What was the security like @ the holocaust death/concentration camps?

Answer 1

According to my father, he said they would shoot you if you disobeyed or asked too many questions. It was basically do what you were told by the guard if you wanted to live. And he did make it out alive...

Answer 2

Three ways to answer this. 1.) Obidience and compliance- MIlgrams famous study was provoked by the holocaust. He found, of normal everyday Americans off the street, 60% would continue electricuting some until they died (they believed) if instructed to. The idea is you hand over responsibility to someone of higher rank (a similar thing was applied to the American soilders bombing a villiage of women and children in Vietnam) 2.) Depersonalisation: In any case of genocide, there are a few universal conditions: an us - them attitude towards the percieved underclass, depersonalistion of the perceived underclass (Jews, dark skinned races, homosexuals were considered lesser than the perfect race), blaming them for all the problems, believing that the country is in a state of crisis - an extreme solution is needed, and a strong leader 3.) More recently, psychologists have dismissed Milgram's view at least as it applies to the higher level of the chain of command (it might still apply to you bulldozer driver). Several of the camp guards actively and imagineitively interpreted orders that did not actuall call for the holocaust, orders being very vague. There was an air of competetion for Hitler's favour. The guards were committed to what they were doing, knew what they were doing, and they thought it was the right thing to do. They thought they were killing an enamy, they take on the ideology of the group that condones this behavoir Most of the people that were "responsible" were sentenced at the nuremberg trial. Others lower down were more likely to be (or at least feel) they were just following orders, thus avoiding guilt that would lead them to suicide. Those that took on the ideology would not feel guilt

Answer 3

Theres a movie called 'Escape From Sobibor' starring Rutger Hauer telling the true story about the only successful escape from a Nazi concentration camp. I'm sure if you watch this movie (only costs between 5 and 10) you will see what it was like to be in a concentration camp and how they overcame the Nazi officers. The ration of guards to prisoners was actually very low. Prisoners outnumbered them by quite a bit and this is part of the reason the escape was successful.

Answer 4

Harsh and Brutal. Sometimes the guards would shoot a person or turn thier dog loose on a prisoner just for fun. They had high fences of barbed wire and consentina wire.

*makes me wonder if commiting suicide by tryiing to escape would have been a quicker less painfull death that living and dying under the Nazis regime at a concentration camp?*

Blessings

Answer 5

I've met a number of men and women from the concentration camps. The most memorable was a gentleman who was one of my art teachers in a graphic design course in Toronto. He had his numbers tattooed on his forearm and in the summer you could see them plainly as he would only wear short sleeves. Baring his arms showed where he had been.
Once in conversation with him he laughed about his tattoo and commented that the inside joke at Auschwitz was "that the only way to get out of camp was through the chimney!". I would take that to mean that the security was a hell of a bond to break.

Answer 6

Schindler's list depicted the most brutal security i've seen in a movie, i'm sure movies can never portray the extent of SS butality.

Answer 7

electric/barbed wire fences. Lots of guards with automatic weapons.

Answer 8

it was barbed wire gaurds with guns and miles to any other land. plus everyone was to weak to run. because of the starvation

Answer 9

Watch an episode of Stalag 13 and you will have a good idea of how the prison camps were set up.

The Germans put in a very tall fence with several guard towers, one at each corner and then one to cover the blind spots. They were tough on people who attempted to escape and set up a zone of death about 10m wide, anyone in the zone of death would be shot with no questions asked.

Start at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:May311944_auschwitz.jpg
Go to the bottom and download the high-resolution picture.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz#Auschwitz_I
"About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, with about 300 attempts successful. A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others. If someone did manage to escape, the SS would kill ten random people from the prisoner's block. This was a quite persuasive method to avoid escape attempts."

Read the rest of the article for more information and notice the pictures on the right side.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_H%C3%B6%C3%9F
The last camp commander Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss said:
"I reported the number of the Jews who were brought to Auschwitz to be killed as 2.5 million. This number comes from Eichmann, who gave it to Commander Glücks shortly before the destruction of Berlin. I myself never knew the real number, and I do not have possibilities to find out. I consider the number of 2.5 million much too high. Even Auschwitz was not able to do that."

" The two big crematoria I and II were built in the winter 1942-1943, and started to be used in the Spring of 1943. They had 5 ovens of 3 rooms each, and they were able to cremate, in 24 hours, about 2,000 corpses each. For technical reasons it wasn't possible to increase their capacity, and the various attempts we made damaged the buildings, which in many cases were put completely out of service. A machine would move the corpses to the ovens that were located high. The gas chambers had a capacity of about 3,000 people each, but those figures were never reached, because the single transports were never numerous enough.”

Go to this site to see pictures of the camp, including the wire: http://www.oskarschindler.com/Albums5/album.htm
Click on an image to see a larger version. Notice the barbwire with concrete or steel polls, the top of the wire bends in to make it harder for the prisoners to escape. The guard towers were built outside of the wire. The zone of death is the area cleared of snow. The other pages show the horrible treatment of the Jews and the crematorium.

Check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_camps
It discusses how the camps were run, then visit The Camps section and click on the links for the other camps. That will give you more pictures and descriptions.

The Jews often were worked in Labor Camps where they lived in thin tents in temporary camps that were guarded only by Nazi Guards. The Jews were often starved to death here, and the survivors were sent to the death camps.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobib%C3%B3r_extermination_camp
“Sobibór was the site of one of three successful rebellions by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi extermination camp — there was a similar revolt at Treblinka, and at Auschwitz one of the crematoria was blown up during an attempted revolt.
On October 14, 1943, members of the Sobibór underground, led by POW Alexander Pechersky, succeeded in covertly killing 11 of German SS officers and a number of Ukrainian guards. Although their plan was to kill all the SS and walk out of the main gate of the camp, the killings were discovered and the inmates ran for their lives under fire. About half of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped. Most of them were either killed by the mines surrounding the site or recaptured and shot in the next few days, but about 50 escapees survived the war.
The revolt was dramatized in the 1987 TV movie Escape from Sobibor. An award-winning documentary about the escape was made by Claude Lanzmann, entitled Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures. (The English title was Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m.)”

According to: http://www.death-camps.org/sobibor/sobibor.html
“The camp was in the form of a 400 x 600 m rectangle, surrounded by a 3 m high double barbed wire fence, partially intertwined with pine branches to prevent observation from the outside (e.g. at the station area). Along the fence and in the corners of the camp were wooden watchtowers.
Each of the four camp areas was individually fenced in: The SS administration area (Vorlager), housing and workshops of the Jewish command (Camp I), the "reception" area (Camp II) and the real extermination site (Camp III).”

The Vorlager included the ramp, with space for 20 railway cars, as well as the living quarters for the SS staff, both German and Ukrainian (Trawniki men / "Trawnikis"). The Vorlager also included the main gate. On top of the main gate was a wooden sign about 0.60 x 2.40 m, with the words SS-Sonderkommando, painted in Gothic letters. Unlike Belzec the SS men lived inside the camp.

The Jews from the incoming transports were brought to the "Reception" Area (Camp II). Here they had to go through various procedures prior to their death in the gas chambers: division according to sex, the surrender of their suitcases, removal of clothing, cutting of women's hair and the confiscation of possessions and valuables. On their way to the gas chambers the naked victims passed various buildings; some warehouse barracks, a second former forester's house separated by a high wooden fence (used as the camp offices and living quarters for some of the SS men), a small agricultural area with stables for horses, cattle, swine and geese, and about 450 m south of the gas chambers, a small wooden Catholic chapel in the shadow of tall pine trees. A high observation tower overlooked the entire area.

The most isolated extermination area (Camp III) was located in the northwestern part of the camp. It contained the gas chambers, burial trenches and housing for the Jewish prisoners employed there. A path, 3 - 4 m wide and 150 m long (the "Tube"), led from the reception area to the extermination area. On either side the path was fenced in with barbed wire, intertwined with pine branches. Through it, the naked victims were herded towards the gas chambers. The barber's shop, a barrack where the hair of the Jewish women was cut for further use in Germany, was halfway through the Tube.
The three gas chambers were inside a brick building. Individual chambers were square shaped (4 x 4 m) and had a capacity of 160 - 180 persons. Each gas chamber was entered through a small door, leading from a veranda which ran along the length of the building. After gassing the bodies were removed through a 2 x 2 m folding door, opposite to the entrance, and placed on a second veranda. Outside the building was an annex in which a motor produced the deadly carbon monoxide gas. Water pipes conducted the gas to the gas chambers.
The burial pits were 50 - 60 m long, 10 - 15 m wide, and 5 - 7 m deep. The sandy walls were constructed obliquely in order to facilitate the burying of the corpses. A narrow gauge railway with tippers led from the station to the burial pits, bypassing the gas chambers.”

Check out the pictures here Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek
Go to This Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_concentration_camp
And look at the overhead view of the Warsaw Camp.