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 The Nazis were brutal to the Jews in the camps, creating several harsh punishments. However, there were many different types of camps, such as concentration camps, death camps, and labor camps. Each camp had different punishments, varying in terms of harshness. Some camps were harsher than others. Throughout the camps the Nazis were the ones in charge of making harsh punishments and carrying them out on all Jews. The Nazis were taught that the world would be a better place without Jews. They knew that it was their job to exterminate the Jews so that the world would be a better and happier place. Punishments were always harmful to the victim; some were even created to kill Jews. =====



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 At many camps common punishments were used to harm the Jews. When the men were working, block leaders would beat those under their control with rubber hoses. They did this just to establish who was in charge. Kapos led labor crews to the worksite. They would force the labor crews to walk at a certain pace. If any of the prisoners fell behind the group or did not follow commands they were then whipped or beaten. Kapos were Jews that were forced to punish their fellow prisoners. If the Jews did not want to become Kapos then they would have a severe punishment or death. "There stood an SS man, his machine gun trained on us" Elie Wiesel. =====



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 Stealing was not tolerated in camps. The Nazis wanted to harm the prisoners and one way to do that was by starving them. The commanders came up with a punishment for stealing that did not only punish the person who stole. If one Jew stole a few potato peelings then half of the Jews in that block were killed. The Flossenburg camp made significant use of starvation as a punishment. The Nazis would sit new arrivals at a flat table with their first meal. The meal was a small bowl of watery soup or oatmeal. The inmates were not allowed to speak or move until they were given permission to eat. However, the guard would then command them to jump under the table. The inmates would then spill their only food when following commands. This exercise was repeated until there was hardly any precious food left in the bowl. =====



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 Some camps even created a Gusen. A Gusen was a group of men that were considered no longer useful. These people were taken to a camp compound on a cold winter night. The victims were stripped naked and forced to stand while wardens poured ice cold water on the Jews. The Jews were then left overnight to die of “natural causes”. The Nazis even created games that were used to help get information out of prisoners. One game was called “rabbit hunts”. It was used to get the frightened political prisoners to reveal secrets. “Rabbit hunts” were when a guard would bring ten to fifteen men. They would be lined up single file in between slim spaced barrack; the prisoners also had targets on their backs. The Nazis ordered them to run then the SS men would shoot the unimportant “Rabbits”. The trick was to intimidate the important “rabbits” into telling the SS men what they wanted to hear. =====

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 Women were also punished for no apparent reason, other than being a Jew. The women were appointed to stand in a green triangle and would be hurled out of a nearby window. They would fall from the window down to a courtyard were fellow inmates were forced to watch. Also medical experiments were performed on the Jews. The Jews were used as guinea pigs to gather information for soldiers on the battlefront and to discover treatments to rare diseases. Nazi doctors tested human body reactions to altitude, pressure, and temperature. They also tested chemicals and other medicines on the prisoners. Many Nazi doctors infected inmates with malaria and other deadly diseases. " For me there was no basic difference..... between Jews and guinea pigs" a unknown Nazi doctor. =====

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 In Buchenwald, gypsies were fed nothing but salt water. The experiment was to see how long a person could live on the sea. In Ravensbruck, women were tested with bone grafting. The procedure is when a surgical procedure is used to replace a patients missing bone with material from the patients own body.  Many of the women tested also died. In Münchhausen, they experimented with tuberculosis and mentally and physically ill children. Many Nazi doctors killed there “guinea pigs” with lethal injections or with a gun and a whip. If the Jews resisted being “guinea pigs” they were quickly put to death. =====

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 A common way to kill Jews quickly was in the gas chambers. The gas chambers were a quick and easy way to kill off hundreds of Jews at a time. Hundreds of Jews were piled into “shower rooms”. The door was then locked and gas was poured into the chamber. After the extermination was completed, inmates and Nazis were in charge of pilling the bodies into burial pits. Eventually the burial pits began to fill up and Nazis started to burn the corpses. =====



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 The punishments that were given to the Jews were harsh and unjust. The Jews that lived through this awful time period in history will never forget the awful torture that they endured. "Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies I saw transform into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live." said Elie Wiesel. =====

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