Question:
What was so devastating about Jewish victims experiences in the nazi death camps?
2014-01-14 10:37:36 UTC
For my history homework I have to write a summary about what was so devastating about Jewish victims experiences in the nazi death camps?
I was wondering if any one could sum up why the Jewish victims experiences were so devastating for me?

xox
Six answers:
Feivel
2014-01-14 14:15:58 UTC
Being ripped away from your families on the ramp as you exited the train.



Being shaved and tattooed against your will.



Lack of food. At times they were living on only 500 calories a day.



Forced labor. They worked very hard from dawn to dusk and given the hard work and lack of food, their health began to deteriorate.



So many people in one place caused rapid spread of diseases like typhus and diphtheria and once you contracted those diseases you would either be deemed unfit to work and sent to the gas chambers OR you died naturally (most went to the gas chamber).



Being forced to do things like burn bodies, bury bodies, count gold teeth, sort the clothes of the dead etc etc., all jobs that were terrifying as you knew you would yourself be burned one day.



Having open cess pits in the middle of the barracks which made disease rampant and putrid.



Being forced to stand for roll call in the freezing cold and snow without coats or in the blazing sun.



Seeing people shot or hung for minor "offenses" in front of you.



Lack of any emotion other than terror which eventually becomes the only emotion you know. My grandfather said "Once hopelessness crept in and attached itself to the terror in your mind, you ran towards that fence" (which meant you either were electrocuted or shot by a nazi on the guard tower but either way it was suicide).



Having no prospect of a future or a clue as to when your plight might end.



Enduring beatings and whippings at the hands of the nazi's or more often the hands of some criminal kapo who was over you.



Never being clean.



Always being thirsty.
?
2014-01-14 13:11:32 UTC
They'd had everything they owned stolen from them: Their homes, cars, jobs, money, etc.

They'd been treated like dirt: Arrested, dragged away and told they weren't even human.

They'd been packed like animals into trains and sent to death camps where they were starved, beaten, tortured, subjected to barbaric medical experiments, used as a slave workers...

They were gunned down, electrocuted, burned alive and killed in all sorts of horrible ways.

Death was an escape from a living nightmare.



What decent human being WOULDN'T be devastated by what those poor people went through?

The Nazis didn't spare anyone, not even the children.



Go look up some Nazi concentration camp photos or old documentary films on Youtube.

You'll puke. You'll cry. And you should. What the Nazis did was utterly disgusting.
Gaffer
2014-01-14 17:48:09 UTC
You know they were in death camps just for being Jewish and you have to ask why this was devastating??

Have you been playing too many video games??



Actually, I'm surprised that you haven't had answers from neo-nazis and holocaust deniers telling you that it didn't really happen and that the gas chambers were built post-war as anti-German propaganda, or perhaps ...
2014-01-14 10:59:27 UTC
The answer is in your question.



What could be more "devastating" than being sent to

a nazi death camp?



Death seems to be the salient word here.
Jeremy
2014-01-14 10:44:02 UTC
This may take the cake for the most inane question I've ever read. How about EVERYTHING?



A free tip: Beware those who give you answers based on Wikipedia. They are simply trying to build up a lack of self worth by assuming knowledge and intelligence they do NOT have. Besides, aren't they calling you stupid? Couldn't you have used Wikipedia? Further, Wikipedia has more inaccuracies than a politicians campaign speech. So, beware the Wiki-answerer! Do not belittle them, however, their self-worth is immensely fragile and any challenge to it can only hurt them. I add this for your benefit. An answer not drawn from Wikipedia is, if a serious answer, almost always better - and in my opinion answered by a more knowledgeable person.



Hope I am clear!
Judy
2014-01-14 11:11:06 UTC
I suggest you ask yourself how would your family be devastated.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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