Concentration Camps

Concentration camps during the Holocaust, were a sort of prison for anyone who opposed Hitler or the Nazi party, or just anyone that Hitler didn't like. However, this is is not your average prison; after being transported to the camp, typically by train, you will be sorted into two groups, one group of people who are seen as useful, and another of people seen as useless. The useless group is sent to the gas chamber to be killed, and the other group is sent to a shower to be cleaned. The useless group is not told that they are going to the gas chamber, they are told it is just a shower, and they won't realise that it isn't until it is too late. Once the useful group is in the camp, they get all of their belongings taken by the Nazis, including clothes, and given striped clothes, so they are easily recogniseable as a prisoner, these people are also shaved, and given a star that is colored based on their reason for imprisonment. After the process of entering the camp, the prisoners will be worked to death.

Auschwitz

Auschwitz is one of the most well known concentration camps, it has a sign at the enterance, which reads, "Arbeit Macht Frei" or, "Work Liberates" in English, which is ironic, because they weren't free/liberated, they were prisoners being worked to death. Auschwitz was located near Oświęcim in southern Poland. Auschwitz was a three in one camp, it was a prison camp, a slave-labor camp, and an extermination camp. Auschwitz is now infamously known as the most lethal of the Nazi extermination camps (Berenbaum). Auschwitz would not be liberated, instead the camp would shut down out of fear of being caught, and tried for war crimes, after it was shut down, the inmates of the camp were evacuated to another camp, to be liberated there eventually (Putnam).