Concentration Camp/ Holocaust

by simonandliam

What exactly was a prisoner’s day to day schedule at a concentration camp? Why did they have them work and what labor were the doing?

Also, what were some of the experiments they were doing to prisoners and why?

jschooltiger

Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you.

##What Was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to 11-17 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.

##But This Guy Says Otherwise!

Unfortunately, there is a small, but at times vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, "entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."

It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.

##So What Are the Basics?

Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.

The early killings were carried out foremost by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the Einsatzgruppen, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.

By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.

Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.

##The Camps

There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps were later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.

Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.

The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.

Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was a vast complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.

##How Do We Know?

Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. This site catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. I'll end this with a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.

##Further Reading

PeculiarLeah

To address the first part of your question, the schedule of a concentration camp prisoner depended heavily on the camp, or even the labor battalion within a camp. Schedule depended on things like the type of camp [a labor camp, concentration camp, or extermination camp] and also depended on the type of forced labor they were doing. However, some generalities can be described such as early waking, late nights, little to no rest, long periods of standing in what was called the "Appel" to be counted, and extremely long hours of hard labor are generally part of the camp experiences described by Holocaust survivors. Generally work was no less than 10-12 hours a day and often was much, much longer. Waking hours were often extremely early, generally at or before 4:30am. Similarly prisoners were often forced to stay awake late into the night, either at work or roll call. I have worked with one testimony of a former Jewish prisoner in the Hardt camp who was building a highway between Frankfurt-am-Oder and Poznan. He describes being awakened around 2 or 3am, then recieving a breakfast of watery soup at 4am and almost immediatly begining the 20mi march to work, he worked until 9pm where he walked back to camp and was given another small meal. For most forced laborers in labor camps or forced labor units in factories etc. this would have been a fairly typical schedule. The early mornings and 12-16+ hours of work would have been fairly typical, and so sleep deprivation was rampant.

In many camps, including Auschwitz, the day began, and often also ended with a roll call, or "appel" which could often take several hours, and acted as a form of torture for starving, exhausted, prisoners. Prisoners who were ill or injured might be selected during the roll call for murder by gas or shooting. Prisoners were also chosen for death completely at random. Prisoners were often beaten, even murdered during the roll call and any reaction to this violence would lead to more murders. Torture such as beatings and whippings were common. Prisoners were terrified of collapsing from exhaustion during the roll call for fear that they, and those standing next to them, would be murdered. Holocaust survivor Noemi Ban recalls standing on line with the women from her barrack and being held up by four women when she once fainted due to hunger and exhaustion.

Slave labor often took up the majority of a prisoner's waking hours and the types of slave labor performed in concentration camps varied greatly. In some camps the work was in effect useless, and was simply a form of torture. Jewish Majdanek survivor L. Fishman in his testimony refused to call the work he did in Majdanek "work" and insisted that they "did nothing- we were just beaten and murdered from morning until night". When pressed, Fishman describes how he was forced to spend most of his day in Majdanek moving large rocks back and forth across a field. He contrasts this with his period of imprisonment in the Auschwitz subcamp Monowitz where he worked in a locksmith shop. He was still a slave laborer, but for him the psychological torture was lessened because at the very least he had some mental stimulation and was creating something.

In some camps labor was simply torture, moving rocks or digging then refilling ditches. But many were also useful work for the Nazis. Some jobs were what are called "functionaries" or jobs done directly to benefit the Nazis such as being a kapo. Others allowed the camps to function. In death camps this meant sonderkommando to bring people to the gas chambers and burn the bodies afterwards. It meant engineers to service the crematoria, prisoners to shave hair, to sort clothing and stolen possessions, sometimes even doctors to perform autopsies in search of swallowed gold and jewels [which very rarely actually existed]. It even meant goldsmiths to extract gold from fillings in teeth and melt gold into blocks. In concentration camps this might mean making things for the guards and officers, digging drainage ditches, or mining or factory labor for the Nazi war machine. Many concentration and labor camps also supported factories, producing everything from locks to military uniforms and war materials. Forced laborers dug mines, extracted raw materials, built bombs, built airplanes, harvested crops, dug ditches, and made hundreds of other types of materials. Slave labor was done both as a form of torture and a way to extract the maximum amount of wealth from those defined as racially inferior prior to their murder.

~

Testimony of Y. Troman

Testimony of L. Fishman

"Sharing is Healing" by Noemi Ban

"Auschwitz" by Deborah Dwork and Robert van Pelt

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka : the Operation Reinhard Death Camps by Yitzhak Arad

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/ss-concentration-camp-system/daily-routines/

http://auschwitz.org/en/history/life-in-the-camp/the-order-of-the-day

https://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/DayEng.html

http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/themes/daily-life.html