Jewish Oppression:
The Labor camps
During the Holocaust, Jews and other "undesirable" groups were sent to camps by the Nazis. They were often forced to perform labor at these camps. The labor was pointless and humiliating, not to mention dangerous; captives were forced to work without so much as proper equipment, rest, nourishment, or even clothing. Even before the earliest concentration camps in 1933, the German-defined enemies of the state were coerced into labor due to an extreme shortage of labor at the time. It was practically slavery. Working was often the only thing that kept the prisoners alive, in the sense that those who were deemed unable to work were usually executed. The work was not limited to camps. For example, in the Lodz Ghetto, 96 factories were opened. The underlying idea, shared by both ordinary citizens and professionals, was that maintaining social "order" was dependent upon productivity put forth by all citizens, and that those who could or would not take their own initiatives should be compelled to do so. The Nazi Party took this idea to a whole new extreme. During the "Final Solution," many prisoners who were deemed unable to work were of the first to be murdered. That is, if they made it that far. The Nazis were aware of the poor work conditions, following a policy of "annihilation through work" i.e. they literally worked the prisoners to death. For example, at the Mauthausen, emaciated prisoners were forced to climb 186 steps while carrying boulders. The abuse dished out by the Nazi Party through labor camps, while not the primary method of Jewish oppression, played a large role in the annihilation of the undesirables of Germany and other European nations.