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Nick Paulson

Miss Schmidt

Honors English 9

February 24, 2018

PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/killing/

The very first method the Nazis used to execute prisoners of the concentration camps was

a firing squad. This was done at very close proximity to the condemned person, and

eventually Nazi officers began to worry about the psychological effect that this was

having on their men. As such, new methods of killing were developed to replace this one.

One of these methods was the gas chamber. The Nazis allegedly had the idea for these

chambers when a drunk soldier almost died from car exhaust. He then convinced others

that gassing would be an excellent method of killing. Originally, the gas chamber was

simply a showerhead through which carbon monoxide was pumped through, and this

would kill the prisoners in the chamber. However, eventually this gas was replaced by a

much more effective one; Zyklon B. It was originally a disinfectant, but when exposed to

hot air, Zyklon B became lethal to humans. Another gas-using method the Nazis used

was gas vans. Prisoners would be led to the windowless back of the van, and it would

drive around, and the exhaust fumes eventually killed the prisoners. The bodies were then

taken to a crematorium and burned, or they were buried.

Though effective, gas chambers and gas vans had one major flaw; they left bodies. As

such, the Nazis built crematoria in order to dispose of these bodies, thereby covering up
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their heinous crimes. Some of the first crematoria were in Auschwitz, where there were

four crematoria and 46 individual ovens.

“The Nazi Concentration Camps.” Executions | The Nazi Concentration Camps,

www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/themes/executions.html.

Even before World War II, there were many Nazi death camps. Before the war, however,

executions in these camps had to be approved by a court, but unauthorized murders,

carried out by the SS, happened anyway. However, in 1938, SS were given permission to

carry out executions, as long as a court had given the death sentence. Then, in World War

II, Hitler began to openly kill without permission. He turned concentration camps into

death camps.

Within the death camps, there were two reasons why people were killed. One was that

they were too weak to work. These prisoners were often selected by doctors, such as Dr.

Mengele or Dr. Mennecke, for various medical experiments. Deaths at the hands of

doctors included poison, infection, burning, and sometimes torture. The doctors and their

sponsors saw the prisoners they experimented on as nothing but guinea pigs. The other

reason for killing was if a prisoner was a prisoner of war. These prisoners were often

killed using poison gas.

Besides these reasons, other prisoners were killed for various other reasons. Usually, they

would do something wrong, and would often be publicly executed by hanging. The Nazis

were cruel and utterly merciless in their treatment of prisoners.

www.auschwitz.org. “AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU.” Polski, auschwitz.org/en/history/punishments-and-

executions/executions/.
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In the concentration camps, almost every error could be punishable by death. Sometimes

prisoners were killed simply for taking more than their allotted portion of food.

Sometimes prisoners were sent to the camps already with death sentences and would

inevitably be killed. Some people were killed simply because their nation was viewed as

a threat to Nazi Germany.

There were many different methods the Nazis used to kill their prisoners. One of them

was the firing squad. In Auschwitz at least, before being executed, prisoners were

stripped naked, and men and women were executed separately. This is likely the same for

other concentration camps. However, this method was eventually abandoned, and

replaced with a more effective one; the gas chamber. However, there were other methods

still in use. For example, the Nazis used public hangings to intimidate prisoners. Another

method that was authorized later was starvation. This was not quite as frequent as the

others and was only used is prisoners escaped. If this happened, other prisoners would be

selected to be starved until the escapees were recaptured. If they were never recaptured,

then the selected prisoners starved to death. However, this method was abandoned in

1943 after 2 years of use.

Berenbaum, Michael. “Holocaust.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7

Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust#ref716660.

Prior to the extermination camps, Nazis had to travel all over the country in order to find

and kill Jews. Extermination camps were made to be essentially a better method of

killing. Now, more Jews could be killed easier. Extermination camps, as opposed to other

concentration camps, existed for only one purpose; killing.

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The primary method of killing used by the Nazis in the extermination camps was the gas

chamber. Originally, the gas chamber was a van which drove around and killed the

prisoners inside of it with exhaust. These were used at Chelmno, which was the very first

concentration camp. However, later gas chambers were stationary things, and originally,

they used carbon monoxide to kill inmates. Later though, Auschwitz started to use

Zyklon B, which was later adopted by the other camps. Bodies from the gas chambers

were sent to crematoria.

Not all the camps killed the same number of Jews. The numbers vary drastically from

camp to camp. For example, Treblinka killed 700,000 prisoners, while in Sobibor

250,000 were killed. Despite its massive number of dead prisoners, Treblinka was only

operational for 17 months. All over Europe during the Holocaust, many Jews were

massacred, some by the Nazis, and some by native people of various countries.

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2006.

Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoire which his story of how he was taken to Auschwitz

during the Holocaust. In it, Wiesel is taken from his home in Hungary and taken to a

ghetto, and later taken to Birkenau, which is one of the three camps in Auschwitz. Once

there, his mother and sister are taken from him, likely sent to the crematorium. He and his

father go through three different concentration camps; Birkenau, Buna, and Gleiwitz

before they are freed.

In this memoire, Wiesel describes several cruel methods of execution the Nazis used. The

first one he sees is the crematorium. Wiesel says that he saw the Germans throw babies
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into the furnaces, and towards the end his father was presumably taken there. He also

says that prisoners were shot for minor things, like attempting to take and extra portion of

soup. Also, Wiesel said that they were forced to watch as several of their fellow prisoners

were hanged at gallows. Another way prisoners were killed was not directly the fault of

the Nazis at all. While being forced to march from camp to camp, some very tired

prisoners fell. They were trampled by their fellow prisoners, who at that point only cared

about their own survival. Some of them also died of cold.

Wiesel’s story tells of the cruelest part of Nazi Germany; the Holocaust. He tells of all

the horrors of the concentration camps, from near starvation to murder. While Wiesel

himself survived, and was eventually freed by American soldiers, he also remembers that

most of the prisoners did not escape, including his father.