Nazi Concentration and Death Camps

Nazi Concentration and Death Camps In attempting to analyze the causes and the history behind the concentration camps and death camps that Nazi Germany created all over the conquered places and more particularly in German soil itself, there are a set of questions that the student of history must answer first.

One relates to the concept of the concentration camp -- the segregation and treating differently of people who are not confirming to the ideals, policies or politics of the majority, and secondly the causing of the disappearance of such communities found harmful.

The second question that the researcher ought to ask is if the killing fields at Dachau were the beginning or mere repetition of history on a grander scale? In answering these two questions it is possible to find the psychology and social forces that created such a horror machine among other wise highly intelligent and thinking people as Germans.

Why did the Germans succumb to a puny and probably insane person like Hitler? The answer to that question also lies in examining the earlier history and later developments after the Second World War. Thus we cannot help regress into history a little and find that death camps were not an 'Aryan' invention. There were methods of eliminating opposition that earlier also bordered on the same principle. Contain or eliminate that which is not a perfect fit in the system.

(History of Roman Circus and Gladiators 2004) The Nazi concentration camps were a culmination of centuries of anti-Zionism that had stalked the world, and mostly the intolerant nations of Europe. Prior to that the Christians were stalked by the Romans, and thus through history we find death camps. Thus the Roman amphitheaters popularly called the circus were a mini death camp for gladiators, mainly criminals and slaves, and the use of wild animals.

Thus the unarmed criminals or high-principled Christians who were treated as criminals at the time faced death at these circuses. (History of Roman Circus and Gladiators 2004) Colosseum in Rome opened by Emperor Titus and was the first known orderly method of disposing unwanted humanity providing entertainment to the rest. Targeting of People- a Career Need: The essence of death camps were methods of disposing of people not wanted in the state.

We find that in Nazi Germany the politics of hate was the beginning of the movement, and the hate was targeted against Jews, Communists and those in power.

German romanticism and the concept of 'Volk' ideology which was perpetuated by other writers was taken up by Adolf Hitler in the Mein Kampf, and the concept of a nationalist superiority and at the same time a struggle by the 'National-Socialist German Workers' Party -- NSDAP and the promotion of the Volksgemeinschaft or Volk-community was the answer of National or German Socialism which believed in the racially purified fatherland was the beginning of the death camps.

This was also fuelled by the rabid hate of Hitler of Jews which he mentions in the Mein Kampf. There were special speeches given as the 'Why are we anti-Semites?' (Cesarani 1996) Hitler's writings and speeches denote two Jewish problems, and the primary was the Jewish conspiracy of world dominion, or the Jewish power of international finance and the other was the so called 'sub-human Jewry,' which was based on the race theory and that the corruption of German blood has occurred.

Thus in 1934 Captain Roehm was seen as a threat by Hitler and the disarming of the SA took place. Thus Hitler's body guards known as the Schutzstaffeln or 'Protection Formations,' or SS. Was made powerful. Thus from 1929, the commander of the SS was Heinrich Himmler. The Reichsfuehrer SS, Himmler by 1934 incorporated into the SS the other divisions of Nazi power -- the Gestapo created by Heydrich, the entire German police system, and had equal and parallel departments of the SS, that monitored every thing in Germany.

It later turned out that the Reichsfuehrer Himmler, was the prime motive after General Goring in the 'final solution' and running of the death camps. (Reitlinger 1953) There was also a need for the adherents of Nazism to show that they hated Jews. Ribbentrop for example had influence inside the Nazi party. Power proceeded with a display of anti-Semitism, and for which Ribbentrop Foreign Minister.

(Feingold 1970) Thus the Jewish problem and seeing the Jew as a being to be dispatched initially at least from Germany was the correct politick of the times. Many officials who wished to have great careers thus had to be Jew haters. However the death camps did not have their origins in hating Jews. It began elsewhere and for ideologies different from the hatred of the Jews.

One question we have to answer is, apart from having a victim or enemy against whom the masses can be assembled, why were the Nazis bent on elimination Jews? If we look at the question in detail, we can observe that there was an intertwined principle that Jews were the creators of financial problems for the Reich both inside and outside. While it was easy to react to other forces, there was the historical question involved with Jews.

The hatred of that community flows through history and therefore the Jew is an easy target to be picked. So we have to answer why pick the Jews? Why Jews? Anti-Semitism was a different kettle of fish altogether. The 'chosen people 'considered slaves by the Egyptian masters had to find the Promised Land. There is evidence that there was some pressure on the community in the early days of Egypt. The first antisemitic statement is on record from the third century B.C.

One priest, "Manetho, wrote that Jews spread leprosy, and that they were exceedingly unsociable." (Weinberg 1986) Thus in finding a land for them the community further came in the way of the Greeks and later the Romans. The persecution of Jews, as seen in the case where "Emperor Caligula ordered the Jews as well as others to worship his image, Jews refused." (Weinberg 1986) This resulted in creation of a ghetto the first in a.D. 38 with a pogrom that killed many Jews is the first one in history.

(Weinberg 1986) Thus the Roman Empire was followed by the spread of Christianity which needed a new enemy to target, found Jews to be that target. Thus the singling out of Jews and blaming them for everything that happens was not a new phenomenon that the Nazis invented. Neither was all the cruelty. The only difference that we can see is the colossal scale in which the cruelty was perpetrated. Earlier pogroms of history were localized to a city or at worse a part of a nation.

The Nazi final solution was aimed at wiping out of existence every person who was of the Jewish faith and every other who was not good Nazis. This naturally made it a big figure about six or more million people and it will haunt the conscience of mankind, for centuries to come. There is the argument that the roots of the holocaust begins with Christian anti-Semitism. This at least is the opinion of many writers like Willehad P. Eckert, Ernst L. Ehrlich and so on.

(Wood 1971) There was thus evidence to show that the 'Jewish question was not a Nazi invention. Konnilyn G. Feig argues that the problem was centuries old. It was seen as a major problem and blown out of proportions and the term 'Jewish question,' was used by various forces to achieve various ends, most of which consisted in highlighting the frustration and fears of the people who confronted the 'chosen people' which was seen as a threat by the developing nations.

Thus the problem was that the Jews and those people who did not confirm to the state policies, in any state were always the targets of the authorities. In the case of Nazi Germany it was taken to the extreme and the 'final solution' to the 'Jewish question' raised centuries ago resulted in the horror that came upon mankind.

(Feig 1981) So one of the questions that the holocaust was the result of the collective drive of centuries of persecution and picking of someone to hate -- a principle followed down the ages was the step through which the history of Nazi crimes passes.

This is not in any way to support the acts of the Nazis or condone them but to show that where we leave small splinters amongst us to perpetuate hatred -- it will one day result if not in the immediate now, then in the misty future of our descendants when they may address similar 'final solution.' At the receiving end may be the very same persons who now sow the seeds of discord.

Having seen that death camps and pogroms were not unique to the Nazis, we now have to examine the rationale behind the death camps. There are two streams of the process that is evident. One is the political view which with the Aryan race theory seems to have made the Jews a hate figure, and with that the 'necessity of struggle' needed that the persons who were wasteful be removed from the society.

The German suffering after the first world war and the humiliation of Germany with other nations gave the Nazis the opportunity to feed hatred of the Jews and at the same time promise that if the People gave in to the Nazi ideology, they would be in the land that would hold them a superior way of life.

That the followers of Hitler followed the Ideals as true and that they also created in their own minds the need to eliminate groups of people who disagree like the communists and the Jews was the fundamental cause of the holocaust. Why did it come about? It was argued that while the political climate of the times did not show much promise, Hitler was able to deliver what he promised even if it was based on evil. This gave him ground support.

One of the chief supporters of Hitler, and Aman who hated Jews more than Hitler was Heinrich Himmler -- the mastermind of the death camps. The Nazis and the Camps: The chief planner of the death camps was "Himmler, whom Hitler entrusted with the planning and implementation of the 'Final Solution.'" (Heinrich Himmler: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and Himmler made the project clear in the first speech after the responsibility having come his way in October 4, 1943.

In the speech Himmler endorsed the mass murder Jews thus: "the annihilation of the Jewish people…. Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses lie side by side, or 500 or 1,000….

This page of glory in our history has never been written and will never be written….We had the moral right, we were obligated to our people to kill this people which wanted to kill us." (Heinrich Himmler: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) When it was evident that the war was to be lost, in the middle of 1945, Himmler tried to negotiate "with the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Stockholm.

Pursuant to that Hitler stripped Himmler of all of his offices and ordered his arrest." (Heinrich Himmler: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) He was captured by the Allies and "killed himself by biting down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth for that very purpose." (Heinrich Himmler: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Himmler had a chequered career, and after some learning he began his career as a chicken farmer.

His ardent work for the Nazi party and the faith and zeal he showed soon made him rise in the party and by 1930 he was a well-known figure in Bavaria. Thus it came to be that "Himmler was elected in 1930 to the Reichstag as Nazi deputy" and under him the SS membership reached fifty two thousand, and was independent.

After that he created the "Security Service -- SD under Reinhard Heydrich, originally an ideological intelligence service of the Party, and together the two men ensured that the Nazis consolidated their power over Bavaria in 1933." (Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)) The rise in his career and the next step to the creation of the camps came in 1933, when he "was appointed the Munich Police President, and later Commander of the political police for Bavaria." (Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)) by 1934 he became under the supervision of Goering, "head of the Prussian Police and Gestapo." (Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)) He made the SS as an independent organization in 1936; Himmler had complete "control of the political and criminal police of the Third Reich," and as the Reichsfuhrer of the SS.

It was he in 1933 who laid the first step for a concentration camp. (Heinrich Himmler: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) it was his view that "there is no more living proof of hereditary and racial laws than in a concentration camp.

You find there hydrocephalics, squinters, deformed individuals, semi-Jews: a considerable number of inferior people." (Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)) That there was a special system evolved for racial questions is evident from the fact that as the Reichsfuhrer of the SS, Himmler he was prejudiced to racial purity and this was evident where he encouraged the 'perfect' men from the SS procreate with "young girls selected for their perfect Nordic traits." (Holocaust Denial) He was instrumental in introducing the gas chamber as 'more humane means' of execution.

Himmler believed in what was being done as the best possible. That is the irony of evil. Not only that he believed init himself but was able to convince the members of the entire SS that the camps and the deaths were natural and necessary.

Thus he is reported to have said: "One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else." (Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)) The camps begin with Euthanasia: There were all forms of death victims. It was not that the Nazis targeted only Jews or political enemies. After Hitler's Reichstag speech in 1939 that blamed the Jews and the Bolsheviks, and the first step in this direction was not taken against the Jews or aliens.

The first set of people who found themselves in the death camps was invalid. "German citizens killed as a part of the euthanasia program intended to destroy those unfit to become volksgenossen (racial comrades)." (Reed-Purvis 2003) Thus those who were physically or mentally challenged were the first victims. This was because the handicapped were looked upon as the carriers of genetic defects and 'eugenics' coined by Francis Galton in 1881. This was later was improved upon by Charles B.

Davenport, who in 1910 proposed the sterilization as a means of keeping the population better. In USA during the 1920s prospective immigrants with unwanted defects were blocked. (Reed-Purvis 2003) In Germany, eugenics was touted by medical professionals, who were indoctrinated into the Nazi doctrines of the German race. Thus all aberrations like homosexuality and other patients who could not be cured were treated as unnecessary. The German Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche first advocated 'mercy death' which was better than sterilization. These theories were current in Germany even before the Nazis.

The Nazis resorted to forced sterilization from 1933 of the mentally and physically handicapped, and those with chronic illnesses. (Reed-Purvis 2003) Thus there were four hundred thousand such patients who had to undergo sterilizations pronounced on them by 'Hereditary Courts'. (Reed-Purvis 2003) During the war "Hitler authorized the start of a secret program of mercy killing of handicapped children throughout the Reich, with or without permission from their parents." (Reed-Purvis 2003) it was code named Aktion. The euthanasia program was a state secret.

This was expanded from children to adults using gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas in hospitals. One in a population of thousand would have met with a mercy death. Thus in the initial phase, over seventy thousand people were killed by doctors for being unworthy of living. This "was extended to all unproductive consumers of food during the war." (Reed-Purvis 2003) Thus a further one hundred and fifty thousand people died in euthanasia programs. (Reed-Purvis 2003) The persons who administered the death were chosen carefully from party stand point-of-view.

Thus the staffs were expected to be discreet. It was based on voluntary participation and there were no forced persons in the euthanasia program unlike in the concentration camps. The Gestapo investigated the candidates and the important posts were filled from the SS. These killing camps were controlled and directed by medical experts, who were "motivated by blood lust.

Above all, their involvement in the euthanasia program presented them with an opportunity to further their careers." (Reed-Purvis 2003) In 1940 the Chancellor Hitler replaced the law of euthanasia with "Law on the Treatment of Community Aliens." (Reed-Purvis 2003) Thus one million Germans were spared on account of this order.

Later on the secrecy having gone, Henrich Himmler closed the euthanasia camp at Grafeneck in 1940, and according to him the reason was: "because what takes place there is secret, and yet is no longer a secret." (Reed-Purvis 2003) the program was also conducted in Poland using mobile gas chambers. These resembled coffee shops. (Reed-Purvis 2003) The victims outside "Poland was handicapped Jews from Germany." (Reed-Purvis 2003) by 1941 three hundred and sixty five thousand people were ghettoes at Warsaw and Lodz. By 1942 Aktion T4 experts created Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobidor and Belzec camps for extermination.

The system was the same as used in the euthanasia program. The method of "using an old tank engine to generate carbon monoxide gas" and also experiment by the SS was conducted using hydrogen cyanide or Zyklon B. Russian prisoners were the victims of this experiment and over one million persons were killed using the deadly gas at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. (Reed-Purvis 2003) it can be noted that of these only one hundred and twenty thousand were Jews.

(Reed-Purvis 2003) Hitler's stop orders however did not seem to have had much effect and hospitals continued killings and it was expanded to concentration camps. Euthanasia took shape as a concept much before the Nazis came to power, and the Nazi regime use it not only against the Jews, but also on Germany's handicapped and it became specialized during the war. The speech by Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland, shows that he believed that the entire Jewish race must vanish "from the face of the earth.

It was estimated that the Nazis killed over two million Jews." (Abzug 1985) That there were targets of handicapped people from all places is shown by the fact that "The handicapped patients from Pomerania arrived by train at the town of Neustadt in West Prussia and were killed in a forest nearby. Polish political prisoners from the SS prison camp Stutthof near Danzig dug large pits to bury the bodies!" (Friedlander 1995) Now the principle is clear and thus the camps came into existence out of a perceived need for elimination.

What was the psychology behind all this? Or why did people resort to such brutality? In that context we have to examine why an elaborate mechanism was erected for the purpose of causing death. Why the Camps? It has to be agreed that man was thus always in the habit of removing large chunks of his fellows from the face of the earth.

This was called the "olokauston -- a Holocaust -- when the imagery of burnt sacrifice, of humans consumed by fire." (Feig 1981) This became a reality in the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka or Birkenau. The Nazis could thus boast of the modern technological civilization removing the chunk of unnecessary human beings with 'economy of means.' (Feig 1981) Thus solving a problem was equated with removing the very existence of the people.

On the one had in the hearts of cities, there were millions of people being massacred and gassed, with crematoriums in full swing and all around the camps the rest of the citizens were living normal lives, and as Konnilyn G. Feig observes, the relations between those who were being killed and the others who were living in comfort then will underline direct or indirect complicity of those who were living blissful life with the horror camps amidst them.

(Feig 1981) Thus it was not just a few Nazi officials, but the entire state that was behind the holocaust and the death camps. Taking the argument further we could say that the root of the camps began thus with the concept that was put forth by writers like Thomas Mann who wanted absolute sacrifice for progress. This was translated by Hitler as making wars necessary and demanding absolute sacrifices from the people. Not only did he say that he also brought about all that he said he would.

(Feig 1981) The thrust for the evolution of Hitler's creed was based on writers like Spengler, Nietzsche and Ernst Jung. Thus the Jewish solution was made to look like a part of natural result of the sacrifice for progress. He announced just what he was going to do and people believed him because he did what he promised them. Nazi Germany was influenced by Lutheran movements. Lutheranism could be seen in the Nazi gatherings. Thus "Germans created Hitler, and demanded that he save them from thought, fear, complexity, confusion, boredom.

And they came to power with their new God." (Feig 1981) The concentration camps were the result of the Nazi administrative structure and the Nazi ideology which was just authoritarian control. "There was no formal structure except in the SS. The SS gave those Germans needing and desiring order and hierarchy a home -- perhaps the only available alternative to the Hitlerian chaos." (Feig 1981) This was a desired situation and it was necessary for chaos to prevail if the death camps were to function.

Thus Hitler kept the institutional chaos and continued to conquer and leave chaos behind, but the structure of the Nazi system was very flexible in case of urgent necessity and very quick action. In ideologies like 'death to Jews' this flexibility helped mobilize blind support and justify the mass murders, and these for the Nazis provided the ideological satisfaction that was promised to them. Thus the 'Final Solution' brought about zeal among the Nazis, even while the future of other projects looked bleak.

(Feig 1981) Thus it was used as the primary source of getting power- by making the Germans believe in a common dangerous enemy- and thus making them compliant to being passive when all around them the midnight visits of jackbooted SA men carried on the targeting and annihilation of people who were believed to be 'enemies of the Reich'. Hate politics began with the Nazi Party. The hate was not limited to Jews but to any one who did not belong to the superior Aryan race.

Thus invalids and sick people, gypsies, handicapped and those not useful to the state were targeted to be packed off. The reason given was that they were dangerous to the state and caused wasteful expenditure. Before the concentration camps were set up, the Nazis toyed with the concepts of euthanasia before setting up camps as shall be shown. Targets of Incarceration: The Nazi government was business like in defining targets that were to be sent to the concentration camps. The majority were the Jews.

But the hit list also had others who were not Jews. Race was the main question, and this as the war broke out included people from other nations. Thus Czech civilians were gassed some time in 1942. Religious beliefs were also targeted and thus some priests were held for abuse of office and even sentenced to death.

(Aroneanu; Whissen 1996) the greater 'crime' for those who did not fall in the above categories was the political views they held and if these were not based on National Socialism there were the concentration camps. Thus the members of the Communist party, and others who were brought from France as prisoners were shot down. (Aroneanu; Whissen 1996) There were others, the gypsies, the disabled who were termed 'free eaters' and any one who was in effect not a good Nazi was sent to the concentration camps.

To be out of it one had to be a model citizen and if in a captured country then of robust health with no record of having ever risen against the Reich. People were transported to the camps in some of the most inhuman conditions and many people perished in the travel. Accounts of wagon loads of people dying for want of air are on record. Thus may arrived dead at the death camps.

That there were brutal episodes in the camps is beyond denial with the evidence of mass deaths at crematoriums and gas mechanisms for annihilating people on a large scale being found in the camps. However the people condemned to these prisons did not reach there alive. Many millions died in the transit to the camp. Extreme brutality has been reported in transfer of prisoners and there was no care for them even as humans. This shows the horror that would have been inside the camps.

Brutalities in Transit: The travel to the camps were death marches and eye witness accounts reveal horrors like: "I saw one SS guard grab a child by the feet and throw it into the air while a cohort fired his pistol at this living target.

Another SS guard yanked a baby from its mother's arms and tore it apart by putting his foot on one leg and pulling on the other." (Aroneanu; Whissen 1996) Thus thirty thousand prisoners who were sent to the camps by traveling 60 kilometers by forced marches without much food and traveled in extreme cramped conditions for weeks and on arrival 700 were dead and another 700 dying. (Aroneanu; Whissen 1996) The arrival rituals were not elaborate.

Those who were fit to work were segregated and allowed to live some more while the old and infirm were disposed off immediately. Vivid accounts of the life in the concentration camps are available. The cruelty is reported by some inmates for example from Camp of Stutthof near Danzig. The prisoner's job was to push carts along the tracks loaded with vegetables. The work was supervised by SS guards armed and constantly urging the prisoners to move.

The reporter says that a prisoner is called at random, and when the prisoner approaches the guard, "The guard behind the fence orders the prisoner to stick his head between the wires. At the same time he turns the dog loose to bite the man in the face. Instinctively the man recoils, withdrawing his head.

But the SS officer starts kicking him in the legs and, holding him by the neck, makes him bend down again." (Nahon; Bowers; Bowman, 1989) Thus the prisoner is mauled by the dog completely and during this event all other prisoners are made to push the carts with blows. Some other forms of torture included making the prisoners jump up higher and when they are exhausted and are unable to comply they are beaten at the commands of the SS officer.

This has left many with cases of ecchymosis and burns from the blows. (Nahon; Bowers; Bowman, 1989) Thus we see that survivors testify to the reality. We have to remember that the Jewish question was not a Nazi invention. It was the collective thought of the Europeans and other races, and the Nazis took it to the extreme and the 'final solution'. So the debate and arguments go on still.

Having found what transpired at the death camps and pogroms and comparing them with the deniers and those who try to revive hatred today, we have to be aware that it is just a slip into the old way that can bring back the Nazi ideology, or something similar and although the Jews need not be the exact victims, other communities may have similar experiences.

There are the mute testimony of dead six million people that hatred will one day result if not in the immediate now, result in someone finding the 'final solution' for people who do not belong to his or her political religious or racial creed. The Concentration Camps: Of all the camps, Dachau is a Nazi concentration preserved as a memorial. Dachau was the model that was created by Himmler for concentration camps. There are monuments erected by all communities whose members were incarcerated there. The invading U.S.

army liberated Dachau along with the other camps, namely ones at Mauthausen, Buchenwald and others. (Reitlinger 1953) it was converted into a museum in 1965. The reports of the brutalities in the camps come from those who survived it. According to a survivor, there were psychological pressures that led to terrible nightmares, and that reality was worse than the nightmare.

An Auschwitz survivor remarks that "The most ghastly moment of the twenty-four hours of camp life was the awakening, when, at a still nocturnal hour, the three shrill blows of a whistle tore us pitilessly from our exhausted sleep and from the longings of our dreams." (Des Pres, 1980) Prisoners were kept malnourished and in a state of exhaustion. Most were sick and sleep was allowed for about five hours a day.

Prisoners were kept awake by use of force, by blows with clubs and either the prisoner responded promptly or died. (Des Pres, 1980) There were discrimination between the criminal convicts who were dressed up in green and the communists and Jews in Red. The German prisoners were pitted against the others in a divide and rule policy. The criminals were given better authority than the political prisoners, and the SS men controlled the inmates by the divide and rule policy.

However the division did not work well and there is an instance where on "November 28, 1942, eighteen German Reds were punitively transferred from Sachsenhausen to the Flossenburg concentration camp and marked for being done in." (Langbein; Zohn 1994) Political prisoners were thus in camaderie with the other criminals. Of the distinctions that other camps achieved, Ravensbruck was the first camp for women, and Mauthausen the first in an occupied country such as Austria. The Nazis followed the policy of establishing the camps in countries that they invaded.

Thus on May 20, 1940, Auschwitz came up in Poland. Another one was established at Gross-Rosen, near Breslau. These were for the Polish people. In France, a camp named Natzweiler came up at Alsace. Another one at Danzig and were commanded from Oranienburg. Prisoners from other camps who the SS favored as being satisfactory were transferred to these camps as overseers.

While the SS believed that the convict German prisoners who received special treatment would be loyal to them it is on record that with many Poles these German prisoners were also part of the resistance movement at Auschwitz. (Langbein; Zohn 1994) Other camps that were established like the concentration camp Natzwiller-Struthof was a labor camp and was built in 1941. The purpose of the camp was to run a quarry for the local red granite for monuments in Germany.

The original prisoners were German, and later it was used for eliminating "Jews, Gypsies, and the fighters from Holland, Belgium, and France." (Abzug 1985) There was added a gas chamber and crematory. Some scientists from University of Strasbourg carried on experiments with mustard gas wounds. More than two hundred people were used for the experiments including testing for anti-typhus vaccine. (Abzug 1985) When Allied army entered the area in 1944 the SS fled the place and the Natzwiller was the first camp to be reported by the allies.

Not that the inmates took the suffering in silence. There was a lot of resistance to the brutality within the camps. These resistance activities in the camps were to some extent helpful in preserving the sanity and support of the inmates. It was indirectly influenced by the fortunes of the Second World War. From 1933 to 1938, the nature of the camps underwent major changes. The camps were not linked to the war but to the Nazi ideology and National Socialism.

The construction of the camps began from Hitler's appointment as Reich chancellor, and was in the direct control of the SS. The first such camp was created at Dachau, and by April 2, 1938, other camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were constructed. Other camps Sachsenhausen were created by the summer of 1938 were meant more for political prisoners and convicts. (Langbein; Zohn 1994) From the Other Side- Explanations of Nazis: The post was period saw many Nazis prosecuted for war crimes.

Some of them have written confessions which proved in detail how the camps were and the brutalities that were a daily routine in these camps. On examining these confessions we can conclude that there was voluntary participation in the death camps and that the concerns were more ideological and often related to the participant's career. Some officers could not wriggle out of this even if they wanted because of the danger to themselves.

For that matter, according to the confession of Rudolph Hoss he took up the work of commandant at the Concentration Camp Auschwitz in 1941, he was told by Himmler that the "Fuhrer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question." (Paskuly; Pollinger 1992) and Himmler informed him that the SS was going to bring about the final solution to the Jewish problem. (Paskuly; Pollinger 1992) Since other concentration camps were not able to cope with the work Auschwitz was chosen for this purpose.

The reason was that it had transport facilities, and is isolated. Rudolph Hoss thus was given the responsibility of the assignment of liquidating Jews. The order was to eliminate all Jews. The autobiography reveals that Rudolph Hoss was later visited by Eichmann and the commandant was informed that all Jews from the captured territories and Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia and other countries will all be sent to Auschwitz.

It was Eichmann who introduced the exhaust gas in the gas vans and elaborates discussions on the use of carbon monoxide and it was later in 1941 that the Cyclon B. gas was used. This was later made sophisticated using the "morgue of the crematory as the gassing facility." (Paskuly; Pollinger 1992) Alan Rosen in reading through the confessions of Nazi officials who were later condemned for their crimes, reviewed the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess's 'My Soul'.

The autobiography of the death camp specialist opens our eye to the working of the psychology of the perpetrators of the death camps. The autobiography is filled with crimes against humanity. There is therefore a doubt regarding its veracity. Being of a confessional nature it is proposed by Alan that the veracity could be assumed.

What went on in the mind of the killer? The answer comes from the statement of Rudolf Hoess: "Let the public continue to regard me as the bloodthirsty beast, the cruel sadist and the mass murderer, for the masses could never imagine the commandant of Auschwitz in any other light." (Rosen 2002) He was the "commandant of Auschwitz from 1940-1943." (Riordan 1997) His memoir was penned in prison prior to his execution. Other memoirs considered are by "government officials such as Franz von Papen," and so on.

The "concentration camp administrators such as Perry Broad and Rudolf Hoess" are of primary interest to us is "My Soul" by Rudolf Hoess which he wrote in 1947, published later in 1951. In analysis we find that Hoess is unhappy over the terrible scenes he is compelled to witness. He argues that he had great sympathy for the prisoners and was not happy with the concentration camp service.

Colin Riordan says that the decades after the end of the Second World War, those who were alive during the holocaust left progeny that viewed the whole affair in a different light. By 1968, the 'Vaterliteratur' that regenerated the legacy of Nazism but there was no mention of the Holocaust, or for that matter Auschwitz.

(Riordan 1997) The children of the war criminals were searched for during 1980s and thus "Rolf Mengele, son of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, sensationally revealed that his father had survived in hiding in Brazil until his death in 1979." (Riordan 1997) in the same year Dorte von Westernhagen the daughter of an SS officer wrote Die Kinder der Tater, in1987.

There was a fascination with for extreme violence This brought about a thesis that Germans could explain the Auschwitz goings on as a result of a historical cycle thus arguing that 'Historikerstreit' is not a national responsibility. (Riordan 1997) After two decades, the camps have become locations of entertainment value and the centre of fiction. Fictionalising something like the concentration camp removes much of the brutality that went in the camps. Litrature is polished and therefore seeks the moderate. The Nazi camps re anything but that.

That is why sensational literature that deals with the camps fail. One can find a large number of post war works on the camps. There are works like "Peter Schneider's Vati, Allan Massie's the Sins of the Father both dealing with the children of prominent Nazis directly involved in the Holocaust." (Riordan 1997) There were activities from the Allied side to bomb the camps. The Allies and Auschwitz death camp and bombing of it were the subject of recent speculation. Rafael Medoff says that in 1944, U.S.

bombers used about a "thousand bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz," near the gas chambers. It is recounted that when the bombs came home, the prisoners were filled with joy at the bombing, which could have killed them and they welcomed the bombing as it opened up a new confidence in life. Surprisingly during the war, some writers claim that there was "anti-Jewish prejudice among senior U.S. military officials" that prevented the bombing the death camps.

The Jewish Agency Executive -- JAE in 1944, had requested the Allies to bomb Auschwitz, it was opposed because it could get the prisoners also killed. But evidence shows that there was a request to the allies "to bomb the death camps." (Medoff 2001) "We demanded, first of all, that they bomb Oswiecim, they should destroy the death camps.

This is because the death facilitate the destruction of large numbers of Jews every day, whereas if they could not destroy them in this sophisticated industrial manner" it will not be possible for Germans to further kill Jews given the limited resources. (Medoff 2001) Thus the argument was advanced to the allies that to save Jews the Allies have to destroy the death factories. (Medoff 2001) At the close of the war the Nuremberg trial produced defenses that.