Third Delivery

1. Why were the prisoners tattoed or marked on their forearms? Does this action have a religious implication? Why?

Incoming prisoners went through the infamous selection process where a Nazi security officer (SS), would determine who would be killed in the gas chambers and who would work in the forced labor camps. The prisoners who would live and work were registered with a tattoo. Each prisoner was assigned a specific five digit Hollerith number, which was part of a custom punch card system designed to track prisoners with in the Nazi concentration camps,these tattoos were only one of the ways the Nazis dehumanized their prisoners.
Tattoos took on an even more gruesome significance in the concentration camps than just simple identification. The inmate who entered a Nazi concentration camp with tattoos was targeted from the moment he or she arrived. Tattooed inmates were immediately catalogued, and their skin was marked for the collection after death.

http://www.articleclick.com/Article/Nazi-Imposed-Forearm-Tattoos/929485

This action have a religious implication because once again they were discriminated for being Jews and they marked them with the number as if they were animals with no rights and without a name.

2. Who were the kapos? Why did their fellowmen fear these leaders?

The German concentration camps depended on the cooperation of trustee inmates who supervised the prisoners. Known as Kapos, these trustees carried out the will of the Nazi camp commandants and guards, and were often as brutal as their S.S. counterparts. Some of these Kapos were Jewish, and even they inflicted harsh treatment on their fellow prisoners. For many, failure to perform their duties would have resulted in severe punishment and even death, but many historians view their actions as a form of complicity.
Their felowmen fear these leaders beacuse they were as bad and brutal as the SS oficers, so they treat their prisoners very bad and they also punished them for not doing things right.

http://remember.org/wit.root.wit.res.html

3. How did SS officers select their victims? Support your answer.

SS officers select their victims as the ones who were old, the ones who couldn’t work or someone who make something bad and don’t obey the officers.
Every few months, there would be a "selection." That was where officials came into the barracks and picked out the prisoners who looked too weak to be of any use. The next morning, the trucks would come and take those prisoners directly to the crematorium.
http://home.snu.edu/~dwilliam/s98/holocaust/conditionsinnaziconcentrationcamps.html