shaven and the men to the other. "They were all sent to the showers, naked with a bar of soap, so as to deceive them into believing that they were truly going into a shower. Most people smelled the burning bodies and knew the truth. " There were six true death camps; Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwitz (Birkenau), Sobibor, Maidanek, and Belzec. These camps used gas from shower heads to murder their victims. A seventh death camp, Mauthausen, used a method called "extermination through labor". Most would not consider Buchenwald as a death camp because it had no gas chamber, but it did have special rooms for mass shootings in which hundreds of prisoners died in every day. BuchenwaldBuchenwald, located in Poland, was built on the site of Mt. Ettersberg, near Weimar. The camp, surrounded by walls and barbed wire, was encircled with guard towers at spaced intervals. Buchenwald was actually a series of internal subcamps with wooden and stone barracks, old horse stables, and tent cities. The "little camp", built beyond the roll call area, acquired the worst reputation. In one part of it the SS set aside primitive barracks for emergency needs, crowding 40,000 inmates into them. In another part, the SS forced the inmates to buy their food, and if they couldn't they would die. In July 1937, the Nazis began building Buchenwald. It officially opened on July 19, 1937. The first commander of Buchenwald was Karl Koch. He headed it until he was relocated in Majdanek. The first inmates there were professional criminals. After the criminals, political prisoners were sent there. These politicals were favored over the rest of the prisoners. On arrival, prisoners were asked their status. If they responded political, they were supplied with better boots and warmer clothes. These small items were essential for the prisoners' physical and mental shape. They also received the highest positions available for prisoners. The first whole Jewish transport was composed of ...
