Death Camps in Germany

The Jewish population was systematically murdered by the Nazi party beginning in the spring of 1941. At this time to walk the streets of your own town, or even eating dinner in your house was dangerous if you were of the Jewish religion. Adolf Hitler viewed the superior race to be pure German. In his attempt to create the perfect race, he felt it was necessary to eliminate all that did not fit his ideal. The Jewish people were the complete opposite of Hitler's idyllic race. In the attempt to exterminate the non-ideal people, or "undesirables" as the Nazi's so chose to call them, he had six death camps created which included: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek (1). These camps served only one function and this function was to kill. The death/extermination camps of the holocaust were effective and served their purpose, which was to exterminate the lives of "undesirables".

A controversial topic such as this would go nowhere without an argument against the point that these camps were effective. Nazi Germany's goal was to kill all the Jews in Europe, and this goal was not achieved. Also in the moral and ethnical issues, killing all those innocent people was wrong and horrible.

Although these arguments have a point, they simply are not valid. Hitler's vision was to exterminate all Jews in Europe, although he did not succeed in total he came close to the big picture. Out of the 3,000,000 Jewish people killed in all the camps together (2) (not only death camps, concentration camps as well), 2,700,000, that's 90%, were killed in the six death camps (3). Although there is a moral issue revolving around the number of people killed, these numbers only prove how effective the camps really were.

Firstly, hard labor was the beginning step to killing the "undesirables". Many however, didn't even make it that far. When the prisoners first arrived at the death camps, some were taken straight to the "showers" which will be discussed later. "For Jews, the ability to work often meant the potential to survive after the Nazis began to implement the Ð''Final Solution'. Jews deemed unable to work were the first to be shot or deported (4)." According to the Nazis, if you couldn't work you were of no use, therefore you shall be killed. During the war, there was an increasing need for workers from the Nazis. Since they were hard to come by, many Jewish prisoners were given the option to work, or be killed. In a particular death camp, the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp of Poland, tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners were put to work at a rubber plant. In this plant, the Jewish prisoners were forced to perform hard labor (5)." This was a very effective move on the Nazi's part because it gave them a way to not pay for their employees, and still get supplies produced. Hard labor was also an effective tool in exterminating the "undesirables" because the Nazi control over the Jewish prisoner's work day was extreme. In 1942, the SS made an eleven hour day mandatory for all Jews. This eleven hour work day also consisted of regular beatings and abuse. Not to mention the rations of for could have starved them to death alone. (6)." Nazis used forced labor to control and to destroy prisoners.

Next, another very successful way of exterminating lives was gas; in particular Zyklon B. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a highly poisonous gas. The street name for this gas is Zyklon B. This gas was used a lot in the death camps by the German Nazi's. In some of the death camps like the ones in Chlelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the Nazi's used sealed room that let the gas seep into them and kill the prisoners. Originally, the Nazi's preferred Carbon Monoxide in the gas chambers until they found that it was en-effective in mass- killings. The Nazi's went in search of a different poisonous gas that would be more appropriate. On September 3, 1941 the Nazis experimented on a group of Russian prisoners of war. The Nazi's wanted to see if Zyklon B was an effective means of mass destruction. At this time the gas was already in use, as a method of fumigation. The testing was effective, and was used in the death camps ever since in the gassing of the "undesirables". Zyklon B was delivered to the camps in crystal pellets. When these pellets combined with the air, they became a highly poisonous gas, in the death camps, a Nazi soldier, who was lucky enough to get a gas mask; would empty these pellets into the