all his experiments were performed without the use of an anesthetic. (Lynott) Eventually, in Monowitz, a third camp was built, Auschwitz (Buna-Monowitz). The name was derived from I.G. Farben's "Buna Works", a synthetic-rubber factory that the prisoners were forced to work in.

Other sub camps affiliated with Monowitz were setup and they too were included as part of Auschwitz. The sub camps included the newly constructed factories such as the German Armaments Works and the German Earth and Stone Works. (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) Auschwitz was the largest graveyard in human history. The number of Jews murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau is estimated at up to one and a half million people: men, women, and children. Almost one-quarter of the Jews killed during World War II were murdered in Auschwitz. Of the 405,000 registered prisoners who received Auschwitz numbers, only a part survived; and of the 16,000 Soviet prisoners of war who were brought there, only 96 survived.

Bibliography

Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982.
Fig, Konnilyn G. Hitler's Death Camps. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979.
Guttman, Isreal, Ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmall in, 1990.
Hellman, Petr t. The Auschwitz Album. New York: Random House, 1981.
Lynott, Douglas Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death " ulcer, Filip. Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.
Nyiszli, Dr. Miklos Auschwitz: An Eyewitness Account of Mengle's Infamous Death Camp. New York: Seaver Books, 1960.