Don’t Concentrate on Camps

Don't Concentrate on Camps

A concentration camp can be defined as a camp were particular people are confined or detained for a period of time, although ironically the term death camp is commonly used as a synonym. Between the years of 1942 and 1945 the German Nazi Party initiated concentration camps for all Jews and other peoples that were considered by Adolf Hitler to be inferior. This is a commonly known fact, although extensive knowledge is limited to most people. The majority of concentration camps established have been used for the containing and eventual extermination of its prisoners. Camps have been located all over the world for many different reasons. Survivors (though rare) do exist and always have gruesome, life altering stories kept away in there souls. Undoubtedly Auschwitz in Poland is the most well known camp, but the future existence of concentration camps in the United States has even been discussed.

Although one of the first uses of concentration camps was by Britain in 1899 against the Boerevolk people, Adold Hitler took them to extreme during World War II (Berwick 85). The first concentration camps of the 1930's were simply meant to hold political enemy's of the Nazi state such as Communists and Socialists, but eventually, bigger camps were created for the extermination of inferior groups and races (Swiebocka 1). The original intention of concentration

camps was not specifically to murder mass numbers of people although that was though of as a plus side. In his raging insanity Adolf Hitler molded the concept of concentration camps from containment to extermination. Hitler located his primary concentration extermination camps in Poland focusing on six main camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin, Sobibor, and Treblinka (Sheehan 6). In these camps alone over 2,700,000 Jews were murdered, along with tens of thousands of Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, and others (Sheehan7). The prisoners in these camps died from many different causes. Some simply died from starvation and illness, others were told to "dig a hole" and then when they finished were shot