Work at death camps
period 3, Nathan, Rodrigo, Chase, Jabez, Jose
Depending on the type of camp, prisoners were assigned to a whole range of different duties. Some remained inside the camp working on a variety of jobs, from administration tasks to heavy manual labour.
Most prisoners worked outside the camps in one the many factories, construction projects, farms or coal mines. They would quite often have to walk several kilometres to their place of work.
The Nazis subjected millions of people (both Jews and other victim groups) to forced labor under brutal conditions. From the establishment of the first Nazi concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor—often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest—formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen.
By the end of that year, most Jewish males residing in Germany were required to perform forced labor for various government agencies.
When Germany conquered Poland in the autumn of 1939 and established the Generalgouvernement, the German occupation authorities required all Jewish and Polish males to perform unpaid forced labor. Forced-labor practices escalated in the spring of 1942, following changes in the administration of concentration camps. Jews deemed physically unable to work were often the first to be shot or deported.
The Nazis also pursued a conscious policy of "annihilation through work," under which certain categories of prisoners were literally worked to death; in this policy, camp prisoners were forced to work under conditions that would directly and deliberately lead to illness, injury, and death.
Germans allowed millions of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) to die through a deliberate policy of neglect (insufficient food, clothing, shelter, or medical care). Germans deported nearly three million Soviet citizens to Germany, Austria, and Bohemia-Moravia as forced laborers.
At the end of the war, millions of non-German displaced persons were left in Germany, including some tens of thousands of Jews who had survived the "Final Solution," victims of Nazi policies of deportation for forced labor.
In conclusion, depending on the type of camp, prisoners were assigned to a whole range of different duties. Some remained inside the camp working on a variety of jobs, from administration tasks to heavy manual labour.
tres to their place of work.Most prisoners worked outside the camps in one the many factories, construction projects, farms or coal mines. They would quite often have to walk several kilome.
After 1938 and well into World War II, concentration camp labor was deployed in producing construction materials for actual SS-managed construction projects (including the expansion of existing camps and the construction of new camps).
In exceptional cases, concentration camp prisoners were “leased” to private firms, such as the I.G. Farben synthetic fuel and rubber plants established in 1941 in Monowitz in Upper Silesia, near the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the incorporation of the camps into the WVHA in 1942, the SS increasingly engaged concentration camp prisoners in producing for the German war effort, deploying them, still under SS guard, to German state-owned firms and private firms, which compensated the SS for the increasingly scarce labor.
Work Cited
"Work." In the Concentration Camps. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2016. <http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-camps/daily-life/work/#.V_-b1_krLcs>.
"Forced Labor: An Overview." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 02 July 2016. Web. 13 Oct. 2016. <https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005180>.
"Concentration Camp System: In Depth." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 02 July 2016. Web. 14 Oct. 2016. <https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007387>
History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2016. <http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust/videos/concentration-camp-liberation>.