The Jewish holocaust was perpetrated by the German Nazis in the world war era, as Hitler rose to power. During the regime, the Nazi army strived to clear the land of ‘vermin’ as they so proudly depicted the cleansing act. Therefore, to make the extermination process effective, they rounded up all Jews, gypsies, and people from religions which were an unnecessary evil to them (Spiegelman, 1992). Moreover, the Nazis rounded up people who had homosexual tendencies. The captives were put in prisons and concentration camps, where they were locked up in large numbers for elimination. The prisoners in the camps needed to be socially construed to co-exist in the camps and reduce chaos. In addition, reconstruction was based on morality, culture, and the numerically strong were isolated to serve as administers in the camp. The administrators were called Capo, while people with undesirable cultures were set aside to await the ‘final’ solution, which was ultimate and brutal death. Morally upright people were isolated into their camps, for future engagements. The morally decayed people like homosexuals had their section and the homosexuals were the most abused in the concentration camps (Frankl, 2006).
Many scholars have exaggerated the benefits that the perpetrators gained from the Holocaust and detainment of Jews in concentration camps. However, documentation from the Nazi perpetrators and survivors shed the light into the hidden motives the Holocaust perpetrators had. For instance, the perpetrators needed unparalleled access to production resources and grew economically. Capturing people, subjecting them to an unimaginable torture and labor was a way of enhancing their production and reap more revenue. The concentration camps provided them with the needed servitude and knowledge they needed (Spiegelman, 1992).
Moreover, the expansion of Nazi territories was key in the lust for power and blood. The Nazi territory stretched as far as Japan and Russia, and in all the places they conquered, they took detainees to work in the very lands that they conquered. The perpetrators also subjected the Jews and Russians they had captured into family planning, whereby a woman in Russia was not allowed to get more than two children. Merciless killing in the concentration camps did not, however, have many anterior motives, as it was aimed at maintaining a sustainable number of detainees in the concentration camps. The killing of people in concentration camps was the perfect cover-up for their incapacity to maintain a large number of detainees. A large number of detainees were a threat to their rule, in case a rebellion cropped up (Frankl, 2006).
Living in the detention camps was a hell for the detainees. Some prisoners opted to take their lives rather than to endure the cruel servitude. People in the camp were concentrated in holding warehouses, which accommodated over two hundred prisoners. According to the sizes of the warehouses used, the camps were heavily congested. If their numbers shot through the roof, a portion of the population was taken away by the soldiers to a different incarceration center to await death. The tales told by survivors of the Jewish Holocaust was documented to give a better insight to the events that conspired in the detention camps.
Conseqently, a large number of prisoners made tattoo for easier identification. Some of the body parts with tattoo engraving include; the face of the prisoners, the eyes of the perpetrators. Indeed, killing prisoners ration was an act of mercy, as they saw it as a way of creating a stronger new race. According to Adolf Hitler, the Aryan race was the blessed race and was the only one fit enough to live in the new world that he would create (Spiegelman, 1992). However, the act of cleansing did not appeal well to the prisoners, who saw the killings as an inhumane act. Most deaths resulted from gassing in gas chambers filled with chlorine gas; Adolf Hitler said that the way of gassing Jews was utterly effective and that it had exceeded his expectations. Some detainees also died from lacerations they received from the crazy Nazi doctors who had no quest for humanity. Some individuals died from sheer exhaustion from the intense labor they were subjected.
In the detaining camps, only detainees with administrative responsibilities were allowed the privilege of smoking, drinking liquor, among other recreational privileges. Prisoners who were defiant faced an even more cruel death. Outlaws would be mostly crucified on a stake and left for the death (Frankl, 2006). ‘Religiously blasphemous’ individuals in the eyes of the perpetrators were stoned to death. The homosexual society was mostly mistreated in the name for their eroded morality. It is estimated that over seventy-five percent of gay people died from mistreatment in the concentration camps. Due to the insane numbers of deaths occurring in the extermination camps, they were later branded incarceration camps. Riots in the camps resulted in bloody murders, and because of the murders, detainees rarely put up strikes. In addition to the indiscriminate deaths, the soldiers in the camp staged planned mass murders frequently.
The aftermath of the Jewish holocaust was rather traumatic, with survivors being united with their families. Due to the experimentations they were subjected to by doctors in the camps, many women feared they might never have children (Frankl, 2006). In this accord, the birth of a baby was a blessing from God. Children were alienated from their parents, as the trauma caused some parents to be depressed and had a lot of mistrust even from the people they had loved. On the contrary, survivors who stuck to families became too attached and lived in fear of separation from their families. Due to the horrors they had seen in the concentration camps, some survivors became unemotional and different from the way they were before and rarely talked about their experience in the camps.
References
Frankl, V, E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press
Spiegelman, (1992) .Art Maus II Pperback Pantheon
