Web Activity Lesson Plans

Chapter 26: World War II, 1939-1945

Nazi Concentration Camps

Introduction

The Nazi concentration camps are a symbol of Nazi terror and genocide, and especially the Holocaust—the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews and other groups. In this activity students will learn about the Nazi concentrations camps, the people who died there, and some who survived the Nazi regime to tell their own stories.

Lesson Description
Students will go to a Web site about the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps. Students will read the information and answer four questions about what they have read. They will then write a poem or eulogy to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

Instructional Objectives
The learner will be able to describe and summarize the Holocaust and the establishment of concentration camps.
The learner will be able to demonstrate understanding of the Holocaust by writing a poem or eulogy in honor of those who died.

Student Web Activity Answers

The three main types of camps included concentration camps (or forced labor camps), extermination camps, and transit camps. The prisoners of concentration camps performed hard labor, while the main purpose of the extermination camps was to exterminate their victims. The transit camps were holding centers for prisoners who were to be moved to other locations. In addition to these three camps, Nazis also had collection camps, labor-education camps, and subcamps.

Auschwitz was in Poland. One reason the Nazis established several camps there was to centralize their systematic transport and murder of European Jews.

The Nazis used gas chambers to kill their victims. The victims, who were often told that they were going to the showers, were lured in the gas chambers naked and then poisoned using carbon monoxide or hydrocyanic acid fumes (Zyklon B). The bodies were then buried in mass graves or burned in crematoriums.

Doctors at the concentration camps "experimented" on living victims, torturing, infecting, and poisoning them in the name of science. Innocent men, women, and children were gassed, poisoned, frozen, and vivisected.

Students' poems or eulogies will vary, but encourage students to be detailed in their descriptions to demonstrate an understanding of the full extent of the Holocaust.