they were being transported, the soldiers kept telling the Jews to have hope. When the camps were finally opened, most of the families who were shipped out together ended up being separated. Often, the transports mirrored what went on in the camps; cruelty by the officers, near starvation of those being transported, fetid and unsanitary conditions on the trains. "On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Many people did not survive the ride to arrive at the camp." Jews were forced to obey the guards' orders from the moment they arrived at the camps. "If they didn't, they would be beaten, put into solitary confinement or shot." Prisoners usually had marks on their clothes or numbers on their arms to identify them. The sanitary conditions of the camps were horrible. "There was only one bathroom for four hundred people. They had to stand for hours in snow, rain, heat, or cold for roll call, which was twice a day." Within the first few days of being at the camps, thousands of people died of hunger, starvation and disease. Other people died from the cruel punishments of the guards; beatings and torture. "Typhus, a disease caused by germs carried by flies, was the main disease that spread throughout the camps. Even when people were sick, they still continued working because they did not see that sickness meant death." In 1937, 7,000 Jews were in camps. By 1938, 10,000 more Jews were sent to camps. "Jews were taken to camps if they expressed negative feelings about the government, if they married a non-Jew, if they were sick (mentally or physically), or if they had a police record." When someone escaped from the camp, all the prisoners in that group were shot. Nazis, who claimed that they did not necessarily hate Jews, but wanted to preserve the Aryan race, seemed to enjoy making the Jews suffer. They rationalized that slavery was better than killing their prisoners. "Gold fillings, wedding bands, jewelry, shoes and clothin...
