The Nazi - Annihilation Camps

During World War II, a time of great sorrow and pain, Nazis under Hitler's command committed some of the worst acts in history trying to exterminate the Jewish people and not by any normal execution methods. Hitler put the Jewish people through some of the worst torment in some of the most inhumane settings history has seen. The survivors of the concentration camps have witnessed firsthand the unimaginable treatment that the rest of us couldn't get a glimpse of in our most feared nightmares. Their stories take your imagination to a place it fears to try to understand, a place some consider as the devil's playground.

The Nazi's are responsible for the "annihilation camps in which the inmates are systematically wiped out through starvation and neglect" (130, Arendt). The acts they conceived are a mere reflection of their evil souls at play. Prisoners, mostly captured Jews were very rarely fed and kept with masses that all were starving. Arendt states this in "Total Domination" that "someone may die as the result of systematic torture or starvation, or because the camp is overcrowded" (130). Among the many ways Nazis tortured the Jews, starvation was a key factor and no one was ever without the constant hunger pains once confined inside the camps. Prisoners were nothing more than skin and bones throughout their many days spent in the camps. Starvation was a main execution path to make sure they suffered till their last breath. The Nazis were not ashamed of their actions and as Arendt explains they boasted "proclamations, repeated ad nauseam (To the point of sickness), that the Jews would be exterminated like bedbugs" (126) in Hitler's book which millions of copies were circulated. Not only did they starve the prisoners they also gassed them just as one would spray raid on a worthless roach. One cannot comprehend such treatments but "our experiences with the tormenting hell of totalitarian camps have enlightened us only too well about the possibility of such conditions" (128 Arendt). Those conditions and more did exist and to an extent we will never fully know or understand the terror that did indeed take place.

Not only were prisoners starved and gassed to death they were beaten and tortured by the Nazis day after day. On top of the daily abuse, Arendt states "the real horror of the concentration and extermination camps lies in the fact that the inmates, even if they happen to keep alive, are more effectively cut off from the world of the living than if they had died" (130). They were completely cut off from the outside world, dying hopelessly and treated as if they didn't deserve to be alive. Arendt also points out those prisoners didn't even have a chance from the moment they were captured that "in turn were divided into those whose extermination was immediately on the agenda, as in the case of the Jews" (129). One cannot realize