Mauthausen
Tessa
Overview of Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators .Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
Definition/Background Information
Several methods of killing were available. As in other camps, the Mauthausen authorities began to use gas as a means of killing in 1941-1942. Like some other concentration camps, Mauthausen was equipped with a stationary gas chamber with the capacity to kill up to 80 people at a time by means of Zyklon B gas (prussic acid).
Original Research Question
Did the people increase at Mauthausen?
After the Nazi regime initiated World War II, the number of prisoners arriving in Mauthausen increased dramatically and broadened in diversity.
Quote
"Beginning in 1942, the SS authorities deployed an increasing number of ethnic German Waffen SS recruits from Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Croatia to serve in the Death's-Head Battalions at all concentration camps, including Mauthausen."
Citations
Mauthausen." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 29 Jan. 2016. Web. 25 Feb. 2016
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.