Dominic Prentice

Ms. Schmidt
Honors English
3/7/2017
Source Night
Night was about a Jewish boy named Elie Wiesel who had suffered in what is now called
the Holocaust. In the beginning, he was in a town which was slowly losing their rights and
eventually being gathered in to ghettos. He was inside the ghetto with his mother, father, and his
sister Tzipora when they were put on a train heading for one of the biggest concentration camps
Auschwitz. From what Elie said about the camp it begins with a selection and if you cannot work
then you are sent to your death at the gas chambers or to be burned. Elie was first sent to the first
part of Auschwitz known as the torture camps. This place is where they begin to torture and
starve the people and where do not survive. After that you are taken to a labor camp where you
work until death or liberation. In Auschwitz, the only food you received was a piece of bread and
soup. It was in places like this where people faced real starvation and many people truly felt
suffering. When Elie was in the camp you could see how quickly he had changed from the
person he once was. When they had gotten to the labor camp he had seen his father being hit by
SS officers many of times but now he barely even blinked when it had occurred. You can see
how much Auschwitz and this torture had changed Elie and the millions of other people who
were tortured inside these camps.

Source 1
Auschwitz was one of the largest Nazi camps ever built and it was a concentration and
death camp. At Auschwitz 1.1 million people were killed most of them Jews. Auschwitz was
conducted on April 27th 1940 and it quickly became the largest camp with 45 sub camps. This
place housed labor prisoners, gas chambers, and were where they conducted many lab
experiments on people. When you first arrived, you would be selected and if you went to the left
it meant that you would be sent to the gas chambers and if sent to the right then that meant you
would work in a labor camp. Most of the people who arrived at Auschwitz went to the left so
they would disguise the gas chamber as showers so that nobody would panic or revolt. Then once
everyone was inside the Nazis would throw in Zyklon-B pellets which would kill quickly but not
instantaneous. Then once the gas clears and everyone is dead a man who was called the
sonderkommando would go in and clean up the dead bodies. When sent to the right you would
be sent to dehumanizing forced labor and would be tortured. All your belongings were stripped
from you and your hair was completely shaved off. they would receive a roll call in the morning
then they would march to work and when they got back there was another roll call. In Auschwitz
food was scarce they would receive only a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. At Auschwitz, they
conducted many medical experiments on people like twins, dwarves, or anyone who had
something unique about themselves. In this article, it gives many facts about this horrific place
and lets us know that we should always remember what had happened here.
 Source 2
Treblinka was first established as a forced labor camp in 1941 and was located northeast
of Warsaw. They began the first evacuation of the Warsaw ghettos on July 23rd 1942 and, they
finished the upper camp which would house the machinery that would kill thousands. Like most
other death camps Treblinka would have a specific routine so that no one would revolt and they
would detail some of the camp so that it would support the lie of Jewish resettlement. When they
had first arrived at the camp they would hear a speech by an SS officer that tells them that they
had arrived at a transit camp. Prisoners were moved to barracks where their heads would be
shaved. Treblinka had started out with 3 gas chambers but quickly expanded to at least 6 of them.
They were inside of a brick building where they appeared to look as showers. They even had
fake shower head inside so no one would panic. Then once they get inside they drop the gas and
for some people it took a long time to die because of how many people were packed so tightly
inside the room. There were many acts of resistance inside of Treblinka which caused some
deaths of SS officers and Ukrainians. The biggest resistance was an underground one where they
planned to take guns from the armory and destroy as many things as possible so others could
escape. Then in the fall of 1943 evacuation began because armies were beginning to close in on
the camp so they ordered to have the camp destroyed. If you visit Treblinka today you will
receive a very emotional experience and will see for yourselves the horror of the Holocaust.
Source 3
At the start of World War 2 Hitler put in plan something known as the final solution. This
was made to destroy all the Jews and he would also kill anyone else who was unfit for Nazi
Germany. To complete this mission Hitler ordered death camps to be built. These camps sole
purpose was to kill the people who entered in this place. Auschwitz opened in the spring of 1940
and was arguably one of the largest camps. It was located on a former military base outside of a
town in southern Poland. If you lived somewhat near the camp, they would force you to leave
then bulldoze your home. Auschwitz was originally a labor camp until Hitler gave the order of
the Final Solution then it turned into a death camp because of its location. However not everyone
who arrived at Auschwitz was killed because they also had the labor camps but if you were
deemed unfit to work then you would be killed in gas chambers. At the peak of its operation it
had several divisions. Birkenau was one of its largest divisions and could house thousands of
people and had several gas chambers. By mid-1942 most people sent to Auschwitz were Jewish.
Upon arrival, you would be looked at and either sent to your death (Left) or sent to the work
camps (Right). They told them they would be taken to showers but once everyone was inside
they would drop Zyklon-B gas inside of the showers. For the people who were sent to labor
camps they lived in very brutal conditions where they would receive barely any food and would
be dehumanized by SS officers. Some prisoners here were subject to medical experiment where
they would experience excruciating pain. For example, to study eye color he would inject serum
into childrens eyes which caused a lot of pain. Near the end of 1944 they began to destroy
evidence of the things that had happened in these camps. When the Soviet Union was close they
ordered a death march to a camp thousands of miles away. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz,
they found about 7,000 prisoners left behind. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million
to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of
operation.

Citation

History.com Staff. "Auschwitz." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 06 Mar.

2017. 1

"Treblinka Shtetl FRONTLINE." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. "A Closer Look at Auschwitz, the Infamous Death Camp." ThoughtCo.

N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2017. 2

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print. 4