Day in a Nazi Concentration Camp

It wakes you up at night when the attic hatch opens. His family members scream in horror as men in long black coats enter the enclosed space, shouting furious orders in German and brandishing their guns menacingly. On the lapels of their coats, the terrifying double rays of the SS shine in the light of their flashlights. This is another detachment tasked with hunting down "undesirables" in Nazi-occupied territory, and despite years of hiding, their luck is running out. You and your family are hauled out of the attic and dragged out into the street, kicking and screaming, before being thrown into the back of a military vehicle at gunpoint.

If you try to escape, they will kill you. But death can be a respite compared to what awaits you in the horrors of a Nazi

concentration

camp

. As a Jew, or one of the many other minority groups persecuted by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, if one was captured by the SS or Gestapo, they were usually persecuted, beaten, captured, and then sent to a

concentration

camp

. While the possibility of being run off the street for the simple crime of being Jewish is already a cause for concern, what is more disturbing is that you can never know when it will happen.

Your journey to a Nazi concentration camp is never a single, clear or direct route. Round and round he goes, influenced by his background and the changing whims of the Nazi regime's arbitrary quota. To reiterate, perhaps you are here because of your ties to groups that oppose the Nazis: communists, socialists, trade unionists, or anyone suspected of dissent. Or perhaps you were considered undesirable to the Nazi vision of society: homeless, homosexual, mentally ill, petty criminals, or simply unproductive. Some unfortunate souls ended up here through random mass arrests where they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Others faced imprisonment for their religious beliefs, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, who refused to submit to the new order. Or perhaps you are simply one of the primary targets of Hitler's overflowing hatred: a member of the Jewish faith and ethnicity, regarded as nothing more than gum under the German boot. Even the trip to camp is designed to rob you of your humanity, to instill fear and shame in you, to terrify you, no matter who you are: male, female, young, old, healthy or sick. The arrival process is meant to crush your spirit, subjecting you to unimaginable abuse, all part of a system that seeks to dehumanize and destroy.

The Nazis will do anything to break you. Once captured, you are forcibly loaded onto vehicles, whether trains or trucks, and transported to a concentration camp chosen by the soldiers. In this vehicle, you will meet other Jews of all ages, cowering in fear and with their eyes full of terror. There is barely enough room in the vehicle and most likely there will be a very small window or no window at all. They are denied water, food and even the basic decency of having sanitation facilities. If you or the many other prisoners crammed into the tight space like animals need to relieve yourself, you will be provided with a bucket and nothing else.

Without food or water, you're starving and dehydrated, trapped in a claustrophobic square filled with the smell of vomit, excrement, and the pungent odor of fear. The uncertainty of where they are forcefully taking you traps you like a vice from which you cannot free yourself. This journey you are forced to embark on can take days... filled with suffering and the inability to do anything about the anxiety and terror that arise from the void of genocidal tyranny. Sometimes transportation in crowded freight cars meant losing sight of family members who were also captured along with you. Worse still, there is no hope that their paths will cross again.

Maybe they will die on the way. Perhaps they will be executed by trigger-hungry German soldiers. Maybe they'll just send them to a different field. The truth is, you may never find out. They also never tell him where they will send him. This situational blindness makes the entire process even more terrifying. If you were arrested in the latter part of the Holocaust, you've probably heard rumors about concentration camps in the East. If he was aware of this information, perhaps he already knew what his fate was. Perhaps you are already aware of the terrible living conditions that await you in the infamous East.

Regardless of what you know, there is nothing you can do but wait in dread and painful agitation. Still, nothing will prepare you for the misfortune that awaited you between the barbed wire fences of the concentration camps. Like the many unfortunate souls being taken to Nazi concentration camps, the transport itself seemed like a march towards certain death. However, whether by a stroke of bad luck or mercy, you or other prisoners crammed into cargo vehicles or airless trucks may not make it to the terrible camps. You see, transportation conditions were often lethal and inhumane. With no access to food or water and the only toilet for long-distance travel being a bucket, the airless transport trucks in which prisoners are crammed are filled with the aforementioned overwhelming smell of vomit, urine and excrement.

Therefore, many prisoners died on the way to the camps due to dehydration, hunger, suffocation or illness. You can watch as this happens, or you can be the one watched by other desperate souls as you breathe your last on the cold floor of congested vehicles. When you arrive at the camp, you are pushed out of the vehicle and thrust headlong into a pretty desperate situation. At first, you are directed as a large group. The soldiers then divided you and other prisoners into two smaller groups of men and women with children. Afterwards, you and the other terrified prisoners are subjected to a macabre welcoming rite in which one of the terrifying tan-uniformed SS guards shouts orders at you and asks you to provide your age, occupation, and state of health.

As a prisoner who has just been excluded from society, torn from the clutches of his family, denied access to basic pleasures such as good food and health services, and transported for miles without food or water, it is not unusual that his health may be affected. . hardly good when arriving at the concentration camps. Therefore, depending on your answers to the SS officer's questions, you will be considered fit for duty when the SS officer points his thumb to the right or you will be sent for immediate execution if his finger points to the left. . As a prisoner during the Holocaust, the grim reality of having your fate sealed and being sentenced to death with a simple gesture from a German soldier was a chilling fate that affected many, including you.

The moment those fingers pointed to deem you “unfit for work,” your heart must have sank as you realized the cruel fate that awaited you. Hundreds of thousands of Jews who in the concentration camps were considered too sick, old or young to be of any economic importance faced the same terrible verdict during those dark times. As you are taken to the gas chambers, a building designed to be a killing machine, you will kick, fight and beg for mercy. However, there was never a way to escape; Your fate has been sealed by a German soldier whose memory of your face is but a fleeting memory.

The abruptness of this sentence, the finality of it all, is a final crushing blow to your spirit. What if you survived? Well, you just have to face and somehow endure the horrors that await you. After experiencing the extremely dehumanizing process of being segregated into groups, surrounded by equally terrified strangers who shared his fate as a Jew and are deemed unworthy of coexisting with Germans, he is subjected to another humiliating process. He is asked to strip away his belongings; Every effect that is connected with your past life has no place in these fields. Clothing, valuables, personal items – everything was taken and piled on a pallet never to be returned.

Passing the selection process could have meant escaping the gas chambers. However, even this relief is short-lived. After being forced to hand over his possessions, he is beaten and pushed while SS guards attempt to register him into the camp system. Registration means you are given a prison number that instantly replaces your name. In the past, before you were taken off the street, you were forced to add “Israel” if you were a Jewish man or “Sarah” if you were a Jewish woman to be easily recognized. However, in this camp, your entire name is removed and you are assigned a number instead.

The assignment of prison numbers was a deliberate tactic to erase individual identities, reducing them to mere numbers devoid of humanity. Sometimes this number is sewn onto the prison uniform, which is probably a striped two-piece suit made of an uncomfortable fabric. Sometimes, especially in Auschwitz, this number is tattooed on your arms, marking you permanently. Once the registration process is complete, you are asked to undress in the presence of hundreds of prisoners and watching guards. At that very moment, your head is shaved regardless of gender and you are forced to shower in groups while the SS guards watch you with extreme scrutiny.

Finally, they will give you your prison uniform, one of the few belongings they would be allowed in their camp. Life in a concentration camp meant that you were constantly surrounded by German soldiers positioned to herd you like a flock. In a way, you have become a herd, stripped of identity and subjected to the most barbaric treatments possible. The hierarchical structure of many concentration camps mimics the model established at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. You will soon discover that your camp's German staff is led by the Lagerkommandant or camp commander and a team of junior officers.

In addition to these specially trained officers, there were also male and female guards who had to be responded to. Likewise, you will also discover that prisoners have their own hierarchical structure, with the prisoner supervisors or Kapos being considered your commanders. All other prisoners outside of the kapos, including you, will be assigned colored triangular badges to identify the reason the prisoners were placed in camps and to facilitate task assignment. Living conditions in the camps are nothing short of misery. The soldiers, who were given absolute power by Hitler, believed that you and other Jews deserved nothing better and therefore offered the minimum they could offer.

This means that you will most likely be assigned to barracks that were designed to hold far fewer people than those who ended up crammed inside. If you are unlucky, your bunkhouse will be plagued by problems such as leaking roofs that will make life even more miserable and intolerable when it rains. Of course, the guards give you a bed to sleep in. However, these beds are small bunk beds that are usually several levels high and are placed directly on muddy floors. Don't get too comfortable thinking you have a bed to yourself. The limited space available in these camps meant that you had to share your already too small bed with other prisoners.

Therefore, while the bunk beds were designed to hold three people with one person per level, they actually housed up to 18 prisoners with six people per level. When there were no more bunk beds, you may have had to sleep in tents made of extremely thin materials or, worse still, in damp tunnels without any cover. He is also not provided with bedding or blankets, apart from the straw bedding placed on top of his small crib. These straw mattresses, if any, were rarely replaced when they were soiled with vomit or urine or infested with lice or ticks. As you would expect in any place with such terrible sanitation, your bunkhouse will likely be infested with lice, rats, and other vermin that facilitate the spread of disease.

Naturally, as expected, diseases spread quite quickly in this state. This means that you are constantly surrounded by prisoners with deadly diseases or, worse yet, you become one. In his barracks, heating came from two small stoves, which were not enough to heat all the rooms, much less the prisoners in them. Sanitary facilities were inadequate, leading to overflowing toilets, a constant stench and, once again, the spread of disease. Still, this is not all. Your daily battle for survival revolves around the constant fight against hunger and the meager rations provided by the Nazis. The indifference to your well-being is evident in the miserable meals that are meant to sustain you at a minimum, not nourish or support your health.

The meager portions, which consisted of watery soup, stale bread, and the occasional small piece of sausage or cheese, were far from satisfying or nutritious. The hoursof food, if you can call them that, are a harsh reminder of the harsh reality of life in the countryside. The corrosive hunger that eats away at your insides becomes an implacable companion, weakening your body, leaving you vulnerable to disease, and perpetuating a cycle of deprivation and despair. The fight for even the smallest scraps of food became a daily ordeal, and many prisoners succumbed to the brutal living conditions to which they were subjected, despite surviving the initial sorting process.

Worse yet, you are expected to provide labor under these conditions. The type of work you do while held in concentration camps varies by camp. However, you may be required to perform tasks such as heavy construction, rock mining, trenching, or factory work. You may also be assigned tasks related to camp expansion, weapons manufacturing, administrative tasks, crafts, trades, farm work, factory jobs, mining or chemical plants. In concentration camps, you are introduced to a life that involves working up to 14 grueling hours a day while guards watch you like hawks. It becomes the norm for guards or Kapos to beat you when you move too slowly or go out of the line of duty without permission.

If you manage to survive the living conditions, disease and hunger, you may end up succumbing to stress and dying from overwork. If you survive, you will be beaten to death, executed, or sent as guinea pigs for medical experiments. Inevitably, given the deplorable living conditions, diseases spread rampantly around you. However, the anti-Semitic regime showed no regard for the well-being of those deemed unworthy of life, denying them even basic medical care. Minor injuries lingered untreated, while serious illnesses became fatal sentences, sealing the fate of many. Typhus, dysentery and tuberculosis are just some of the deadly diseases that ravaged the countryside and are waiting to wipe you out.

The combination of physical difficulties, constant fear and the loss of loved ones has a devastating effect on their mental state. Depression, hopelessness and despair became common companions in the daily struggle for survival. Still, you have no choice but to suffer day after day. The life of the average prisoner held in Nazi concentration camps began with The Appel, a daily demonstration that took place unfailingly every morning and every night. Whether it rains, snows or is very cold, upstairs and other prisoners are expected to always be present at the Appel. You wake up to the chilling reality of another day at camp between 4am and 4:30am every day.

The air is thick with despair as you and other prisoners are rudely awakened in the barracks to the sound of a loud gong and the screams of Kapos. As you open your eyes, the harsh reality of your surroundings hits you like a wave of darkness. You are just one among countless souls trapped in this seemingly eternal hell. It was not unusual to find the bodies of the many who did not survive the night lying rigidly in their cramped sleeping positions, mostly ignored by the German officers. Although in German eyes they were now considered nothing more than husks to be disposed of, these bodies were probably family members or friends.

Or simply a partner who shared difficult times with you. Then, you grieve. If you're unlucky, you'll be able to experience bettenbau or bettenmachen, which roughly translates to making a bed following very strict rules. Following the SS guards, you are expected to make your bed. However, given the limited space caused by overcrowding, his weakened physical condition due to stress and malnutrition, and the unnecessary bed preparation regimens established by SS, he would most likely fail. When this happens, you are beaten, sometimes to death, while other prisoners watch helplessly. In many cases, you knew this person. It could be your neighbor… your doctor… or a local employee.

If you somehow manage to make your bed, you will be expected to clean yourself with the dirty water available at the campsite and of course without access to soap or other toiletries. Then, you get breakfast in your pot, served by a Kapo. Dinner is an unappetizing meal of stale bread with watered down tea or coffee without the luxury of milk or sugar. On good days, you'll receive a thin slice of sausage or margarine. Like many things that happened inside concentration camps, even the mere act of collecting food was tinged with malice. Sometimes, the Kapos point you out as an act of evil, throwing the bread into the mud.

Sometimes they push you and spill your watered coffee or tea on the floor. When this happens, you lose the right to eat or you pick up the muddy bread from the floor, dust it off as best you can, and eat. After breakfast, you're expected to head to The Appel or Appellplatz, the dreaded morning roll call. Regardless of the circumstances, except for those working away or in the camp kitchen, all prisoners were required to gather for this daily count. Even the deceased were expected to be present, their lifeless bodies lined up at the front of the gathering, a heartbreaking reminder of the harsh reality of life in the countryside.

During The Appel, you and your fellow prisoners stood in rigid lines of ten, meticulously counted by the Kapos under the watchful eye of guards and SS officers. Any movement was met with swift and brutal punishment, and soldiers were quick to deliver beatings for the slightest infraction. The counting process, which was often repeated to ensure accuracy, meant hours of standing in formation, sometimes in adverse weather conditions. The physical effort was immense and caused the prisoners to collapse from exhaustion, an action that carries serious consequences. Attempts to evade The Appel were met with the same level of brutality, and those captured faced beatings, torture, or even death as punishment.

Once the roll call was completed to the satisfaction of the Nazi soldiers, they were taken on foot to their assigned duty stations, varying the distance from a short walk to several miles. Forced to sing degrading songs for the amusement of the guards, an exhausting pace had to be maintained under the threat of violence for any perceived disobedience. Staying behind meant risking severe punishment, reinforcing constant fear and pressure to comply with the guards' demands. When noon arrives, you will be told to return to camp for afternoon roll call. It's like morning all over again: a seemingly endless count in which you are expected to stand firm, this time under the scorching sun and exhausted from all the work they had done.

Afterwards, lunch is provided, which is a small respite from the challenging daily routine. This was the norm in previous years. However, later, German soldiers arranged for lunch to be brought to workplaces to reduce the amount of time they spent walking to and from the field, thus increasing the amount of time spent working. You are usually discharged from labor at about 5 p.m. m. or 6 p.m. m. every day, or during the winter, at dusk. Sometimes you may even be forced to work all night. However, when work ends for the night, he is taken back to camp for the last roll call of the day.

While you may be able to retrace the distance you walked in the morning, your companions will bring other prisoners who died during service to the camp to participate in the afternoon roll call. Once again, inaccuracies were inevitable and discrepancies in the number of prisoners counted meant that roll call could take hours to complete. The process is also often prolonged as a form of punishment. If you have endured the day's ordeal without collapsing from exhaustion or facing brutal punishment, you are granted the meager dinner ration, usually a thin, thin vegetable soup. Once again, the familiar routine of presenting the can of food or risking starvation during the night was repeated, a reminder of the constant struggle for sustenance.

Or maybe you ended up in less fortunate camps where dinner is a luxury unknown to prisoners. In this case, after exhausting work, they send you directly to your barracks, where they are given free time. You and other prisoners around you can use this free time to trade with each other, exchanging one item for another that you may need between you. If you manage to eat dinner, you are expected to retire to your barracks as soon as mealtime is over. In many campgrounds, the lights usually go out at 9 p.m., but it could be later. Once inside his barracks, it was strictly forbidden to leave at night.

To ensure that no prisoners attempted to escape, Blockfuehrers and guards constantly paraded around the grounds, keeping their eyes peeled for signs of a defaulting prisoner. Blockfuehrers were often also called Death Heads. They wore green triangles on their uniforms, an insignia that meant "true criminals." These soldiers had the power to determine your fate if you were caught outside a barracks during bedtime. They decided who lived or who died as punishment. at the end of the day it meant that you had managed to survive the difficulties of the day. However, this also meant that you had to live through these terrible experiences the next day.

The lack of essential medical facilities and life-saving resources meant you got sick. It would lead him to a grim fate. While there were designated infirmaries or infirmaries, they were often mere illusions of care and compassion. In some camps where fellow prisoners were tasked with running the infirmaries, there were brave attempts to help you and others. However, the overwhelming challenges of rampant disease, horrible living conditions, and severe shortages of medical supplies rendered these efforts largely futile. Many diaries that survived the Holocaust included accounts of the medical care of prisoners in concentration camps. Regardless of the camps where these diary entries were written, they all share the same experiences as you: the infirmaries, typically located in old buildings like the rest of the camps, had no water, no plumbing, no electricity other than natural light, were dirty cots similar to those in the barracks, and disgusting straw mattresses covered in pus and blood.

On every dirty mattress there are at least two sick people, sometimes looking skeletal and almost always covered in scabies, boils, eaten by lice or simply completely naked. In cases where there is an outbreak of illness and the infirmaries are full, it is not unusual to find more than two patients sharing a mattress. They were left shivering from the cold, suffering and waiting for help. Or at least waiting for death. Despite the terrible living conditions you find yourself in, you cling to fragile threads of hope. Hope continues to flicker like an eternal candle fighting against the gusts of wind.

You try to live life as you normally would, keeping cultural and religious activities alive. Perhaps he keeps diaries detailing his agony at the hands of German soldiers and the camps. Maybe you write about your daily life on scraps of paper, talking about the degrading conditions you are forced to live in. Maybe instead you create artwork, illustrations, and drawings that imitate life in a concentration camp. Or maybe you choose to produce jewelry with copper wire. Regardless of the medium he chooses, his works, which act as testimonies to the life of a prisoner who lived in concentration camps during the Holocaust, are nothing less than a grim reminder of the resilience and humanity that persisted in the face of unimaginable cruelty.

Amid the shadows of despair and suffering, you cling to fragments of normality and find solace in your faith, traditions, and artistic expressions. In the midst of so much darkness, these small acts of defiance manage to keep your spirit alive and humanity intact. Life in Nazi concentration camps was a routine nightmare for prisoners. With basic rights stolen and nothing you can call your own except the crude striped prison uniform on your back, Nazi concentration camps leave prisoners with nothing but the harsh reality of survival in a nightmarish existence. Your daily fight for survival is marked by the relentless brutality of SS guards, the dehumanizing routines of hours-long roll calls, and the constant fear of punishment or death for the slightest infraction.

Regardless of the widespread darkness that enveloped you and the hundreds of thousands of Jews and other prisoners unjustly detained in the hands of the enemy, you continue to show remarkable strength and humanity in the face of unspeakable horrors. Through their artwork and writings, they preserve shreds of their identities and humanity despite the attempts of theGermans to put out the flame. These stories are haunting narratives that serve as a poignant reminder of the indomitable human spirit... the ability to endure even in the most extreme circumstances, presenting the power of spiritual strength and hope in the darkest of times.

Until all prisoners were rescued through the combined efforts of the Allied forces, prisoners in Nazi concentration camps endured a nightmare that tested their stamina, stamina, and overall will to survive. Their liberation from the horrors of the camps marked the beginning of the end of a chapter filled with shocking cruelty, loss and trauma, offering those who had faced the depths of human depravity a silver lining and hope for a better life. However, even this release did nothing to erase the charred stain from the minds of those affected... as well as the world at large. Following the liberation of Jews from the clutches of Nazi soldiers in the concentration camps, survivors faced the daunting task of trying to rebuild their lives, deal with the trauma of their experiences, and seek justice for the atrocities they had faced.

The legacy of the Holocaust and the sufferings of the Jews serve as a stark reminder of the consequences of unbridled hatred, unbridled intolerance and inhumanity, urging future generations to remember the past... fight for a world free of such horrors. ..and look for leadership that works. for the freedom and safety of the innocent. Now check out “The Real Reason Nazi Officers Fled to Argentina After World War II.” Or watch this video instead!