Auschwitz+Torture+Tactics

Introduction When I was in fourth grade I read a book called “Daniel’s Story” by Carol Matas. That is what first got me interested in the holocaust and what exactly happened, now five years later I’m still looking up and learning more about those terrifying eight years when so many people died. While looking on the internet one day I decided to look into the holocaust a little more. What I found was shocking. I found that not only were they killing these people they were actually torturing them first, and in many different horrifying ways. Why torture/kill the Jews? The extraordinary reason the Nazis tortured the Jews was to punish them, even for crimes they didn’t commit. The Nazi’s wanted someone to blame all of Germany’s problems on and the Jews seemed like easy targets. We all know that the main objective of the concentration camps was to get rid of the Jews by whatever means necessary. This means they would look for any excuse to kill someone; something that we wouldn’t think was a big deal people were killed over. Something like not keeping the floor in a corridor full of dead bodies clean enough for the SS and Gestapo’s liking. (“Nazi Torture…”) Many elderly, sick and disabled people were just sent straight to the gas chambers or in some cases the crematorium. The Nazi’s eliminated children that they felt would be a threat to German imperialism. (“Death Camps…”) Many of the Jews didn’t even have to be killed; they died of Yellow Fever, Dysentery, Tuberculosis and many other diseases every day. (“Nazi Torture”) Why perform medical experiments on the Jewish inmates? When I found out that the Nazi’s were performing medical experiments on the inmates I asked myself, “why would they do this?” my answers were surprising. When the German troops were going into battle they couldn’t take much with them, so one reason they performed medical experiments on the Jews was to see how far someone could push the human body. The Nazi’s figured: “it isn’t a big deal and who better to torture and perform these experiments on than people we plan to kill anyways?” They practiced these experiments in the name of science. (“Nazi Torture…”) They also performed Genetic experiments to breed the ultimate physically built Communist. (Death Camps…”) I really don’t think they succeeded in their task. What Methods were used to torture the camp’s inmates? Many different methods were used to torture the inmates of these camps, methods such as: putting people’s hands in boiling water until their skin and nails came off like gloves; stamping on a man’s foot for ten minutes with a special steel boot and repeating the process for two weeks; pressing a hot poker into the hands; hanging a person with his hands tied behind his back until his shoulders were out of joint then slashing the bottoms of his feet and making him walk on salt. (“Death Camps…”) What’s really sad is there were even more methods that were too disturbing to describe. Many Commandants enjoyed torturing children. One of them would have one of the SS officers throw three- and four-year olds into the air while he shot at them to entertain his nine-year old daughter. (“Death Camps…”) these among painful medical experimentation that was performed without anesthesia and genetic experiments on twins were the leading causes of death in the camps. Mostly because it was most of what was practiced.

“Nazi Torture and Medical Experimentation”, Ehrenburgs, Ilya and Grossman, Vasily, History Project.com, January 1, 1946, Web. 8 March 2011.

"Death Camps, Torture, Experiments on Children", Rose, David and Glees, Anthony, [] August 10th 1997, Google

"The last days of Auschwitz", Adler, Jerry//. (Includes profiles of individual survivors) (Cover story),// Newsweek http://find .galegroup.com/gps/informark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tablD=T003&prodld=ISP&docld+A16030535&source=gale&srcprod=Eaim&, 16, January 1995: 46+, //Expanded Academic ASAP,// Web. SD State Library.

Want to know exactly what happened to Jews living in the Holocaust? Do you wan to know what the Nazi's did to these innocent people for no reason? Well you've found the place to do just that! This article will tell you about the horrors that the Jews in Nazi Germany faced everyday!