Natzweiler Concentration Camp example essay topic

On January 30, 1933 the Nazis assumed they had full power of Germany. Immediately after this, they decided to start concentration camps to rid the German society of "inferiors". This included: communists, socialists, religious rebels, Jehovah's Witnesses and most of all, Jews. During the 1930's there were six main camps established. These were: - ~Da chua ~Sachsenhausen ~Buchenwald ~Flassenburg ~Mauthausen and, ~Ravens bruck (a concentration cap especially for women.) During the 2nd World War Nazi concentration camp numbers increased dramatically. New camps that were opened included: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Neuen gamme, Gross-Rosen, Strut hof, Lublin-Majdanek, Hinz ert, Vight, Dora, Began-Bels on and Natzweiler.

Natzweiler concentration camp was the only camp in French territory during the whole of WWII, (it housed people only of German origin even though it was located in France. ). It was in May 1941 that 300 German prisoners were put in to the Natzweiler concentration camp. These prisoners lived about a kilometre away from where the location of the camp was planned to be. They were made carry all materials from a nearby farm and were forced to prepare earth and foundations before constructing three separate housing blocks. After these were first three blocks were completed 500 more prisoners were shipped in, raising inmate numbers to a total of 800.

Between 1941 and 1944 fourteen more blocks were added to the site of the concentration camp. These blocks were used for housing of prisoners, one was used for an infirmary - this was only for guards and staff, if a prisoner was sick they were killed. Gassing, shooting or simply a fatal injection killed them - and the rest were rooms where doctors and scientists carried out torturous experiments on prisoners. A gas chamber was placed outside the camp.

We don't know when this chamber was built or when it began working but it is known that during the summer of 1943, the chamber was used quite regularly. So, what happened to the bodies of the people that had been gassed? In October 1943, a crematorium was construct. Before this, bodies were simply incinerated in a "mobile crematorium" which was positioned outside the camp near the farm. (The same farm that the original prisoners had walked to and from carrying materials in order to construct the camp back in 1941.) It is unbelievable what prisoners of these camps endured.

They were used as guinea pigs, test subjects, at the disposal of Nazi doctors and scientists to do with as they please. Their housing conditions were so bad, prisoners died in the rooms with inmates crowding them. The guards treated them with hatred and disrespect because they were ordered to, they were following the Nazi law and that meant hating "inferiors" purely because they did not have the same beliefs as Hitler. Up to 18 000 prisoners lived and died in this particular camp and it was not until September 1944 that the Natzweiler concentration camp was evacuated by the SS.

4 000 prisoners perished inside the camp as it was destroyed. It is believed that more than 700 000 people were put in Nazi camps from 1933 to 1945. It is also believed that more than six million Jews alone - not including all other "inferiors" - were killed in Nazi Camps during WWII.