Assigned Blog #5

I watched the documentary called "Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State" Episode 1. It started out with how the Nazis talked over their plan to exterminate the Jews.It showed how German SS soldiers had the task of preparing Auschwitz and how they forced Poles to assist them in doing so. One of the ways they punished Poles was hanging them by their arms behind them until their joints would come out of place. A Polish Prisoner himself said how painful it was to take this punishment. This documentary focused mainly on German soldier Hurse, who was in charge of a lot of the construction of Auschwitz and also Himler. It explained how the site for Auschwitz was strategically placed because that area of Poland was very rich in natural resources, especially coal which would be needed for the extermination of the Jews. Auschwitz was originally supposed to hold 10,000 Jews but it was tripled to be the largest concentration camp, holding 30,000 Jews. Then it went onto explain how Hitler planned to invade Moscow in the Soviet Union. Germans took 3 million Soviet soldiers in the Invasion of Moscow and over 2 million of them were killed, yet some slipped away. Soviet Jews were also taken and killed or forced into concentration camps to work. A German SS soldier recalls the ways the Jews were killed in Ostrag. One of them was lining them up in front of a ditch and shooting at them, so they would fall back into the ditch, making their bodies easier to burn. A Jew recalls being in Ostrag and being able to slip away from these horrible executions with his mother and return to safety. 2,000-3,000 Jews were killed in Ostrag that day. In order to select which people were "handicapped" 3 doctors would go through a form and mark a red X on it if they thought they were suitable to be killed. If majority marked the red X, then the handicapped were sent to be exterminated. These handicapped people were taken to the gas chambers in Auschwitz and were told that they were simply getting a shower. Carbon Monoxide gases came out of the pipes instead of water, and 70,000 handicapped people were killed this way before the summer of 1940. Nazis experimented by using explosives to kill Jews and body parts flew everywhere. They also tried experiments with Carbon Monoxide gas from car exhaust to kill the Jews by locking them in a room with a car running. They also did an experiment with Zyclon B, which was another form of gassing the Jews. The Germans liked gassing the Jews better because there wasn't any blood baths.

I thought this documentary was pretty interesting, but it got a little boring as it went on. I give it a 3 out of 5. I learned a lot about the ways Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 

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  • Break your summary into shorter paragraphs. It would make it much easier to read.

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