Derrick 1

Shannon Derrick

Mr. Neuburger

English Composition 101

07 March 2011

Annotated Bibliography

Holocaust – The Five Death Camps

Bülow, Louis. "Nazi KZ Camps." Gates To Hell. N.p., n.d. Web. 2008.

The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during the Nazi genocide. In
1933, nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe. By 1945, two out of every three
European Jews had been killed. The number of children killed in the Holocaust is not know, but
estimated in the range of 1.5 million. Never before in history had children been singled out for
destruction for no other reason than having been born. KZ Dachau was the first concentration
camp established by the Nazis in 1933. The camps first inmates were primarily social
Democrats, Communists, criminals, homosexuals, and other vagrants. It was after the invasion
of the Soviet Union in 1941 that the Germans started targeting the Jews for mass extermination.
Killing evolved from shooting massive numbers of Jews and Gypsies in open fields and ravines
to specially organized mass murdering facilities.

Although this is a short article, it is very interesting reading.

"Chelmno Death Camp." Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. N.p., n.d. Web. 2007.

The death camp in the village of Chelmno in the Kolo County in central Poland became
operational on 8 December 1941. The entire Jewish population from the Warthegau  was to be
exterminated there by means of poisonous gases. The location for the Chelmno camp was
chosen for several reasons. It was close to railway which made it easy to transport the prisoners.
It was hidden in the trees which reduced it’s visibility and kept out unwanted visitors. The Ner
River ran on one side of the camp which presented a natural barrier which made it difficult for
prisoners to escape. The first victims to die by poisonous gas happened on December 8, 1941.
They were from a nearby Ghetto in Kolo, and were told that they were being transported to
another facility to work on the railway. Killings were performed daily by rushing the victims
down a ramp and into the back of a truck where they were gassed with the fumes from the
vehicle. This practice was carried out from December 8, 1941 thru the spring of 1943. A total of
180,000 Jews and 4,300 Gypsies were killed and exterminated before the camp was shut down
on April 7, 1943.

A great website with lots of information about the extermination methods and practices of the
camp.
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Fischer, Ralph. "Holocaust Survivor Ralph Fischer Testimony." USCShoahFoundation. Ed.

Mary Rothschild. N.p., 5 Feb. 1996. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

Ralph Fischer was born November 28, 1922. He grew up in a conservative Jewish home with 1
brother and 2 sisters. His grandparents had passed before he was born, but he still enjoyed the
company of a large extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. He attended a private school
and was considered to be in the upper middle class of society. On the first day of the war in
September, 1939, he remembers the planes flying overhead and was excited at first not realizing
what was going on. Because the city he lived in was highly populated with Germans, they were
not bombed. In 1940, German soldiers moved his family to a Ghetto. He was later taken from
the Ghetto to a concentration camp where we worked building the railways. From there, he was
taken to Auschwitz in 1942 where he found favor with the German guards by volunteering to
work in the bakery and paint the barracks. Ralph had not shown his emotions while living inside
the camp until he passed a group of children being marched to the gas chamber. From
Auschwitz, he was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp where he again found favor in the
guards when he took the initiative to clean and paint the barracks without being told to do so. He
worked at the Mauthausen camp for seven months and was then transported to a camp high in
the Appalachian Mountains where around ten thousand people from all over the world were
working digging out tunnels in the mountain. He again found favor with the guards and was
given the job of loading coal into the locomotive engine. Through ambition and creative
thinking, he was able to better his position in each of the camps and did not suffer from beatings
and starvation like so many of the other prisoners. After the liberation of the Jews, he spent
some time in Paris France where he met is wife and married on January 19, 1947. In 1952, he
was brought to the United States by his uncle where he remained for ten years with his wife and
2 children. He then moved to California and started a lumberyard business. His is now a
professor at Berkley University. His message to his grandchildren is “Try to be somebody, be
honest, and you will survive and live a happy life.”

Ralph’s testimony shows that you have the ability to change your fate by not giving up and being
creative. This is a very encouraging testimony of a man that wouldn’t settle for the worst.

Levy, Ursula. "Holocaust Survivor Ursula Levy Testimony." USCShoahFoundation. Ed. Marie

Kaufman. N.p., 3 Mar. 1997. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

Ursula Levy was 4 years old when her father was taken out of their home and put into a
concentration camp. He returned after a few months suffering from starvation and a gangrene
infection in his leg, and passed away a few days later. This scared her mother so much that she
started writing letters to her uncle in America because she feared for the lives of her children.
Her mother made the decision to send Ursula and her brother George to a home for
underprivileged Dutch children. Because they were Jews, they were hid among the other
children. There were about one hundred girls and one hundred boys in the home, and only 5 of
them for from a full Jewish background. Ursula and George were the only 2 Jewish children that
survived. Although she missed her parents greatly, she enjoyed playing in the woods with the
other children each day after lunch. In April of 1943, Nazi soldiers arrived at the convent and
had Ursula and George sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. On her 8th birthday, she
was visited by Mr VanNachlenburg, a man from the home that she had lived in for the last 5
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years. He brought her food and chocolates as a gift. He also told the Nazi soldier that she wasn’t
100% Jewish, her father was American. Because of this, she was saved from the Auschwitz
concentration camp where she would have been killed immediately because of her age. They
were placed in a camp with the privileged Jews that were actually diamond cutters. They were
fed well and did not suffer the persecution that the rest of the Jewish children endured. There
she was impressed by the positive outlook that the French women had. They would try to make
themselves pretty by wearing makeup and having a positive outlook. They would also sing each
day while they worked. They were loaded onto another train and taken from Bergen-Belsen
camp where they spent 13 days inside the train car. Of the 2600 people on the train, 2000 of
them died from starvation or Typhoid. They actually had opportunities to escape, but because
they had lost the ability to reason, they didn’t even think of it. On the 13th day, she heard many
people screaming, :”we are free.” She then saw several Russian soldiers overtaking the German
soldiers. The Russian soldiers lined up the dead along the railway and told the living that they
were free to go, and that therer was a little town just down the road that they could live in. All of
the houses were empty so they could just pick one. After a few months, they were taken back to
Holland where they lived with Mr. VanNachlenburg again. It was at this time that Ursula found
out that her mother had died in a concentration camp. On April 14, 1947, Ursula and George
were flown to New Jersey where they would live with their aunt and uncle. Her aunt tried to
convince her to change her name because Levy was Jewish and this would just cause her
problems. She did not want to do this, but went along with her aunt until she was 40 years old,
and changed her name back. Ursula is proud of her heritage and is not ashamed of her past. She
has spoken at high schools and believes that there is a lot people can learn from the Holocaust.
She believes that the love, caring, and nurturing she received from her parents was something
that has helped her cope with her life. She is proud to be a part of a culture that lives their lives
forgiving people and not leading a life of revenge.

A very inspiring story about a young girl that was lucky enough to be found by someone that
cared for her and protected her. Although she endured much suffering, she does not live a life of
hatred towards the German people.

"Majdanek." Aktion Reinhard Camps. Majdanek Memorial Archive, 18 June 2006. Web. 9 Mar.

2011.

The combined concentration / extermination camp Majdanek was built in September 1941. The
camp was located only 3 kilometers south of the Lublin centre and is named after the suburb of
Majdan Tatarski. At its beginning, the camp consisted of Soviet POWs and Jewish prisoners
from the ghetto districts of Lublin. It is estimated that 300,000 prisoners passed through the
camp and approximately 78,000 of them died due to starvation, exhaustion, illness, or
extermination. In the center of the camp held ten fields, each holding twenty barracks for
prisoners, and two barracks for equipment. In three gas chambers, people were killed mostly by
carbon-monoxide. Their hair and belongings were sold, and bodies cremated after death.

This is a very informative website that I enjoyed reading.

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Niss, Caren K. "Treblinka (Poland)." International Center for Holocaust Studies, 28 2011. Web.

2011.

The Treblinka killing centers were located near the small villages of Treblinka and Malkinia
along the main railway of Warsaw-Bialystok. Treblinka I was established in November 1941, as
a forced labor camp for the Jews. The majority of the laborers worked in a nearby gravel pit. In
July, 1942, the Operation Reinhard authorities completed the construction of a killing center
know as Treblinka II. The killing center was heavily wooded and hidden from view. The
primary method of killing was carbon monoxide poisoning. The victims were ran through a
barbed wire path know as “the tube” which led to a large holding chamber. They were told they
were being led in for showering but were actually being led to the slaughter. Once inside, an
engine located outside the chamber was turned on and the victims were killed. Jews that were
too weak or sick to walk were taken to the side and told they would receive medical treatment.
Once taken away, they were shot by the guards. A total of 750,000 people would die in the gas
chambers of Treblinka between July 1942 and April 1943.

This is a great article that describes the layout and methodology of the Treblinka camps.

Peter Setkiwicz, Auschwitz III-Monowitz Concentration Camp, Tuesday, 10 June 2008

Auschwitz III was the camp that was ran as a true labor prison. The camp was built between the
eastern part of Oswiecim and the villages of Dwory and Monowice because of the favorable
geological conditions, access to railways, water supply, and the availability of raw materials such
as coal, lime, and salt. The main purpose of the camp was to produce synthetic rubber (Buna)
and fuels. Auschwitz III continued to quickly expand and grew into the largest of the three
camps at Auschwitz. By July 1944, the camp held over 11,000 Jews. The growth occurred
despite a high mortality rate in the camp. Around 10,000 Jews lost their lives as a result of
malnutrition and poor living conditions.

Excellent resource with lots of information about the camp.

Piper, Franciszek. "The Building and Expansion of Auschwitz Concentration Camp." Memorial

and Museum - AUSCHWITZ BURKENEAU. Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w

Oświęcimiu, n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2011.

The infrastructure of Auschwitz consisted of 22 brick buildings. Over time, the camp expanded
in overall size as well as its organizational structure. At its peak in the summer of 1944,
Auschwitz covered about 40 sq. km. in the core area, and more than forty branch camps spread
through an area of about one hundred kilometers. About 135 thousand prisoners occupied the
Auschwitz complex, which accounted for 25% of all the people in the entire concentration camp
system. From the date of its founding in 1940, to the spring of 1942, Auschwitz was exclusively
a concentration camp. In the beginning, the killings were primarily due to starvation. From the
spring of 1942 until October of 1944, the camp simultaneously became the largest center for the
immediate, mass killing of Jews.
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A very informative website that states a lot of detail about the Auschwitz camp and how it was
ran.

"Sorbibor (Poland)." Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d.

Web. 2011.

Sobibor was established in 1942 under the command of Franz Stangl. The camp was divided
into three parts; an administrative section, barracks and storage, and extermination, burial, and
cremation sections. There were three 12’ x 12’ gas chambers that held around 180 people.
Approximately 100,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor before the camp was shut down for
repairs to the railway. Once the camp was re-opened, another 150,000 Jews were exterminated.
It’s estimated that 250,000 Jews were exterminated in a 12 month period.

This website gave only a top line overview of the Sobibor camp.

Stone, Dan. "Beyond the Auschwitz Syndrome." EBSCOhost. N.p., July 2010. Ozark Technical

College EBSCOhost. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

Beyond the Auschwitz Syndrome discusses the operations of camps such as Belzec, Sobibor,
and Treblinka as well as local organizations in the countries of Romania, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Because more Jews were killed in Auschwitz than any other camp, it gets the notoriety as “the
capital of the Holocaust,” but there were many other locations that developed through Western
Europe as the antisemetic belief that the Jews were taking over Germany grew. It’s discussed
that greed and thievery grew among the gentiles to the point that people began killing Jews on
their own just for their possessions. It was discovered that the Romanian government took it
upon themselves to solve “the Jewish question” on their own. The “Final Solution” was
developed at different times as a result of interaction between local commanders and directives
from Berlin.

This is a great article that takes a look at the motives and thought processes of antisemitic
groups throughout Europe.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. March

8, 2011

The Auschwitz concentration camp was the largest of the five camps. The camp was opened in
1939 and was initially used as a forced labor facility. In May 1940, Auschwitz II was opened,
and in October 1942, Auschwitz III was opened. In November 1943, it was declared that
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz-Monowitz would become independent concentration camps.
Auschwitz I remained as the headquarter for maintaining prisoner records and managing prisoner
labor deployment. In November 1944, Auschwitz I and II were combined and Auschwitz III was
renamed the Monowitz concentration camp.

A very informative website about the administrative aspects of the Auschwitz camps.
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Vogelsant, Peter, Larsen, Brian B.M., Extermination Camps, The Danish Center for Holocaust

and Genocide Studies, 2002 Web.

Five extermination camps were established from December 1941 to December 1942 for the
purpose of eliminating and disposing of the Jewish prisoners. All of the extermination camps
were strategically organized to efficiently dispose of the Jewish people. Camps were placed near
railways, yet far from the core of Germany to reduce the amount of publicity to the public that
would reveal of the camps true purpose. Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkeneau
and Majdanek were the five main extermination camps. Each of these camps resembled
industrial plants due to the ability to exterminate and dispose of massive amounts of people in a
very organized and systematic way.

This article gives a brief overview of each extermination camp and its purpose.

Wikipedia contributors. "Auschwitz concentration camp." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 8 Mar. 2011. Web. 9 Mar. 2011.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau, also known as the extermination camp, began in October 1941 to ease
congestion at the main camp. It was designed to hold several different categories of prisoners
and to function as an extermination camp. The first two gassing chambers were brick cottages
that were converted by sealing up the walls. Later, the mortuary and crematorium was converted
into a killing factory by sealing up the doors and using a gas called Zyklon B. The Nazis decided
to continue expanding the killing factory, and later built three more gassing chambers. By June
1943, all four of the gassing chambers were in full operation. The camp was mainly staffed by
prisoners that would help sort incoming prisoners and remove corpses from the chambers after
extermination.

A good website that is very informative about Auschwitz II