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Under Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, many concentration camps were established across invaded European regions as a way to impose control, further war effort, and execute Nazi evil plan of genocide. Different types of camps were set up for different purposes. The concentration camp was where people were forced to do labor and work to death, which came to be known as the German policy of annihilation through work. Extermination camp, also known as a death camp, was designed “specifically for the systematic killing of ‘undesirables’ including Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally retarded and others”.
Located two miles away from Lublin in Poland and serving as both a concentration and death camp, Majdanek was the first to be liberated by the Soviet troops in July 1944. Alexander Werth was one of the war correspondents accompanying the army. He gave his insight into what it was like to experience the period of liberation. His first impression of seeing the camp from the outside was nothing like what he previously had in mind of it being horrendous and diabolical. Surrounded by barbed-wire fences, the camp appeared quite harmless and nothing out of the ordinary. There were large barracks and guard towers inside the camp. After being taken off the train, men and women were led directly to the building with the sign “Bad und Desinfektion II”. Here, they were asked to undress and take off their valuables to be ready for disinfection. This was done as an effort to create an illusion that gave the victims a false sense of hope before taking them into the gas chambers. Werth asked himself whether anyone suspected or had any idea that they were going to be led to a mass execution when the evidence was right in front of them. Then they entered a dark concrete box with stoned floors and holes in the ceiling. It was dark so none of them could see the gas coming to off. Zyklon B, a pesticide containing hydrogen cyanide that emits toxic fumes when exposed to the air was poured from above and sealed. There were several of these concrete boxes and each box held up 200 or 250 people. All of them were gassed and asphyxiated to death. SS-man used the spyhole in the middle of the heavy steel doors to the gas chambers to observe the killing process.
The invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939 called for the beginning of World War II. Holocaust later became known as one of the most brutal and destructive events in human history. During this time period, Polish Intelligence and several other people who had escaped from their home country tried to reach out to the Allied powers and report to them about the existence of concentration camps and the mass killings committed by Nazi Germany. For this reason, not long after the war started, the Allies already had some idea about the happening of the Holocaust, but they did not believe in the horror and the insane stories told by the Polish people and other escapees from concentration camps. They did not really know the scope of the heinous atrocities being committed. As the Allied forces progressed deeper into European countries, they began confirming the reports and the full extent of something of that magnitude and scale could only begin to be pieced together after the war. The vast majority of camps were liberated by the Red Army, and there were a few eyewitness reports. One of them was from Alexander Werth and he had given us a very interesting insight into what the period of liberation was like to let everyone know the massive losses and the depth of suffering millions of people had to go through.
Majdanek was only one out of the thousands of camps controlled by the Nazis. Even with all the sheer amount of films, photographs, documents, and evidence available, it is very hard to be able to comprehend the enormousness and terror of the Holocaust. The thought of how one could take the mentality of “us versus them” to such as extreme as to justify the act of killing millions of people on the basis of nothing more but their race and ethnicity, is extremely evil and unfathomable.
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