Concentration Camps
"And as they gave me my tattoo number, . . . the SS man came to me, and he says to me, 'Do you know what this number's all about?' I said, 'No, sir.' 'Okay, let me tell you now. You are being dehumanized.'"
- Michael Jacobs, survivor of Auschwitz.
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"New arrivals at the Klagemauer" National Archives and Records Administration. |
The concentration camps were set up by the Nazis as a place to send the "undesirables" in Germany: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, critics of the Nazi government, and many more.
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"Mauthausen disinfecting process" Franz Amicale Collection. |
There were two basic types of camps: work camps and death camps. Work camps made the prisoners work continually with very little sleep or food. The death camps were mainly for the mass execution of the Nazi's enemies. Both had cramped, filthy living conditions.
Ghettos
"This is a fight between a free world and a slave world."
- Vice President Henry A. Wallace
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"Soldiers Supress the Uprising" Central Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation. |
The ghettos were parts of a city that the Nazis closed and put Jews in. The Nazis would isolate Jews from the rest of the world, giving them little food and clothing.
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"Children Sneaking
Through the Warsaw Gates" Archives of Documentary and Film Studio. |
There were over 1,000 ghettos in Axis-controlled territory alone. The German government later forced all ghettos to be destroyed and the people in the ghettos to be killed or put into labor camps. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in Poland. There the Nazis forced 400,000 Jews into 1.3 square miles of city.