World War II was going on at the same time as the Holocaust. The Allied forces, which included The United States of America, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, were fighting the Axis Powers, which consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan. (Mackay 4-5). The Holocaust is a time in history when millions of people were persecuted in Europe by being sent to live in ghettos and eventually being
To prevent enemy soldiers from returning to their troops, the Japanese held prisoners of war in horrible camps throughout Japan, forced them to work in horrendous conditions, and treated them inhumanely. The living conditions the prisoners had to endure on the way to the camps was truly awful. When transported, the men were crammed into rusty old freighters and spent several nights in these “hell ships” (“The POW Camps”). The men on the ships had no room to move, were ill with dysentery and had very little food. Sometimes they were transported from one “hell ship” to another on their journeys to work camps.
That meant three hours of sleep, if they fell asleep. Some slaves slept in a one-room shack that has no furniture or beds. Ten to twelve people would crowd in the small room with no plumbing or electricity. In those 18 hours, most slaves worked on cotton plantations. Kids would pull weeds, feed chickens, scare crows away from the cornfields, keep hawks from stealing young chickens, pick insects off the crops, or carry water to other workers.
A 40 acre piece of land is attributed for over 2 million deaths, this is more than the total number of British and American soldiers combined that died in World War II. This small acreage was called Auschwitz and to the prisoners who stayed and died there it caused both mental and physical inhumanity to them. Mental inhumanity is an act against someone or a group of people, which is considered immorally wrong, on which affects their thoughts or feelings. Physical inhumanity is an act against a person or people which is considered immorally wrong, on which affects their body and health. Both of these acts of inhumanity were committed not only at Auschwitz but at every death camp established during the Holocaust.
Diseases that are easily treatable here in the United States are basically death sentences to the poor people of Afghanistan. About 48,545 children die each year in Afghanistan due to diarrheal diseases alone (TOLOnews). That is about eighty percent of the children who die from unsafe water. These kids died from ingesting water, which is a very troubling sentence to type. The families are left with choice of using this dirty water or not use any water at all.
They were left to starve to death. In a second barracks, people were so weak, they couldn’t lift their bodies. By now, we were all crying. Some of the men were promising revenge. The greener ones were vomiting.
Many have become slaves while others only leave their cells for 4 hours a day. For minor misbehaviour prisoners are sent to the punishment block or the ‘hole’ with no running water and many are left there for days. Carandiru Penitentiary in Brazil has everything from massacres, HIV prisoners to legalised torture. The 7500 inmates there, the majority have HIV but never entered being positive and most of the time when there is a surgery they forget the anaesthetics. Tadmor military prison in Syria still use the medieval methods of torture on the guilty and innocent, being dragged by a rope till dead or beaten to death by pipes.
Many of them worked to death or died of starvation. In the last days of the Nazi regime, from 1942 to 1944, the Auschwitz camp was used as an extermination camp. That is run mainly served to prisoners of the Jewish origin. Through processes such as gas chamber, crematorium and shootings, Jewish people were executed. This period was known as the stage of final judgment.
Funding for this facility was continually cut and as a result, Willowbrook was short staffed, care providers were uneducated and just frustrated in general. The video depicted mostly children looking malnourished and miserable. Children with special needs who weren't able to even feed themselves were given only a few minutes to eat each meal and disease and sickness plagued the residents. Many families found their children abused, bruised, having broken bones, or with their fingers and toes stuck together from lack of use. Many witnesses on the documentary complained of the smell that enveloped the facility, stating that the residents were uncared for, and thus unhygienic.
People in the camps had poor diet, what they usually received were gruel, cornbread and vegetable soup that made from the cheapest vegetables available. Some camps have reported two meals a day while others allowed three. The camps were also infested with many types of pest which would cause severe skin problems and lead to dangerous infections and eventually, causing death. Nevertheless, they were still forced to work even if they were ill. Under these extremely bad circumstances, many of them were driven to insanity and in many cases committed suicide.