"Night" Intro Essay: Auschwitz

Hannah Maestro and Kaori Murakawa Auschwitz Created in 1942, Auschwitz grew to become the site of one of the worst mass murders in history. Although there were no specific statistics, deaths range from 1.5 million to a staggering 4 million. At first, Poles were held there as prisoners, but later it became a prison for Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, and prisoners of other countries. The camps soon held over 100,000 people. To keep up with the overflow of prisoners, over 2,000 were easily killed through gas chambers and crematoria. Many also died through horrific experiments the Nazis performed. Experiments ranged from submerging prisoners into freezing cold water to removing their organs without anesthesia. Doctor Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, the “Angel of Death,” became an enigma of the twentieth century. Probably the most well known Auschwitz doctor, he performed a number of gruesome experiments. He would experiment especially on twins, who he thought held the secrets of heredity. Known as "Uncle Mengele" by the children, he would perform numerous operations. Injecting chemicals into their eyes to change the color, sewing them together, and performing sex change operations was a normal thing to the prisoners. Many died during the operations, and most of those who did survive died from infection.

Auschwitz was divided into three main camps. Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III, also known as Monowitz. Auschwitz I was built to incarcerate enemies of the Nazi regime, and to get rid of the minorities within. This major camp was mainly used as a place to perform all the medical experiments. This is where they conducted pseudoscientific experiments on the twins, and many more. Birkenau was built later on, in October 1941. It was the major killing center out of the three camps. It played a big role in the Nazis plans to exterminate the Jews in Germany. The following year in 1942, Monowitz was built. This camp was established to house the prisoners assigned to work in synthetic rubber factories. Out of the three, Monowitz had the least amount of deaths until March 1944, when all the other camps were abandoned. Monowitz soon surpassed the previous records of mass killings. This made Monowitz the most notorious killing camp of all time. Auschwitz was the most notorious concentration camp during the Holocaust, with one of the highest death records to date. Out of all the concentration camps, Auschwitz was the worst.




Sources:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189
http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/auschwitzeng.html
http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=9&limit=1&limitstart=3