Compare and Contrast Essay: Nazi Concentration Camps

WWII is full of stories from every angle from the war involving soldiers, world leaders, civilians, but the ones that hit the hardest for me are the stories told by the ones who had to endure the pure evil of Hitler’s Nazi concentration camps. Before reading the Moller pdfs I have read and heard of many stories from people involved in the Nazi concentration camps, but these readings have brought a new look on things especially how not all Nazi concentration camps were created equal. Nazi concentration camps were terrible, but some more so than others. I want to bring to light how all Nazi concentration camps were the same, but also how they were different and how those camps were different than the Final Solution. My goal for this paper is to show the similarities between Nazi concentration camps and some big differences between them also.

For many stories involving Nazi concentration camps usually a few things stick out, crowded, dirty, unlivable conditions, scarce food, disease, and the Moller pdfs readings hold those words true. In the reading of Gabriele Herz, she describes the first ever Nazi concentration camp for women (Moringen) and one thing she brings up is how crowded the camp is, “Throughout the entire course of the day, there is not a single minute during which you can be alone with yourself” (Document 20). Space was little to none no matter what concentration camp it was. One of the biggest similarities between all the concentration camps was the scarce food that was given out. Looking at pictures from the holocaust will show this, but a quote that caught my eye from the readings came from Hanna Levy-Hass and her time at Bergen-Belsen. “Starvation is everywhere; each of us is nothing more than a shadow” (Document 50). Weather it be from pictures or journal entries you can see just how scarce food was among all the Nazi concentration camps. The number one similarity between the camps, that would be death. Death is talked about no matter the concentration camp and no matter the location, some more than others, but death was apart of all camps. While the camps had a lot of similarities, they did have differences as hard as that is to believe. 

Differences among the camps can be hard to see from the naked eye if you’re going off pictures or readings, but something caught my eye when reading the Moller pdfs, death. Death being apart of all the camps was a similarity, but how those deaths occurred were not. Death at Auschwitz came via the gas chambers, which was beyond inhumane, but at other camps like Bergen-Belsen you could argue the way those death occurred might surpass the gas chambers as far as inhumane goes. After reading Hanna Levy-Hass’s journal entry you find out that people at that camp are basically wilting away from starvation, killing themselves at work, and being beaten to death every single day. At Auschwitz you’re dead within minutes from the gas chamber, at Bergen-Belsen you’re basically on deaths doorstep for weeks sometimes months, suffering with no end in sight. A quote from Hanna’s journal captures these thoughts, “It would be better to die right away, as quickly as possible… like a human being” (Document 50). That quote to me shows just how big of a difference death was among the camps. The Nazis using the camps to kill Jews was one plan they had for the final solution, but there were more plans in place separate from the camps to follow through with the termination of the Jewish people. 

The Final Solution and the Nazi concentration camps do go hand in hand, but there were other ways the Nazis were doing the Final Solution that differ from the camps. The Nazis plan for the camps was to have the Jewish people die weather it be from starvation, disease, or gassings, but different forms of the Final Solution were tried. One solution being putting all the Jewish people in the ghetto and sealing them off from the rest of the world. Another solution being the shooting of Jews in large pits. The ghettos and camps could be considered the same thing just based off the conditions and the pure evil the Jewish people had to go through at both, the ghettos were just another way of isolating Jewish people and eventually leading to their deaths. After reading Chaim Kaplans journal entries that’s where you find out the Final Solution was going on inside these ghettos also. “The Jewish section of Warsaw has become a city of slaughter. We have endured three more nights of butchery, and we have almost become accustomed even to this” (Document 47). This quote shows how the Final solution was being executed among the ghettos, which is almost a mirror image on how the camps were also handling the Final Solution. Shootings of the Jewish people was common throughout the Nazi regime, but the Final Solution mass graves in Dubno, Ukraine was unlike the shootings that were happing at camps or ghettos. After reading the testimony of Hermann Graebe in document 45 you can see just how different this place was. Graebe talks about how 1500 people were killed daily and how each was led into a massive ditch and shot in the back of the head. These firsthand accounts from Mr. Graebe show just the pure evil that was going on in Dubno, but this pure evil was all over the Nazis Final Solution whether it be starvation, disease, gas chambers or shootings. After reading Hermann Graebes I feel the major difference between Dubno and the camps were how the camps for the most part were used to slowly get rid of the Jewish people, but Dubno was used more as a accelerated version of that with over 1500 people dying each day. The differences in how the camps and ghettos were used compared to Dubno to me showed just how the Nazis were living every day in chaos and how the Jewish people were the ones who had to suffer from all of this. 

After reading the Moller pdfs I came away with a greater understanding of just how different each camp was, but also the same. The differences are sometimes hard to see when all you see and read about is the pure evil that was going on at each camp, but the Moller pdfs and weather it be journal entries or testimonies really brought to light all the similarities and some big differences that were going on among all the different camps.