Jewish prisoners' resistance and survival in Nazi concentration camps

Jews in Concentration Camps

As early as 1933, Nazis were sending people to concentration camps most of them being the Jews. The concentration camps were confinements where Jews were forced to go to, tortured and forced to work. The camps were for the undesirable people according to the Nazis and they were; democrats, socialists, homosexuals, prisoners and Jews and during the war the camps held soviet prisoners of war and slave laborers. These camps were later only associated with Jews and were intended for the extermination of the Jews. The camps were used for a range of purposes including labor camps, transit camps that served as temporary way stations and extermination camps that were primarily meant for mass murder. The life in the concentration camps was very horrible (Dickson, 2010).The function of the prisoners in the concentration camps was to work but their lives were not worth anything to the guards and the camp commanders. Anyone who could not work was killed and those who worked, worked to their death. The working hours were long, the labor was hard and in all kinds of weather not forgetting the constant beating they got from the guards. There were many causes of death in the camps such as exhaustion, exposure to harsh weather, malnutrition since they only had little food a day i.e. A piece of bread and soup. Death was quite inevitable in these camps; those who managed to avoid starvation or death by exposure were vulnerable to death in the hands of guards. There were also gas chambers that were used to kill people more efficiently. There was no form of medical care; those who were ill and weak were left to die. Children died at the hands of doctors who conducted barbaric medical practices and medical experiments on them (Dickson, 2010).

With all these conditions it was only natural for the Jews revolt and attempt to escape from this captivity, however they failed to do so and this might be attributed to various factors such as; their religious principles, the psychology behind human captivity and the overall strength and power of the Nazi oppressors.

Psychology behind human captivity

The Jews in the camps were isolated from the society. The captives are psychologically tuned and accustomed to the life of where they are held. The Jews in these camps therefore were accustomed to the life in the camps and viewed it as normal. They therefore had no reason whatsoever to revolt since they were living normally according to them. They had hence embraced this life so long as they had their families there with them they could not complain. In any case, any resistance in the camps was paramount to suicide, to resist was to risk death. One of the most significant factors that could keep a Jew from fighting back against the Nazi oppressors was the concern of the people who depended on him. In these camps they came as families and there was a sense of responsibility and allegiance to the family members to keep as united as long as possible. There was also the hope for an easy solution among the Jews, the decision to fight back against the Germans was not easy since it meant abandoning all hope they had for German mercy and accepting great immediate personal risk. Psychologically they chose to continue hoping that the oppressors would one day have a change of heart and release them. There was also no one who was willing to lead the Jews in these revolts. Without strong leadership there can be no success in any of their attempts to free themselves (McCollum, 2009). This is a clear indication that the entire captive body was formatted to think like slaves and they did think and believed that their freedom was at the behest of the Germans and not from their own action.

Overall power and strength of oppressors

The oppressors were fully equipped with weapons that they could use anytime there were attempts by the Jews to revolt. Weapons were an essential element in all violent resistance to the Jews to prevail against their oppressors. They were forbidden to posses any sort of weapons they required to fight. Hence the Jews did not have weapons that could match those of their oppressors. The oppressors treated them in a way that was intended to minimize any possibility of any revolt. They were outnumbered in strength by the Nazis and any attempt to escape saw mass killings by machine guns, any uprising was crashed by the well armed and well trained Nazis. They were also strong in terms of the leadership system. The oppressors were well organized when it came to their leaders and hence the Jews could not even think of revolution since they would be suppressed direly. They also had the strength in numbers. There were very many guards in these camps that made sure no form of revolution was planned by the Jews. This made the Jews reluctant to any attempts of trying to free themselves. The Nazis were very brutal in their operations and this made the Jews to fear them and hence they would not dare go against them in any way.

These reasons made the Jews to be reluctant in any form of revolution. Any of their attempts to free themselves were promptly suppressed and this instilled fear in anyone who wanted to attempt to revolt.