I have decided to base my poster on World War 2 era Nazi Germany due to the amount of misunderstanding of the culture and I am interested in the history behind concentration camps/Germany's story. Due to having a German background I can get primary research from a World War 2 victim and secondary research from the internet.
For a storyline I would like to base it of something like Black Ops zombies due to the vast storyline and how real it seems.
Location:
Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940 - 1945
Source:
Auschwitz was a network of German concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the third Reich.
It consisted of Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), and 45 satellite camps. It was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners who arriveed in May 1940. The firstv extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941. That is when Aushwitz II-Birkenau went on to become a major site of Nazi "final soultion to the Jewish question".
From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe. The victims were killed by the pesticide Zyklon B which was invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of Hydrogen Cyanide or known as Prussic Acid, a warning eye irritant and several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth. In early 1942, Zyklon B emerged as the preferred killing tool of Nazi Germany for use in extermination camps during the Holocaust. The chemical claimed the lives of roughly a million people, most of whom died at Auschwitz. One of the co-inventors of Zyklon B, chemist and businessman Bruno Tesch, was executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS
for use on humans. Although the use of hydrogen cyanide has been banned or severely restricted in many countries, products similar to Zyklon B are still manufactured by Detia-Degesch (successor to Degesch) and by Adezin, a Czech firm. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz and around ninety percent of them were Jewish.
Approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses,homosexuals, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments. In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 6,500 to 7,00 members of the German Schutzstaffel. 15 percent of which were committed for war crimes, some including Rudolf Höss were executed. The Allied Powers or Allied Forces refused to believe early reports of atrocities at the camp or it's railways remains controversial. 144 prisoners are known to have escaped Auschwitz successfully and on October 7, 1944 two Sonderkommando units- Prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising.
Within in Auschwitz, prisoners were forced to strip and wear uniforms that were striped and blue in colour (These uniforms are now known as Striped pyjamas.) Men would wear a vest, trousers, hat and coat. Women would be supplied a smock type dress. On their feet pirsoners were to wear wooden or leather clogs and socks were not supplied so the clogs would rub on their feet and ankles. This would cause foot sores and this could be dangerous due to the poor conditions of the barracks and around the camp. The prisoners would easily get an infection which would lead to death.
The uniforms were changed approximately every six weeks and prisoners were to sleep and work in the same clothing which would get very dirty.
Each prisoner had a number printed on their clothing to identify them along with an inverted triangle with lettering to signify the reason for their imprisonment. Criminals were marked with a green triangle, political prisoners with red, homosexuals with pink, Jehovah's Witnesses wore a purple triangle and asocials (including Roma) wore a black triangle. In some camps, Jewish were usually marked by a yellow triangle over a red triangle to form the Star of David. However in other camps a yellow star identify them as being Jewish.
Image: http://www.webanswers.c om/post-images/8/86/160B2349-D28C-C0D1-6553103310036809.png
Crematorium 1:
August 15, 1940 - July 1943
According to calculations by German authorities, 340 corpses could be burned every 24 hours after the installation of three furnaces. After the completion of four crematoria with gas chambers in Auschwitz II - Birkenau, the burning of corpses in Crematorium I was halted. The building was used for storage and then designed as an SS air-raid shelter. The furnaces, chimney and some of the walls were demolished, and the openings in the roof through which the SS poured Zyklon B were plastered. After the war, the museum carried out a partial reconstruction.. The chimney and two incinerators were rebuilt using original components, as were several of the openings in the gas chamber roof.
Crematorium 2:
March 1943 - November 1944
The Crematorium II building contained a gas chamber and furnaces for burning corpses. Serveral hundred Jews were murdered here with poison gas and their bodies burned. Bodies of Jewish and non Jewish prisoners who died in the concentration camp were also burned here. According to calculations by German authorities, 1440 corpses could be burned every 24 hours. According to the testimony of former prisoners the figure was higher. At the end of the war with the intention to remove the evidence of their crimes, the camp authorities ordered the demolition of the furnaces and crematorium building in Novermber 1944. On January 20, 1945, the SS blew up the remains which was not removed.
