Matthew Bailey

UWRT 1102-009
Wertz-Orbaugh
1/11/15
My Holocaust Knowledge
There are several things that I have learned about the Holocaust over the years from
different things such as documentaries, classes, and movies I have seen. The main goal of the
Holocaust was for the Nazis to eradicate everyone that did not fall under the category of the
supreme race. Hitler himself especially did not like the Jews because of experiences that he had
with them while he was younger. This is why the Jews were the main victims of the Holocaust
and their treatment was especially brutal. At the beginning of WWII Hitler ordered the Nazis
along with local police of occupied areas to gather up the Jews and take them to concentration
camps.
At these camps the occupants were forced into labor, were starved, and were not allowed
water. Many of the people of the camps were gathered up and taken to gas chambers where they
were killed and put into mass graves. Many Jews were also forced into incinerators where their
bodies were burned up into ash. The treatment of the people who were kept alive was much
more brutal than the ones that were put to death. When they were forced into labor they
normally worked all day and were treated brutally. Some of the occupants of concentration
camps were experimented on like lab rats and the Nazis performed brutal procedures on them.
The SS were like Hitlers special task force when it came to tracking down and capturing
Jews to be taken back to concentration camps. Many times they would visit homes to conduct
searches to find Jews that were hiding in their homes. Many times if these Nazis found the Jews

or evidence that they were their the Jews would not only be taken away but many times the
family that was protecting them would also be either arrested or killed on the spot. Many of the
Jews that went into hiding would hide in floor boards or attics. One great example of this is Ann
Frank, where she had to hide in a small attic from the Nazis. But like in many cases she was
caught and taken to Auschwitz which has become possibly the most well know and infamous of
the concentration camps.
The conditions that the occupants of the camps were horrific. Hundreds of Jews were
forced into tiny houses where they were given bunks that were stacked four tall and were barely
wide enough to lay down. There was also disease along with the starvation of the people. They
were rarely allowed to bathe and were most likely not given any type of toiletries so the
conditions that they had to live in were severe and disgusting.
All occupants of concentration camps were given ID numbers that were tattooed on their
arms and many camps would sew gold stars onto the Jews clothes in order to easily identify who
were in fact Jews. Out of the ones that did survive those tattoos would be a lasting mark that
would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
After the war and when many of the British and American forces got into these
concentration camps they witnessed firsthand what had happened to the occupants of these
camps. They saw what many of them would most likely describe as walking skeletons of what
was left of the people that were in the camps. They also came to find the mass graves,
incinerators, and gas chambers. The Jews were surrounded by death and decay. Thousands of
them did not make it out of the camps alive and the Nazi holocaust is considered to be one of if
not the worst genocide in history.