Barracks In Nazi Germany

The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and Kaustors (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an alter. Since 1945, the mass murder of 6 million Jews by the German Nazi regime during the second world war became the new, horrible, meaning of the word “Holocaust”. The leader during this horrible time period was, anti-Semitic Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. To Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, and even an alien threat to German racial purity and community. In Hitler’s “final solution”, he decided the best way to get rid of all of these “aliens” would be with a mass killing centrally constructed in concentration camps of occupied Poland.
Jews lives were interrupted at their homes, forced to get …show more content…
In autumn of 1941 is when the brick barracks were constructed. Very often more than 700 Jews would be placed in each of them, but the Germans originally intended the barracks to house only 40. Depended on the number of transports arriving that day, will affect the total number of Jews in each barracks. Straw was spread over the wooden bunks for the Jews to sleep on. The floors were earth and there were very few sanitary facilities. The wooden barracks had once been stables. These “stables” let in bitterly cold winds because the walls were thin and had gaps at the top and bottom. The functionaries or Kapos (head of the block) had two rooms in the front of the house. These barracks had a row of skylights at the top of the roof, but had no windows. Each block had wooden three-tiered bunks, which the Jews slept on or under a thin blanket or rag on mattresses. They provided each barrack with two stoves with a brick-heating flue running between them, but absolutely no fuel to fuel it. As a result, to no heat, many Jews died during the extreme cold of the Polish …show more content…
The Jews are given their morning “meal” imitation coffee or herbal tea, after morning roll call. For the lunch meal, the Jews were given a litre of watery soup. If they were lucky, they might find a piece of turnip or potato peal. After they work all day and come back to their barracks completely exhausted, that is when they luckily got their evening meals. For the evening meals, they received a piece of black bread, weighing three hundred grams, together with a tiny piece of sausage, or margarine, marmalade or cheese. The Jews would try to hide their bread on them whilst they sleep, so that they would have some to get them through the morning. The lack od food, poor diet and hard labor caused the Jews to suffer from starvation and sickness. The loss of weight and muscle tissue cause many thousands to die. Others became too weak to work and were then murdered in the gas chambers. In the camp, Auschwitz-birkenau, the conditions were worse because it was built on a swamp. Therefore, the barracks were damp, and lice and rats were everywhere. As a result, the spread of a contagious disease is