It was heart-wrenching walking through the Auschwitz concentration camp. A sign on the gate entrance said work sets you free in the translation. How anyone could treat anyone like the Jews were treated is beyond comprehension. They lived on a five hundred calories a day diet. The soup was only a broth. If the grain had worms, they still had to eat it. Diarrhea and lice were common with their horrible living conditions.
The concentration camp known as Auschwitz, Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was Poland’s largest Nazi concentration or death camp. The amount of Jews that died in Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 was about 1.1 million. During World War 2, Hitler had his Nazis and SS men rounded up and killed many people that he felt was not a superior race. Hitler wanted only an Aryan race. The master race is the Nazi ideology. Hitler was obsessed with racial purity.
During the Holocaust, 6 million European Jews were murdered in World War 2. Nazi Germany was responsible for the genocide of many Jews or people not of the Aryan race. Soviet citizens and POWS, Poles, Serbs, Romani, Freemasons, Slovenes, Spanish Republicans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals, and Disabled people were Holocaust victims.
When the Jews entered the Auschwitz concentration camp, they had to remove artificial limbs, clothing, shoes, jewelry, and personal items. After entering the concentration camp, they left their suitcases, pots, pans, and money. It was heart-wrenching to see the baby’s shoes, makeup, and everything that was robbed and how their families suffered from the atrophies they had to endure.
They were told they had to shower before entering their living area, which was a ruse to get them to enter the gas chamber. Those they wanted for work detail were tattooed on their wrist and wore a striped jump suits.
The gas chambers would kill a person in 20 minutes. The very young and the old were immediately taken to the gas chambers. The young and the able were forced to work until they could not, and then they were taken to the gas chamber where the cyanide gas would suffocate them. If you happened to live through the gas chamber, you would be taken out and shot to death. You were shot to death if you could no longer work or collapse.
If you were a Doctor or chemist or had a skill they highly needed in Germany for the War effort or medical purposes, you would live until you could no longer function or someone with more knowledge replaced you.
The ovens burned many bodies in one day because they killed many Jews in one day, and the ranges were operating at total capacity 24 hours a day. People said they could smell the burning bodies from miles away.
They had a public restroom with no privacy. There was a standing cell where four people stood next to each other naked and could not move. There were straw mats on the floor for sleeping and four to five people per mat. They would all have to turn over on the carpet if one turned over. Some people were forced to stand for sixteen days in a row. If you ventured beyond the fence, you were shot and killed automatically.
Gold fillings were removed without painkillers. Your hair was shaved off of your head, and your hair was made into mattresses or blankets. Human skin was made into lampshades. It is beyond human what some people have to go through in their lifetime because of who is in control, and no one can stop that person. Jesus went through a lot to save us from our sins.
When the war was won, the Americans came to the concentration camp astonished by the condition of the Jewish people in Auschwitz. The people still barely alive were skin and bone. When the camp was liquidated in Jan. 1945, 9,054, out of 9,792 people were Jews.
With all my heart and soul, I hope that we never let history repeat itself. There is no one race or religion or one person that is any better than anybody else. We all want to enjoy our lives productively and peacefully. God bless our diverse nation.
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