The Holocaust

Ghettoes After the conquest of Poland, the Nazis moved most of the Jewish population into Ghettoes.

A ghetto is a small area of a city, into which a very large population is placed. People were crushed in, with several families sharing a room. Food & Work were scarce. Starvation was common; nobody had enough to eat. Supplementing your ration by dealing on the black market was dangerous, and could mean death if you were caught. Disease was common, with so many hungry people, and few washing facilities, vermin soon spread disease.

The Ghetto produced the kind of Jew that the Nazis wanted to see; dirty, diseased and outcast from society. The few opportunities for work were eagerly snapped up, even if it meant working as slave labourers. Many who left to work, did not return!

“Einsatzgruppen” As the German armies advanced into Russia, they were followed by special action squads; often composed of police reserves, ordinary men, often with academic qualifications which had kept them out of the army. These squads began the task of liquidiating the Jewish population of the conquered territory.

On arrival the einsatzgrup would post a notice that all Jews were going to be resettled elsewhere, and should report for transport at a given time. Those who reported were loaded onto trucks, and driven off, usually only a short distance to secluded spots, usually wooded. Here they would be forced to strip naked, and line up to await execution.

Often they would have to stand on the corpses of those who had already been shot, while they waited to be killed. After the Jewish population were killed, their clothes and valuables would be sent to Germany for re-use.

Some einsatzgrup commanders, worried at the toll that this was taking on their men tried to find other ways of killing Jews which would not effect their soldiers so badly.

People were drowned, burned, or clubbed to death by local anti-semites who supported the Nazi regime, or by mental patients whom the Nazis had released for this purpose. Eventually it was decided that this method of killing was un-economic! While the einsatzgruppen were at work on the eastern front, in Germany, doctors had been experimenting with the best way to kill large numbers of disabled people. They had settled on Gassing as the best and most economical technique, and it was decided that this should be used to kill the jews as well.

Huge camps were established, self- financing, as the inhabitants would provide slave labour to German Industry. Here the Jews of Europe would be brought in enormous numbers.

Most would be killed straight away, and those who survived would endure a short, painful life of hard labour and experimentation, always at the risk of random violence from the guards

The camp at Auschwitz was capable of killing thirty thousand people every day.

New arrivals would pour off the trains, and be divided into two groups. One group would go off to work, to be tattooed, and enter the camp population. The other group would be taken off, being told that they were going to have a shower, and be de-loused.

They were marched to an underground changing room with numbered hooks, and told to undress, and remember the number of their hooks. Their heads would be shaved, and they would be marched into a shower room. When about 2000 people were in, the doors were shut, and they were gassed with Zyklon B. It took about minutes for them all to die.

After the room was ventilated, Jewish Slave workers, the Sonderkommando, removed the bodies, and, after removing any Gold teeth, or hidden valuables, the corpses were taken up to be cremated. The cremation ovens at Auschwitz were designed to be self-fuelling, to run off human fat, but most of their victims were so thin that they kept breaking down.

Later in the war the SS resorted to burning the bodies in huge pits of petrol; and many thousands of Jews were thrown in, or forced to run into this, without having been killed first.

The valuables were taken back to Germany, including clothing, which was distributed to those who had been bombed out of their houses, the hair, which was used to stuff mattresses, and sometimes the fat, which was used to make soap. The Jews became commodities for the Nazis; dehumanized and just used.

Some Nazi doctors, particularly the infamous Mengele, used the Jewish slaves as subjects for medical experiments, usually performed without anaesthetic

For those who had been selected to work, life was appalling; endless labour in freezing conditions, abysmal food, and vile living conditions. The only way out was to be selected for death.

At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to hide their actions, but many camps were liberated by the allies, who had to dispose of thousands of bodies. Many died from the shock of getting decent food!