Concentration camps

“In his imagination he had thought that all the huts were full of happy families, some of whom sat outside on rocking chairs in the evening and told stories about how things were so much better when they were children and they´d had respect for their elders, not like the children nowadays. […] “
Concentration camps are camps, where Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals and others were brought in the Second World War. The name was borrowed from the British concentrations camps in the second-Anglo-Boer-War. The first camp was built after the Reichstag fire, in 1933 and was called Dachau.
In the concentrations camps, the people were concentrated in one place. They were punished and humiliated by the soldiers before they finally had to go into the gas chamber and were gassed. Most captives were killed on the marches of death or died because of their illnesses or they starved to death.
Some concentrations camps were labour camps. There, they had to built new caserns.
“As it turned out, all the things that he thought might be there – weren´t.”(Page 207)
Marlene


Holocaust (from the Greek hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burn") is the term for the systematic murder of over 3,6 million Jews in the time of World War 2. It’s also used for the murder of many Roma and Sinti. The Holocaust was committed by the Nazi’s. They thought the Jews and other groups were undesirable.
“[…] as the door at the front was suddenly closed and a loud metallic sound rang through from the outside. Bruno raised an eyebrow, unable to understand the sense of all this, but he assumed that it had something to do with keeping the rain outside and stopping the people from catching colds. And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed”


Jews (Yhudim):
the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East.
In the National Socialism people, who were Jewish origin were treated very cruelly by the members of the Nazi party in Germany and had to fight against prejudice. (p53, Bruno´s father:”Ah those people aren´t not people at all”)
In the time period of 1933-1945 many special laws, which forbid normal things, were formed and the live of Jews as well as family members of Jews turned to be really hard and difficult.
For example:
In July 1938: Jews were not longer allowed to work as doctors, so people like Pavel had to finish their work.
November 1938: Jews had to wear a Jewish star and leave there houses. Shmuel, for example, had to leave his home above the watch shop and moved to the ghetto.
Types of these laws were set in the Reich legal Register. They had to e be obeyed only by Jewish people. Unbelievable inequality was formed and just a few people had the courage to try to help jews.

Luisa


The “Final Solution”

The Final Solution is the name of the plan of Heinrich Himmler for killing all Jews.
The Genocide of the Jews began with the “Operation Reinhard” in summer 1942 in Poland.
In the whole Holocaust more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
The most bodies were burned or were thrown into mass graves.
The Nazis didn’t care about the Jews.

“Several days later, after the soldiers had searched every part of the house and gone into the local towns and villages with pictures of the little boy, one of them discovered the pile of clothes and the pair of boots that Bruno had left near the fence. He left them there, undisturbed,…It was as if he had just vanished off the fence of the earth and left his clothes behind him”


Deportation

Referring to the ideology of the Nazis many Jews were deported to concentration camps. First, they had to leave their homes in order to live together in ghettos and there they had to live together in small rooms. From there they were taken by trucks or trains to the concentration camps. When they had to move with trains they were crowded together in carriages. These carriages had no windows and doors. When they arrived at the concentration camps they were selected into groups. One group consisted of old people, ill people and pregnant women. This group was sent to the gas chambers. The other people were sent to small huts and had to work in the camp.
“[…], Bruno could only make out the crowds of people for a few moments before he and his family boarded a very comfortable train with very few people on it and plenty of empty seats and fresh air when the windows were pulled down. If the trains had been going in different directions, he thought, it wouldn’t have seemed so odd, but they weren’t; they were both pointed eastwards.”
Simone