The Atrocities at Auschwitz

Not long after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, there began to be talk of the "Jewish question." This question was basically code for "we don't know what to do with the Jews, and we hate them, so do we kill them or not?" While being given multiple different orders on what to do with the Jews, the SS men, or Nazi bodyguards, were being asked to do different things with the Jews by the bureaucracy. Some of the Jews were saved, while others were killed in Auschwitz, a death camp located in Poland. The whole environment at Auschwitz was largely based on deception. For example, as soon as the Jews got to Auschwitz and got off the train, there was complete chaos; coats were being ripped off the prisoners, their luggage was grabbed. While all of this was going on however, an SS man was standing in the background reassuring everyone that everything was going to be "just fine." However, this feigned cordiality was all part of the Nazi's plan that would eventually lead to the killing of the Jews. 

At this point, the prisoners had absolutely no idea where they were, mostly because they had been told that they were being "relocated," or "deported." They were not told that they would be sent to death camps and killed. The next thing that happened, was the Nazis told the Jews to strip and get ready because they would be taking a shower. After five days in "the train from hell," a shower must have sounded so nice to the Jews who had had no sleep during their long journey to be "relocated." However, as it turned out, the Jews were actually brought to the gas chambers, not the showers. The chambers were built to look exactly like shower rooms, except the only thing missing was the drain in the floor. At some point, someone had to have noticed that the drain was missing, and figured out that what was actually about to happen was the gassing of hundreds of Jews, not a nice warm shower. Once more Jews figured out that they were being sent to the gas chambers to die, they began to bang on the locked door, but to no avail. The Nazi guards didn't even seem to notice or care that the Jews wanted out, mainly because they were just "trying to do their job." 

Another atrocity that occurred at Auschwitz was the many experiments done on twins. Performed by Josef Mengele, these experiments included; blood transfusions, injections, surgeries, and much more. These are just some of the many atrocities that occurred at Auschwitz, and there were many more terrible things that occurred there as well.