by Sophie (Feb 14, 2005)

The 27th January 2005 was the sixtieth anniversary of Auschwitz. So I decided to celebrate it, and to make a presentation of this terrible event.

Many detention areas were built by the Germans to imprison and eliminate the enemies of the state: German communists, socialists, social democrats, Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals and persons accused of asocial or socially deviant behaviour.

The most famous camp established by the Germans is Auschwitz. It was a concentration, extermination and forced-labour camp.

The camp was divided into three sections: Auschwitz I, II and III. They didn't have the same function.

Auschwitz I was the main base and the smallest part of the camp.

Auschwitz II was created to accomodate more prisoners. There were gas chambers and crematoria. It was the largest section of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz III was a small area where the main function was to produce synthetic fuel and rubber.

All around these camps, there were many pits, which were used as graves for thousands of corpses.

 The life of the prisoners was very hard. There was no running water. There were few toilets, and the prisoners could use them only 10 seconds. They were treated likes animals by the Nazis. And children who were born in the camp were immediately killed. Many doctors, especially Josef Mengele, tortured Jewish children and tested drugs on them. He injected chemical substances into the women's wombs which produced horrible pain, and damaged their ovaries.

The Nazis imposed forced labor on prisoners inside the camps and on Jewish civilians outside the camps. Many of them died because the conditions of work were very bad. For example, at the Mauthausen concentration camp, prisoners were forced to run and to carry heavy boulders outside.

Nowadays, we can visit Auschwitz camps. Everything in the camps has been reconstructed (gas chambers, crematoria...). To be on the spot is different from seeing it through pictures.

More on the topic in Julie's article .

If you wish to react to this article, write to the editor.

March 5, 2006

I think it is a good article showing how brutal the Germans were. There is a lot of information about being in Auschwitz. I hope this time will never come back.

Carsten (Balve, Germany)