The effects of concentration camps during the Holocaust on the people who lived in them - Essay Example

?During the Second World War, the German Nazis deported millions of Jews from European Ghettos, particularly in Poland and transported those Jews to forced labour camps and later extermination camps. Once there, they were selected based on their ability to work. Age, gender and other supporting factors determined where you were selected to go. Millions of Jews were enslaved, exploited for scientific experiments, murdered and subjected to a number of atrocities.1 This “widespread destruction of the Jews” has been recorded in history as the Holocaust.2 However, while the Jews were subjected to the greater number of atrocities, other nationalities and ethnic groups received comparable treatment by virtue of the Nazi’s concentration camps. The concentration (labour) camps in particular were established in German conquered and occupied areas and thus included the Poles, French, Czechs, Dutch, Yugoslavians, Belgians and any other nationalities in the conquered and occupied countries.3 The majority of prisoners however were Jews and Gypsies who were primarily destined for the extermination camps.4 Once the Second World War ended, many healthcare professionals came into contact with the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. Accounts of the effects of the concentration camps during the holocaust and the people who lived in them began to emerge.5 German camps were divided into three types: extermination, concentration and labour camps. Extermination camps were designed to murder masses of human beings primarily through gas chambers. Auschwitz-Birkenau served a dual purpose in that healthy Jews were put to work and only temporarily spared the gas chambers. All others were murdered. As a result, those confined to the concentration camps were confronting the prospect of death on a daily basis and otherwise witnessing the merciless killings of their loved ones.6 The largest forced labour camps were located in Germany at Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler. Although the forced labour was designed for economic aspirations, conditions did not reflect this. Prisoners were primarily engaged in the production of bricks and other construction materials. The death rate increased as working and living conditions continued to deteriorate. For example the death rate at Dachau camp in Germany was 4% in 1938. But by 1942 the death rate increased to 36%.7 The work was characterized by “victimization and terror”.8 Victims were forced to work to the point of “exhaustion” and were not provided with basic working equipment.9 Through the constant inflow of prisoners, the camps became unbearably overcrowded so that living conditions were subhuman.10 A report by one survivor reflects the magnitude of the victims’ struggle to survive in Nazi concentration camps. Elie Cohan, a Jewish physician from the Netherlands, whose parents had been killed in Auschwitz, was sent along with his wife and children to camps in Amersfort and then to Westerbork. Cohen’s life was spared because he was a doctor and the Nazis needed his services. When his wife offended a German Jew, Cohen and his family were immediately transported to Auschwitz where his family was put to death in the gas chambers immediately after arrival. Cohen however was not accorded time to grieve and had to work immediately with little food and water. When he was liberated he weighed less than 80 pounds and was described as “someone on the threshold of death”.11 The effects of living in a concentration camp regardless of whether it was a death camp or a labour camp appear to be entirely the same for all inhabitants.12 Inmates were shaved, dressed in standard inmate attire and forced to wear a tattoo for identification. This forced the people living in the concentration camps to lose all identity and essentially dehumanized them. Even when the Second World War came to an end and the concentration camps were forced to close because of the approaching allied forces, the taste of freedom was also bitter and just as horrifying as incarceration.13The people who survived the camps had no homes to return to and often had lost their families. Returning to the lives they once lived was not an option anymore. They were forced to start their lives over with nothing. Since food and water were non-existent and the temperatures were freezing, many survivors did not have the strength and means to survive once they were free. In order to cope, prisoners typically reflected on their past lives and idealized about the future. Many fanaticised about a Utopian existence once they were free. They were convinced that having been subjected to so much “injustice, and such incredible terror and horror” the world outside the barbed wires could only hold a future of “goodness among and between peoples”.14 It has been reported that upon first exposure to the horrors of the concentration camps, inmates typically experienced: ...a terrifying trauma of such degree that it resulted in a paralyzing panic with loss of rational thinking; the mind dissociated itself from the unbearable reality.15 Systematically exposed to emotional and physical forms of torture, victims were forced to adjust “all their mental and physical resources to the struggle for survival”.16 As a result, the people living in concentration camps experienced a “mental and emotional paralysis” which was “accompanied by increased activation of instinctive behaviour reactions”.17 Under ordinary circumstances, the victim would develop a “fight or flight” reaction.18 However, the atrocities experienced and witnessed in the concentration camps during the Holocaust were not ordinary confined situations. In hopes of survival, these victims had to dissociate themselves from the life that they were forced to live. Others lost their faith in god or sense of religion, which was part of the goal in dehumanizing them. Revolts were isolated because many of those who lived in the camps were aware that escaping did not always mean survival. They were fully aware that as refugees anti-Semites who wanted to finish the job that was started were still hunting them. Even if they were lucky enough to avoid the Nazis, they knew that they would have to live in a world were virtually all Jews were either gone or living under the threat of disapproval. Therefore non-Jews would not be willing to offer them much help, if at all.19 There are many reports of long-term effects both physical and emotional on those who lived in and experienced the Holocaust from behind the barbed wires of the camps. No matter what type of camp, none of the victims were spared the mortification associated with the inhumane, cruel and unusual treatment. Those who survived have perhaps suffered the worst as they were forced to live with the memory of their experiences and the memory of the tragic fate of their loved ones. Survivors were not given anytime to grieve, they were expected to witness the murder of loved ones and report to work as if they were animals. Prisoners were stripped of all humanity. This was evident by the denial of all things human, from individual identity to human dignity. The ideology of the Nazis with regards to the forced labour and concentration camps was to dehumanize people as quickly as possible. Guards when referring to the prisoners did not use names, food was substandard, water was not provided on hot days, or proper clothing on cold days. Shooting someone for no reason was the game played to keep you on your toes. Your life was nothing and could be taken from you at any given moment. Most Holocaust survivors continue with daily nightmares and odd habits that have plagued them since liberation. These habits are now called post dramatic stress syndrome. Bibliography 1. Browning, C. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, 1998. 2. Eitinger, L. “The Concentration Camp Syndrome and Its Late Sequaelae.” Cited in Dimsdale, J. (Ed.). Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators: Essays on the Nazi Holocaust. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 1980. 3. Freidlander, H. “The Nazi Camps.” Cited in Grobman, A.; Landes, D. and Milton, S. (Eds.). Genocide, Critical Issues of the Holocaust: A Companion to the Film, Genocide. West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, Inc., 1983. 4. Kremer, S. L. Holocaust Literature: Agosin to Lentin. London, UK: Routledge, 2003. 5. Stienbacher, S. “The Concentration and Extermination Camps of the Nazi Regime.” Cited in Friedman, J. (Ed.). The Routledge History of the Holocaust. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011. 6. Wagner, J. “Work and Extermination in the Concentration Camps.” Cited in Caplan, J. and Wachsmann, N. (Eds.). Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2010. 7. Yahil, L.; Friedman, I. and Galai, H. The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932-1945. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991. Read More