The Camps

1
The Camps
2
The Wailing Wall

• The new prisoners were sent to an initiation
  ceremony. They were then forced to stare at the
  wall while their arms were chained with iron
  rings to each other. The prisoners would have to
  do this for two days without stopping. Sometimes
  they were beaten.

This picture shows prisoners waiting at the
wailing wall
3
The Dissecting Table

• The doctors that worked at the concentration
  camps would remove organs from living people.
  They would bottle them up and store the organs in
  a special room. If a prisoner had an interesting
  tattoo, the doctors would skin them and sell the
  products as book covers, gloves, luggage, and
  lamp shades. The most gruesome procedure they
  performed was cutting off the prisoners head and
  using it as a paperweight.

An example of what a dissecting table looks like
4
The Badges

• Each prisoner got a different type of badge. A
  category could determine their chance of
  survival.
• Jewish people yellow triangles
• Criminals green triangles
• Political prisoners red triangles
• Jehovahs witnesses purple triangles
• Homosexual pink triangles
• Gypsies black triangles
• Emigrants blue triangles

5
Gas Chamber

• The Nazis would cram 120 prisoners into one gas
  chamber. They would seal the door and pump carbon
  monoxide into the small room. After a few minutes
  the doors would be opened and the prisoners
  bodies were covered with blood. Their eyes popped
  out of their sockets and their bodies stiffened
  into grotesque positions.

One of the gas chambers at Mauthausen
6
Death Steps

• The prisoners were forced to climb the 186
  steps of the Wiener Graben with large blocks of
  granite on their backs.The blocks would weigh up
  to 25 kilograms. The granite blocks would weigh
  so much that they would crush the limbs of the
  prisoner and sometimes kill them. The guards
  would bet on which prisoner would die first.

Steps known as the death steps
7
Toilets(washroom)

• At the camps there was not much water for the
  prisoners to use. The amount of allowed daily
  cleansing was very limited. There was no privacy
  in the camps, especially in the toilet rooms. Due
  to lack of cleanliness, the prisoners developed
  many diseases.

The toilet room
8
The Prisoner Reception

• In all weather conditions, naked prisoners
  would have to wait outside for their turn in
  line. The would have to give up all their prized
  possessions, including their money, jewels,
  wedding rings, and photos. The only thing that
  they were left with was their body. After that
  the prisoners would have to go up to the guards
  and let them shave off the hair on their head,
  under their arms and other parts of the body.
  Then they would get a number tattooed on their
  arms.

The hallway where the prisoners first arrived at
the concentration camp Birkenau
9
The Tattoos

• The tattoo process started in 1941 at the
  largest concentration camp, Auschwitz. Originally
  the tattoo was placed on the left breast of the
  prisoner but soon changed to the arms. The
  Germans did this to make it so the prisoners felt
  that they no longer had a name and that now they
  were no one. The tattoos came in many different
  styles, shapes, symbols, and letters. The people
  of Auschwitz were the only prisoners that had
  this done. The Ethnic Germans, police prisoners
  and inmates did not have to be tattooed.

10
The Pond

• This pond, shown in the picture, is where the
  soldiers would dump all the ashes of tens of
  thousands of people. The ashes were from the
  prisoners that were gassed at the Crematorium.
  Millions of Jewish and other immigrant prisoners
  were killed during the Holocaust.

The Pond where the ashes were thrown at Birkenau
concentration camp
11
The History of the Swastika

• The original meaning of swastika was life and
  happiness. Up until the Nazis used the symbol,
  it meant life, sun, power, strength, and good
  luck. By the end of the 19th century the swastika
  was part of the German culture. In 1920, Adolph
  Hitler decided that the Nazis should use the
  symbol on their flag. Soon after it was placed on
  the Nazis flag, it became known to represent
  hate, anti-Semitism, violence, and death.

Nazis symbol, the Swastika
12
Food

• The amount of food given to each individual
  depended upon your work status. For doing certain
  factory jobs, those prisoners received more
  bread than others. Office workers received the
  most food. An average factory worker received one
  bowl of soup which was mostly water. If they were
  lucky, the soup would have a couple of barley
  beans floating in it. The usual rations were one
  loaf of bread for five days, a small amount of
  vegetables (occasionally "preserved" beets that
  were mostly ice), and brown water that was
  supposed to be coffee. This amount of food caused
  starvation.

A small bowl of soup was a normal meal
13
Children

• In the ghettos, many children died from lack
  of food, clothing, and shelter. The Nazis
  considered a lot of the ghetto children as
  unproductive. They were generally not used for
  forced labor, which increased their chances for
  early deportation to concentration camps. Jewish
  children were usually the first victims when the
  Germans and their assistants wanted to destroy a
  Jewish community by shooting the inhabitants or
  forcing them to go to an extermination camp.

Two young children looking very unhappy
14
Surviving the Concentration Camps
The prisoners would try to escape the camps by
pulling out the barb wires and jumping through
the little windows. Many people there would risk
their life by trying to leaving the camps, many
times getting shot to death in the process. They
would sometimes see their family members being
taken away or dying. They were too scared, sick,
and weak to escape. The only chance to live was
to survive the camps by doing their daily jobs
and being lucky.

Train tracks that led to the concentration camps
15
Clothing and Possessions
Jews were forced to move into ghettos or were
deported to concentration camps. The Nazis took
most of their possessions because they limited
the amount of moveable property that the
prisoners could take. Once the Jews were moved,
the Nazis restricted the flow of goods to them.

An example of the everyday clothing the prisoners
would wear
16

• Works Cited
• Grant, . The Holocaust. Texas Raintree
  Stecks-Vaughm, 1998.
• Holocaust Badges. 2004. 31 May 2004
  .
• Rice, Earle. Final Solution. San Diego Lucent
  Books, 1998.
• The Camps. 25 Apr. 1995. Cybrary Community. 31
  May 2004 .
• The Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial
  Museum. 31 May 2004 .

17
This power point presentation was made by Karly
Topkis Kate CallahanPeriod 7