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    World War One was not only a war between countries, but a war of all people in them.  While the soldiers were fighting on the battle front, the people suffered great loss at home.  One of the most devastating losses in our history is the Holocaust.  During the Holocaust, concentration camps played a major role in Hitler’s Final Solution.  The Nazis planned to kill all Jews because they were blamed for the destruction of Germany.  The German Nazis had reached their goal.  By the end of the war more than six million European Jews were killed.  Also targeted were Poles, Soviet POWs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, and Catholics in the extermination.
    Auschwitz, a town in Krakow, Poland, was home to one of the twenty-two concentration camps set up by the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler.  Auschwitz was the largest, most brutal camp and was very effective.  More than 2.5 million deaths were caused in Auschwitz alone.  The deaths were caused by harsh labor, beatings, starvation, sickness, shootings, and disease.  The commander of the camp was Rudolf Hoss, whose main goal was to eliminate and exterminate all the prisoners brought to camp.  One important reason why camps were effective is because the killings were systematic and fast instead of the firing squad.  Auschwitz was divided into three different camps located in different cities.  Auschwitz One, located in Krakow, where the prisoners were forced to labor.  Auschwitz Two, in Birkeneau, where the gas chambers and crematoria were located.  Auschwitz Three, in Monoschwitz, was the headquarters for the production of synthetic fuel and rubber.
    As the prisoners entered Auschwitz, mounted over the main entrance were the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" or, work will give you freedom.  At the camps of Auschwitz and at other camps, prisoners were tortured to death.  They were forced to live in the poor and unsanitary conditions of the camp.  With vermin and disease going around, hundreds died each day. Upon entering the camp, the prisoners were stripped from their clothes and given raggy pants and a long shirt, which were not useful in the cold and damp days.  The penal roll call was when all the prisoners stood standing all night long for the wrongdoing of one inmate.  As the prisoners stood for the roll call in the cold, their goal was to die so they could get out of misery.  Most fainted and fell to the ground and were beaten and shot to death.  In the morning, a small breakfast of diluted coffee and a stale piece of bread were distributed.  After breakfast, the prisoners were divided into work groups and labored up to twelve hours daily.  The work involved going through the possessions of the prisoners for any valuables.  Some skilled prisoners, like cooks and carpenters, were given jobs and weren’t killed.  The barracks, where the prisoners were housed, were without heat or running water. Unsanitary conditions combined with lice, bed bugs, rats and other vermin gave deadly diseases to all the inmates.
    The gas chambers and crematoria were located next to the barracks to remind the prisoners of tortured death.  The gas chambers were showers that gave off poisonous gasses.  They were used because they were more efficient and quicker than a firing squad.  The dead bodies were then shipped to the mass graves.  These mass graves were large ditches that could hold up to 100,000 bodies at once.  This was easier and less laboring than individual graves.  To hide evidence of the murders, the crematorium was used to incinerate the dead bodies.  The stale smell of burned hair and flesh was a constant reminder to the prisoners that death was near.  The crematorium was also a grave to live children.  They were pushed into the burning flames because they were harder to kill in the gas chambers.  If the prisoners did any thing wrong they were shot to death also.
    Other deadly but less effective camps were Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Mauthausen.  Majdanek was a death camp near Lubin, Poland.  It was the first camp to be liberated in the Holocaust.  Up to 1,000,000 were murdered there, and only 1,000 remained living.  Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp where the famous Anne Frank died of typhus.  Dachau was also a concentration camp near Munich.  There, in April 1945, liberation day, only 33,000 prisoners remained alive.  Mauthausen was near Linz, Austria, which was Hitler's hometown.  Here, the prisoners slaved in stone quarries.  Up to two million died there until liberation day on May 4, 1945.
    Auschwitz and the other death camps demonstrated the horror of the Holocaust.  These camps were designed to exterminate millions of innocent people.  Every aspect of a concentration camp was made to hurt the prisoners there.  Unsanitary conditions, harsh labor, and torture were some examples used at the camps to hut prisoners.  The Nazis were eventually defeated; ending this horrific time where humans were treated more like animals.