concentration camps

Concentration Camps

The chambers, the bodies, the prisoners.

Prisoner forced to

stand in one spot for a long period of time

as a punishment.

Prisoners standing during Roll Call

Confiscated Hair Brushes

Warehouse overflowing with clothes

Women’s hair, shaved before they were gassed, put in bundles to ship. Over 7,000 kilos were found in Auschwitz at liberation.

More hair, marked and labeled for shipping.

Ruins of a crematorium

Door of a gas chamber in Auschwitz.

Execution Wall

Human remains in a crematorium.

American soldiers executed SS Officers outside of the crematorium.

Prisoner subjected to low-pressure

experimentation. The Germans did

this to see how high of an altitude the

German pilots could go without passing out or having side

effects.

Dr. Shilling, here on trial, infected over 1,000 prisoners with Malaria. He was condemned to death and hung. Before he died, he asked if he could finish his

experiments and make notes of his observations for the sake of science.

Josef Mengele, German physician and SS captain. In

1943, he was named SS garrison physician of

Auschwitz. In that capacity, he was responsible for the

differentiation and selection of those fit to work and

those destined for gassing. Mengele also carried out

human experiments on camp inmates, especially twins.

A war crimes investigation photo of the disfigured leg of

a survivor from Ravensbrueck, Polish

political prisoner Helena Hegier (Rafalska), who was

subjected to medical experiments in 1942. This

photograph was entered as evidence for the prosecution

at the Medical Trial in Nuremberg. The disfiguring scars resulted from incisions made by medical personnel

that were purposely infected with bacteria, dirt, and

slivers of glass.

Prisoners digging their own graves.

Prisoners being shot.

Civilians being shot into their

grave.

Bodies found by Soviet war crimes investigators.

Funeral for prisoners who did not survive before the liberation of Auschwitz.

Children being kept alive in Birkenau are held behind barbed wire

fences.

Prisoners greeting liberators.

Ch. 6 reflection

• Why do you think this was being ignored by the allies for so long?

• As a Jew and a prisoner, how do you think they felt being liberated?

• How do you think they felt after they realized the allies had ignored the situation for so long?