Internment+Camps

This page gives historical and cultural background of internment camps across the US, Germany and Italy for both WWI and WWII and the living conditions for those that lived there.

WWI: During the first world war, there were internment and concentration camps across the entire world. They were located in Austria, Australia, Namibia, Isle of Man, Ukraine, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and other places. The largest concentration camp of the war was located in Southern Poland. Auschwitz was the largest camp with the largest estimated number of deaths.

Auschwitz was opened after the Germans overtook Poland in 1939, thus starting The Holocaust. Auschwitz was comprised of three different divisions. The prisoners of Auschwitz would work all day, every day, but Sunday. The prisoners were tortured and murdered on a daily basis. An estimated 1,500,000 people were gassed, cremated and killed by injection. The prisoners were separated by gender and were forced to labor differently based on gender. They were packed into tiny buildings with only cots or large wooden bunks they shared with many other people to sleep on. They were marked by a number and lost their name while in the camp. They were fed a bare minimum and sometimes not at all leading to starvation and malnutrition. Prisoners were called to role call each day where they could be shot and killed on the spot. This form of torture lasted until 1945 when the war was finally ended and Prisoners were allowed to leave.

WWII: During the second world war, there were internment camps across the entire west side of the US. The majority were located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.The Japanese were interned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942 and were kept under control until 1945. One of the major camps that will be explored on this page is Manzanar, which was located in Owens Valley, California.

In Manzanar, internees were forced to pack into barracks that were much too small for a family to live in. They went without plumbing or major heat sources. They huddled under as many blankets as the government would allow them in front of the small stove in their barracks. They had to use public outhouse type toilets that were without any form of privacy for the first half of their stay. Internees were fed on a daily budget, 43 cents to be exact, in a crowded mess hall. The menu included food that the Japanese would never had thought of eating in their normal life, but here grew use to the food.



Pictures:[|http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/exhibits/nowinonlinholo.html] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm087.html Information: "Farewell to Manzanar" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp Kirsten