1. The Camps
Although the Nazis came to power in 1933, it wasn’t until the second half of 1941 that Nazi policy began to focus on the annihilation of the Jewish people. This coincided with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, Historians note that on July 31, 1941, Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, sent an official order to Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the security branch of the SS to authorize a “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” The exact meaning behind this order is still debated among many Holocaust scholars. Current research shows that mass systematic killing of Jewish men in the newly conquered territory of the Soviet Union began in June, and by August, had spread to women and children as well.
There is no surviving order by Hitler to expand the murder activities to encompass all Jews under Nazi control, but most scholars believe such an order was given in the fall of 1941 or at the latest, early in (Would the army act without an order being given?)

2. The Road To The Death Camps
When we hear the word Holocaust, it usually evokes visions of murder in gas chambers
It is true that many died this way, but it was not the original Nazi plan
The idea of death camps came about gradually

3. The Road To Death Camps
Oct Hitler signs order permitting physicians to put to death those unsuitable to live
“Life unworthy of life”
Backdates to Sept. 1, 1939
organize a secret killing operation targeting disabled children. Beginning in October 1939, children with disabilities, brought to a number of specially designated pediatric clinics throughout Germany and Austria, were murdered by lethal overdoses of medication or by starvation. Some 5,000 disabled German infants, toddlers, and juveniles are estimated to have been killed by war's end.
Hitler ordered a halt to the Euthanasia Program in late August 1941, in view of widespread public knowledge of the measure and in the wake of private and public protests concerning the killings, especially from members of the German clergy. According to internal T4 statistics, approximately 70,000 adult disabled patients were murdered during this initial gassing phase. However, this did not mean an end to the Euthanasia killing operation. The child Euthanasia Program continued as before.  
Euthanasia planners quickly envisioned extending the killing program to adult disabled patients living in institutional settings. In the autumn of 1939, Hitler signed a secret authorization in order to protect participating physicians, medical staff, and administrators from prosecution; this authorization was backdated to September 1, 1939, to suggest that the effort was related to wartime measures. The secret operation was code-named T4, in reference to the street address (Tiergartenstrasse 4) of the program's coordinating office in Berlin. Six gassing installations for adults were eventually established as part of the Euthanasia Program: Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein.
Beginning in January 1940, adult patients were selected by specially recruited T4 physicians for death. These doctors rarely examined the patients themselves, but often based their decisions on medical files and the diagnoses of staff at the victims' home institutions. Those selected were transported by T4 personnel to the sanatoria that served as central gassing installations. The victims were told they would undergo a physical evaluation and take a disinfecting shower. Instead, they were killed in gas chambers using pure carbon monoxide gas. Their bodies were immediately burned in crematoria attached to the gassing facilities. Ashes of cremated victims were taken from a common pile and placed in urns without regard for accurate labeling. One urn was sent to each victim's family, along with a death certificate listing a fictive cause and date of death. The sudden death of thousands of institutionalized patients, whose death certificates listed strangely similar causes and places of death, raised suspicions. Eventually, the clandestine Euthanasia Program became an open secret.

4. The Road To The Death Camps
T-4 Programs
First killings by starvation, then lethal injection, and later gassing
Pseudoscientific rationalization for the killing of the “unworthy”were bolstered by economic conditions. According to bureaucratic calculations, state funds that went to the care of criminals and physically and mentally ill persons could be put to better use, for example, loans to newly married couples. They were seen as a burden on the Volk, the German people. In a time of war and economic hardship it was not difficult to lose sight of the absolute value of human life. Hitler understood wartime and said it was the best time for the elimination of the incurrably ill.

5. Killing the Jews Einsatzgruppen- mobile killing squads used in Russia
Helped by police battalions and Waffen SS units
Used trucks to move the older Jews
When they discovered it took too long to starve and work the Jews to death in the ghettos, they resorted to other methods
Had to change tactics.
In Poland the Einsatzgruppen rounded up the Jews and put them in ghettos. In Russia the Einsatzgruppen killed the Jews.
Einsatzgruppen- Many taken to the countryside, forced to dig a mass grave and were shot.
Using diesel trucks to murder Jews was both inexpensive and efficient. A large black truck would drive up and take a load of Jews away. Then they would come back and get another group. When they were asked where they had been taken they were told they had been relocated.
Witnesses who saw the truck noticed a special pipe connected to the truck’s exhaust with the rear compartment, and soon the truth was known.
The truck would drive until all the passengers had died of lethal carbon monoxide poisoning. Then the corpses had been burned or buried in a forest, which is why the Nazis had stopped traffic from leaving the city during that whole weekend.

6. See historical footage and hear personal stories
Einsatzgruppen
The SS followed the German army, the Wermacht. Their job was to search for opponents to the Reich, including communists and all Jews- and execute them. There were four units of Einsatzgruppen (A,B,C,and D) and the largest unit was composed of 1,000 men. These groups alone did not carry out the destruction of Soviet Jewry, wherever they went, ordinary German soldiers, German police units, and local collaborators helped get their murderous job done. By spring 1943, the Einsatzgruppen and their helpers had exterminated 1.25 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others, including Soviet prisoners of war and Sinti-Roma
The Einsatzgruppen killed their victims, men, women and children, by gathering them along the edges of ravines, mines, ditches, or pits dug specifically for this purpose. First, they would force Jews to hand over their possessions and remove their clothing. Then they would shoot them and throw the bodies into ditches that often had been dug by the Jews themselves. They killed at least one million Jews this way.
The commanders completed daily reports of their murderous activities, which are still accessible today. The evidence of the murderous actions is also found in photos taken by the soldiers and personal diaries and letters sent back home to Germany, telling close family of their daily routine.
Among the bloodiest massacres was that which occurred at Babi Yar, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine in late September There close to 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children were forcibly taken to the Jewish cemetery and ordered to remove their valuables and clothing before being killed. One by one,the young and old, grandaparents and infants, were shot in the back of the head, as they lay on top of one another in a mass grave.
Get picture on p. 95 from The World Must Know book.
Local residents could see what was happening, could hear the shots and the cries of the victims. Most of them did nothing to intervene. They too, were terrifies: What happened to the Jews one day might be done to them the next day.
One survivor remembers:
“I saw them do the killing. AT 5:00 p.m. they gave the command, Fill the pits. Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil… His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: ‘Finish me off!’ … A murdered woman lay at my fee. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately, ‘Mommy!’ That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious.” p. 96- The World Must Know .
One officer said he never permitted the shooting of individuals, but ordered that several of the men should shoot at the same time in order to avoid direct personal responsibility. Other group leaders were not so. They demanded that the victims lie down flat on the ground to be shot through the nape of the neck. He did not approve of these methods. When asked why, he responded, “It was psychologically an immense burden to bear.
A handful of men in the mobile killing units asked to be relieved of their assignment. Permission was granted and no action was taken against them. The rest went along and performed the task with discipline, if not zeal.
The killers drank heavily. Alcohol somehow made the work more bearable.
Himmler was told by one commander, “These men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we training here? Either neurotics or savages.
To deal with this problem, a more impersonal method of killing was sought. If the killers could no longer be brought to the victims in order to slaughter them face to face, the victims must be brought to the killers and dispatched in a way that kept the victims at a distance. Thus a second form of killing was developed: the death camp, where killing was done by gas and the bodies were then burned.
When the SS ran out of bullets they sometimes killed their victims using flame throwers
Shooting soon became too inefficient because the bullets were needed for the war effort.
After the war, leaders of the Einsatzgruppen were tried at Nuremberg. Of 24 defendants, fourteen were sentenced to death. Only four were actually executed; the rest had their sentences reduced. Although there were subsequent trials of men who had been involved in the shooting of Jews, most of those who took part in the murder were never punished. Only tried 24 because that’s how many seats there were.
See historical footage and hear personal stories

7. Einsatzgruppen 3,000 men participated in the Einsatzgruppen
Officers of the units were ordinary citizens
Many were university educated
1.2 million Jews killed one by one
Local residents could see what was happening and could hear the shots and cries of the victims. Most of them did nothing to intervene.
Historians are divided about the motives of the Einsatzgruppen. Christopher Browning described them as ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances who gradually overcame their moral inhibitions.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen considered them to be willing executioners who shared the Fuhrer’s vision. Both scholars agree they had a choice of whether to participate. Almost all chose to become killers.

8. Euthanasia Program
They had gained experience with gassing victims in their Euthanasia Program
Physically eliminating persons considered unproductive or physically ill.
The mobile killing squads proved to be problematic. They required large numbers of executioners, the men suffered from psychological repercussions, and it was difficult to conceal the killing from the surrounding populace. A new method was therefore devised, aimed at solving a number of difficulties for the perpetrators. First, instead of the killer coming to the victims, the victims would now be brought to killing centers. The new system of murder by gassing, moreover, served to reduce the direct contact between the killers and their victims, making the murders’ task easier.
Experience with these methods had been gained in the so-called Euthanasia Program. IN Germany, since 1939, the mass killing of Germans considered a burden to the race, those with mental or physical disabilities, and others who suffered from a range of diseases thought to be hereditary, had been conducted. The killing installations that had been set up in Germany utilized gas, among other methods, and in light of their experience, the staff of these institutions were transferred to the east in order to set up and run extermination camps.
Mobile gas vans were used at Chelmo beginning in Dec The main drawback of the vans was their limited capacity. They could not handle large numbers of victims. They were also slow. The excruciating suffering of the victims was of little concern to the SS, but the task of unloading the vans after each use was time-consuming and “unpleasant”. Dying took so long that the anguished victims could not control their bowels and left a mess.

9. Wansee Conference
Nazi leadership decided on the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem”
Until 1939, the basic aim of Nazi policy was the forced emigration of Jews. That policy failed when few countries were willing to offer the Jews a haven even as Nazi territorial expansion brought more Jews under the control of the Reich. Between 1933 and 1938, only 150,000 Jews left Germany. When Austria joined the Reich in March 1938, more than 200,000 Jews came with it. With the conquest of Poland a year later, more than two million additional Jews fell with the German orbit.
Took place in January of It was at this meeting that the Nazi leadership decided on the “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” It marked a turning point in the war against the Jews.
The conference was called by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS Reich Security Main Office. Among the agencies respresented were the Department of Justice, the Foreign Ministry, the Gestapo, the SS Police, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property. Adolf Eichmann prepared the conference protocols.
The fifteen men seated at the table were considered the Reich’s best and brightest. More than half of them held doctorate degrees from German universities. They were well informed about the policy of dealing with the Jews.
Heydrich introduced the agenda: “Another possible solution of the [Jewish] problem has now taken the place of emigration, I.e., evacuation of the Jews to the East…. Such activities are, however, to be considered as provisional actions, but practical experience is already being collected, which is of greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish problem.
The men at the table needed little explanation. They understood that “evacuation to the East” was a euphemism for concentration camps, and that “the Final Solution” was systematic murder.
During Wansee they spoke about methods of killing, about liquidations, about extermination.
There was no opposition, no qualms of conscience. On the contrary, the members of the coordinating committee were enthusiastic about doing their part.
By 1941, Nazi leaders realized there were so many Jews in occupied Poland that using existing methods, it would take too long to eliminate them all.
Unaware of what awaited them, many Jews were happy to leave the misery of the ghettos to go to the camps.
The Final Solution involved using modern factory methods to process Jews to death in the fastest time possible.
A new phase in the reign of terror was reached when the “Final Solution” was formulated, and extermination camps were constructed with the express purpose of killing Jews. Unlike other enemies of the Third Reich, all Jews in Nazi-occupied territory were destined for extermination.
Elie Wiesel has often been quoted that the Jews were targeted not because of what they did, but because of who they were. This could also be said of the Gypsies and there has been some debate on whether the gypsies should also been considered major victims of the Holocaust. In the words of Elie Weisel, “While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims.”

10. The Camp System Between 1933 and 1945 Nazi Germany set up 20,000 camps
Dachau was the first camp
Used for many purposes
Forced labor
Transit camps
Extermination camps
All those imprisoned were physically concentrated in one area
As Nazi Germany expanded by bloodless conquest between 1938 and 1939, the numbers of those labeled as political opponents and social deviants increased, requiring the establishment of new concentration camps. By the time the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, unleashing World War II, there were six concentration camps in the so-called Greater German Reich: Dachau (founded 1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg in northeastern Bavaria near the 1937 Czech border (1938), Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria (1938), and Ravensbrück, the women's camp, established in Brandenburg Province, southeast of Berlin (1939), after the dissolution of Lichtenburg
As Germany conquered much of Europe in the years , the SS established a number of new concentration camps to incarcerate increased numbers of political prisoners, resistance groups, and groups deemed racially inferior, such as Jews and Roma (Gypsies). Among these new camps were: Gusen (1939), Neuengamme (1940), Gross-Rosen (1940), Auschwitz (1940), Natzweiler (1940) Stutthof (1942), and Majdanek (February 1943). Stutthof had been a Gestapo Labor Education camp from 1939 to 1942.
There were more than 9,000 camps scattered throughout German-occupied Europe. They included transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, private industrial camps, work-education camps, foreign labor camps, police detention camps, even camps for children whose parents had been sent to slave labor camps. More than 300 camps were for women only.

11. The Camp System
Concentration Camps

12. Deportations
After Wannsee Conference, Jews were taken from the ghettos to death camps
Rode in cattle cars
Were told they were being relocated
Continued until the ghettos were “liquidated”
Get pictures of cattle cars- p. 115 in The World Must Know
The transport of Jews, and their destination, was no secret to the Reichsbahn (railroad) workers. At Auschwitz alone there were 44 parallel track at the train station, more than twice the number of New York’s Pennsylvania station. No railway man resigned and none protested.
Jews were ticketed as people, although they were transported to death camps as cattle, mainly in freight cars. The SS used travel agents to book one-way passage to the camp at a rate of 4 pennies per km of track they would travel. Children under 10 rode for half fare; those under four rode free. A group rate of half the usual third-class charge was introduced for deportations of more than 400 people. The Reichsbahn did not charge for the trains that returned empty. Indeed, the SS was offered a credit for one-way transport.
Most were told they were being relocated farther East. In some ghettos they had to purchase their own train ticket.
The railway system was stretched to its limits to keep up with the demand of the camp, where as many as 12,000 people a day were being gassed.
Were told to pack a suitcase. Were told to bring tools of their trade.
There was a lot of deception. New arrivals were given postcards to send to their friends. Many of them had no idea what was about to happen. Even as late as Spring of 1944, many Hungarian Jews had not heard of Auschwitz.
The train trip was often long. Some trips took days, others took more than a week. In the summer, the sealed cattle cars were suffocatingly hot, unheated, they were freezing cold in the winter. The SS made few provisions for food or water, the most they provided was a bucket for bodily needs. Crowded passengers were often forced to sit in feces and urine. The stench was overwhelming. When the doors were opened upon arrival, gratful passengers thought that the worst of the ordeal was behind them. They were disoriented and exhausted.
When the doors opened, a vast platform appeared before them.

13. The Extermination camps
Operation Reinhard- code name for the German plan to murder Jews in the Generalgouvernement
Killing centers or extermination camps were death factories
Six were established
First killing center was Chelmno
It was initiated in the fall of 1941 and was re-named after Heidrich was killed by Czech partisans. Lidice was completely destroyed by the Nazis as a retaliation for Heydrich’s death.
Airtight buildings were constructed connected to large turbine engines that pumped out carbon monoxide gas. Then the roundups began. In the ghettos and in the cities of western Europe, Jews were gathered together for “relocation”
Total number of victims at Belzec was 600,000. At Sobibor, it was 250,000. At Treblinka, it was more than 750,000 and at Chelmno, it was more than 300,000. The vast majority of these victims were Polish Jews.
There were six major killing centers: Auschwitz/Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.
Most killing centers were located near railroads, Chelmno was not. Began on Dec. 8, 1941 and continued through March of Was re-opened and re-staffed in June-July of 1944 for the murder of 7,000 Jews from Lodz, the last remaining ghetto. The remaining Jews from Lodz were sent to Auschwitz. In fall of 1942, special units under Aktion 1005were sent to Chelmno to dig up the bodies and burn evidence of the crime. In the end more than 150,000 Jews were murdered at Chelmno
Gas vans were disguised as delivery vans. The trucks developed problems with their rear axles as the victims rushed to the door to escape. Reinforced axles provided greater reliability for the mobile gas chambers. Death by gassing took a few minutes and then they continued to the mass grave in the nearby forest.
Germans constructed 2 crematoria after a typhus outbreak in summer of 1942 caused by a typhus outbreak. In Jan. 1945, with the Soviet troops approaching, the SS men started the execution of the remaining Jewish workers, some of whom attacked the Germans, killing two of them. The SS then burned the building in which the Jewish workers were housed. There were only two survivors of the camp. Mordechai Padchlebnik and Simon Srebnik, and one escapee, Jacob Gronjanowski

14. The Extermination Camps
Sobibor was the second killing center
Jews deported from Lublin
Some 400 are selected to survive, temporarily, to provide manual labor for the killing center
Uprising October 14, 1943
300 prisoners escape, but 100 are recaptured and shot
Most arriving at this camp die right away.
Branches woven into the barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter camouflaged the site. The entire camp was surrounded by a minefield 50 feet wide.
Prisoners carry out a revolt in Sobibor, killing nearly a dozen German staff and Trwawniki-trained guards. Of 600 prisoners left in Sobibor on this day, 300 escape during the uprising. Of those who escape, SS recapture and shoot some More than ½ of the remaining survivors did not live to see the end of the war.
After the revolt, the Germans and Trawniki dismantle the killing center and shot the Jewish prisoners who had not escaped during the uprising.
During the year and a half this killing center was operated, camp authorities and the Trawniki-trained guards murdered at least 167,000 people. Virtually all of the victims were Jews

15. The Extermination camps
Treblinka
Treblinka I was a labor education camp for non-Jewish Poles who the Germans perceived as violating labor discipline. Most worked in a nearby gravel pit
Treblinka II-was the killing center
Ghettos of Warsaw and Radom
Some from Lublin and Theresienstadt

16. The Extermination Camps
Treblinka II
Prisoners revolt on August 2, 1943
During late July 1944, Soviet troops are moving into the area
Camp authorities and the Trawniki, trained guards, shot the remaining Jewish prisoners, between , and hastily dismantled and evacuated the camp
Soviet troops overran the site of the labor camp and killing center in the last week of July 1944
Deportations and gassing operations halt at Treblinka on Aug. 2, On this date, prisoners used for forced labor, frearing that the SS will soon kill them, stage a revolt. Prisoners seize weapons from the camp armory, but SS guards in the camp discover the plot before it can be completely implemented. Hundreds of prisoners nevetheless storm the main gate in an attempt to escape. SS and police guards kill many with machine-gun fire. More than 300 prisoners escape, but the SS and police personnel eventually recapture and kill 2/3 of them. There are only 100 known survivors of Treblinka
During the 14 months of operation which began July 1942, between 870,000 and 929,000 Jews were murdered by a staff of Thirty of them ss peronnel, many of whom were veterans of the “euthanasia” program in Germny, supported by the 120 former Soviet prisoners of war trained specially at the Trawniki camp.

17. The Extermination Camps
Belzec
Jews from Galicia, Lublin and Cracow sent here as well as hundreds of Poles and Gypsies (Roma and Sinti)
Unclear exactly how many perished here
Some Jews were murdered upon arrival without any record of their death
Only two known survivors of Belzec
Camp was dimantled and turned into a farm
Overran by the Soviets in July 1944
Once camp was dismantled the forced laborers were either shot or deported to the Sobibor killing center to be gassed.
After the Belzec camp was dismantled the Germans ploughed over the site, built a mano house and planted trees and crops to diguise the area as a farm. Soviet forces overran the region in July 1944.

18. The Extermination Camps
Majdanek
Primarily served as a vast forced-labor camp
Was a transit camp for Polish and Soviet civilians being deported to the Reich for forced labor
Had three gas chambers
Was a storage facility for items taken from Jews
Traditionally most scholars have counted Majdanek as a killing center, recent research has shed more light on the functions and operations of the camp. It primarily served to concentrate Jews whom the Germans spared temporarily for forced labor. It occasionally functioned as a killing site to murder victims who could not be killed at the Operation Reinhard killing centers of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. It also contained a storage depot for property and valuables taken from the Jewish victims at the killing centers

19. The Extermination Camps
Majdanek
Nov. 3, 1943, Harvest Festival, special SS and police units dispatched to Lublin shot 18,000 Jews outside the camp
8,000 were Majdanek prisoners
11,000 were forced laborers from other camps
Music was played over loudspeakers to cover the sounds of mass murder
It was, in number of victims, the largest single-day, single-location killing during the Holocaust

20. The Extermination Camps
Majdanek
Late July 1944, Soviets are approaching and SS had evacuated most of the prisoners to concentration camps further west
Soviets liberate July 24, 1944
First camp to be liberated
Germans did not have time to dismantle the camp entirely and captured the camp virtually intact.
Nearly 360,000 people from 28 countries and representing 54 ethnic groups passed through Majdanek. Between 170,000 and 235,000, many of them Poles, died from starvation, exhaustion, disease, beatings and gassing.

21. Major Deportations

22. Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz was the largest and most highly organized concentration and death camp
More people killed here than any other camp
Comprised 19 square miles and guarded by 4,500
View animated map
At Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, all but a few were dead within hours. At Auschwitz, one could hope for a reprieve.
Auschwitz was the killing center.
4 trains a day would arrive at the camps. In addition to the gas chambers, four crematories with 46 ovens were built. Nearly two million people were murdered in Auschwitz and its death camp.
Birkenau- was a work camp connected to Auschwitz.
Zyklon B- the company that made Zyklon B specialized in making poisons for rats and pesticides for insects. Now the gas was used for murdering human beings.
The program for rounding up Jews to send them to Auschwitz began slowly. After Heydrich’s death in May of 1942, Eichmann speeded up the transports. In Heidrich’s honor, the program was called Operation Heydrich.

23. Auschwitz-Birkenau Located in Polish town of Oswiecim
Was an Austrian military barrack and set up to incarcerate political prisoners

24. Auschwitz -Birkenau Auschwitz I Auschwitz II Auschwitz III
Was a concentration camp
Medical experiments were performed here
Auschwitz II
Also called Birkinau
Had the facilities for the killing center
Auschwitz III
Buna or Monowitz
Housed workers of the synthetic rubber plant

25. Entrance to Auschwitz
Notice that it has been made to look like a train station

26. Entrance To Auschwitz

27. The “Selection”
As trains arrived they were sorted into who would live and who would die
Call the selection
At the entrance to each of the death camps, the reception area, the dead were removed from the trains and the living divided according to their ability to walk.
Those able to walk were sent on, those unable to walk were taken away.
Those who could walk then faced the first selection. An SS officer pointed to the left or to the right. The Old people, pregnant women, young children, and the infirm were immediately condemned to death. Segregated by sex, they surrendered their valuables and removed their clothes before entering the gas chambers. The Nazis tried to deceive arriving prisoners until the end. The gas chambers were labeled showers.

28. The Selection
There were 405,000 registered prisoners at Auschwitz. The vast majority of those who passed through its gates, were never registered. They were sent directly to the chambers of Birkenau. Only those sent to work were tattooed on the left forearm.

29. The Bath
Those selected for work were registered, branded and sheered. Their hair was shaved and their arms were tattooed with a number. Uniforms were issued. Their ordeal as inmates was just beginning.
In the undressing room, prisoners were told they were going to be bathed and deloused, that they must leave their clothes neatly together and above all remember where they put them, so they would be able to find them again quickly.

30. Quote about the selection process
“The tattooing was not a pleasant experience, especially if you bear in mind how primitive the tool was with which it was carried out. Of course it hurt. There was blood and a nasty swelling afterwards. The shaving off of our hair was the most traumatic experience. It made me feel utterly vulnerable and reduced to a complete nobody.

31. Quote about the selection process
I had relinquished my clothes as well, and I stood there stark naked, bald and with a number on my arm. In the space of a few minutes I had been stripped of every vestige of human dignity and become indistinguishable from everyone around me.
Anita, a holocaust survivor
From Lawton, Clive A. The Story of the Holocaust. P. 25
The only prisoners who got registered at Auschwitz were the ones who were tattooed. The vast majority of those who passed through their gates were never registered and sent directly to the gas chamber.
Those selected for work were registered and branded and sheared. Their hair was shaved and their arms were tattooed with a number. Uniforms were issued. Their ordeal as inmates was just beginning. They would face additional selections in the future.
The shearing, tattooing and taking of the clothes and possessions was all a part of the process to dehumanize the prisoners.
The officer in charge of the selection was a physician. His “expert opinion” was required to determine who would live and who would die. The most infamous of all of them, Dr. Josef Mengele, who also oversaw some of the cruelest quasi-medical experiments conducted on inmates, was often to be found at the ramp in Birkenau
The inmate who survived the first selection lived in constant fear of future selections.
Fritzie Fritshall recounted her experience. The World Must Know. P. 127
“We needed to get undressed every day. And we needed to run- not walk- in front of SS officers. We needed to show that we still had strength left… I recall some women, as their hair grew back, they were beginning to get gray hair. And they would take a little piece of coal from one of the pot-bellied stoves that was in a barrack. And they would use coal to color their hair with, so that they would look a little younger. One greyed at the age of maybe eighteen or nineteen under those conditions… If one had a scar, a pimple, if one didn’t run fast enough, if one didn’t look right for whatever reason to the particular person that was doing the selection… They would stand there with a stick [to the right or to the left] as you ran by them. One never knew if they were in the good line or the bad line. One line would go to the chambers. The other line would go back to the camp and to the barracks, to live another day. We knew the trains were coming in… And we knew many barracks were being emptied out, day in and day out, to make room for the new people that were coming in. We never knew when our turn would come next. So one always lived in fear and one always tried to get through these selections for one more day.
The vast majority were killed shortly after arrival.

32. Shoes waiting to be processed by the sonderkommando
Taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz Museum. This represents one day's collection at the peak of the gassings, about twenty five thousand pairs.

33. The Shoes We are the shoes, We are the last witness.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam,
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
Moses Schulstein, Yiddish Poet

34. Glasses
Everything was used. Every part of the body was recycled to serve the Nazi war economy. Gold teeth went to the treasury, hair was used to stuff mattresses, and ashes from the incinerated corpses became fertilizer.
Until August 1942, hair was not used. As the mass murder of Jews moved into high gear, camp commandants were informed that “human hair” will be processed into felt to be used in industry, and thread will be spun out of them. In particular, the combed-out and cut-off women’s hair will be used to make socks for submarine crews, and to manufacture felt stockings for railroad workers. It was also used for hair cloth, the ignition mechanism of bombs, ropes and cords for ships and as stuffing for mattresses.

35. Life in Auschwitz People slept on planks of wood
Six on a plank
Had a variety of experiences
Auschwitz was the largest and most highly organized of the Nazi death camps. More people were killed there than any other camp. It was a closed zone of 19 square miles guarded by up to 6,000 men. They were part of the SS Death’s Head units and they wore a skull and cross bones insignia on their uniforms.
A sign over the entrance read Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Liberates) Inmates who were not immediately murdered were worked and starved to death.
Fritzie Fritshall remembers the smell of Auschwitz:
“How does one describe the walking into Auschwitz, the smell? And someone pointing out to you that those are the gas chambers, that your parents went up in smoke. When I asked, “When will I see my mother?” several hours after I came to the camp, I was shown the smoke. This is how I found out where she went.
Elie Wiesel has argued that only those who were there can ever know what it was like to live even for one day at Auschwitz. Fritzie Fritshall tells why:
How do I describe fear? How do I describe hunger to someone that has probably had breakfast and lunch today? Or even if your dieting, or even if you’re fasting a day. I think hunger is when the pit of your stomach hurts. When you would sell your soul for a potato or slice of bread. How do I describe living with lice in your clothes, on your body? The stink. The fear. The selctions. The “appells”. The being told when to go to a toilet, not when you needed to use it. The using of the morning coffee to wash your face with. Mengele,. And mostly, mostly death and the gas chamber.
Six people slept on a plank of wood, on top of us another layer, and if one of us had to turn, all the others had to turn because it was so narrow. One cover, no pillow, no mattress.
Those who lived in Auschwitz had a variety of experiences. Some were political prisoners, others were slave laborers. Some worked as Sonderkommando, feeding the crematoria. The Jewish inmates who made up the Sonderkommando were given better food while they did their gruesome work. But they, too, were expendable and were sent in turn to the gas chambers, then they were replaced by new inmates.

36. Life in Auschwitz

37. The Gas Chambers
The Nazis would force large groups of prisoners into small cement rooms and drop canisters of Zyklon B, or prussic acid, in its crystal form through small holes in the roof.
These gas chambers were sometimes disguised as showers or bathing houses.
Had the capacity to kill 6,000 people a day.
The SS would try and pack up to 2000 people into this gas chamber

38. Dead Bodies Waiting To Be Processed
Cleaning up the bodies and disposing of them was a huge job. At first the dead were buried in lime pits, but the mass graves were soon packed to overflowing.
As they decomposed, the buried corpses bloated, causing the earth to rise and ooze, and polluting the groundwater. They bodies had to be exhumed and incinerated

39. Processing the Bodies
Specially selected Jews known as the sonderkommando were used to to remove the gold fillings and hair of people who had been gassed.
The Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed the dead bodies into the crematorium.
One story recounted how some people that were put in the ovens were still alive. They were just too weak, were ill, or were dehydrated and were so helpless that they could not walk and were taken for dead.
Businesses in German society were widely engaged in the killing process. Business firms competed for contracts.
Estimates in 1944 were as high as pounds of gold a month was removed. At the peak of the extermination process, at least 40 prisoners were employed in this dental labor. Were going to melt metal down and into gold bars.
The fat that dripped from the bodies burned in pits or on pyres was collected in ditches dug for that purpose near the incineration sites. It was then used as fuel for fires that burned the bodies. It was a particularly common practice during rainy weather.
Sometimes the bodies of new arrivals were thrown in with the bodies of veterans from the camps because the body fat from the new arrival made the burning process more efficient.
There is no reliable evidence that human fat was used to manufacture soap, or that human skin was treated to make lamp shades, book bindings, purses or similar objects.

40. The Ovens At Dachau
The maximum capacity at any given moment was between 45 and 75 bodies.
At Auschwitz, the ovens were designed in violation of crematoria law. They were destroying evidence of a crime and crematoria law says that you can only burn one body at a time, it must be completely incinerated, and oven must be cleaned before next body put in. This way can give ashes to the families. They made them a little bigger so they could put more than one body in at a time.
Body is mostly water and water burns quickly, but it takes a long time for the bones to burn. After 15 minutes the water is gone so the volume (size) decreases and if they build them a little bigger they can put another body in. Economical because you can use the bones of the first body to burn the water of the second body and you don’t need to add fuel. Also with being wartime, fuel was in short supply.
This is a criminal design.
They develop a patent for this and this patent is used today in the U.S. cattle industry in Alabama for the cadavers of the meat-packing industry.

41. Destruction Through Work
This photo was taken by the Nazis to show just how you could quite literally work the fat of the Jews by feeding them 200 calories a day

42. Destruction Through Work
Same group of men six weeks later

43. Children of Experiments
See The World must know p. 133
Sterlization experiments were carried out in Auschwitz by an air force physician, Dr. Horst Schumann. If enemies of the state could not reproduce, genocide would be but a matter of time. Two to three times a week, groups of thirty prisoners-male and female-were brought in to have their testicles or ovaries irradiated with x-rays. Schumann varied the dosage. As a rule, prisoners subjected to these experiments were sent back to work, even though they suffered from serious burns and swelling. These experiments proved disappointing. Surgical castration was more dependable and time-efficient.
Dr. Josef Mengele became the chief physician of Birkenau. He wanted to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. His first experiments were performed on gypsy children, but before long he expanded his experiments to twins, dwarfs, and persons with abnormalities.
Mengele subjected his experimental group to all possible medical analyses that could be performed while they were still alive. The tests he conducted were painful, exhausting, and traumatic for the frightened and hungry children who made up the bulk of his subjects.
One set of twins about the age of four, Mengele had sewn them together, back to back. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Their parents managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.

44. Pressure Experiment
The twins and the crippled persons designated for experiments were photographed, their jaws and teeth cast in plaster molds.
When the research was complete. Some subjects were killed by phenol injections and their organs were autopsied and analyzed. Scientifically interesting anatomical specimens were preserved and shipped out to the Institute in Berlin-Dahlem for further research.
On the day that Mengele left Auschwitz, January 17, 1945, he took with him the documentation of his experiments. He still imagined that they would bring him scientific honor.

45. Those who Knew Why didn’t they say anything?
Only a few dozen Germans had to be present at the deaths. In total, there were hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses, including railroad workers, concentration camp guards, SS groups housed in and around Auschwitz, and German workers who supervised the Jews kept alive to do slave labor. People in the nearby town seldom spoke of it, but the special “industry” of Auschwitz was well-known to them.

46. Why Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed
Jewish leaders, some organizations, and the U.S. War Refugee Board urged the Allies to intervene
At the very least, destroy the rail lines
All requests were denied
Jewish leaders in Budapest and Slovakia, some Jewish organizations, and the United States War Refugee Board all urged the Allies to intervene.
The Jewish organizations that weren’t asking the Allies to intervene were afraid of the toll the bombings would take on the victims.

47. Why Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed
Not within range of Allied bombers?
Military resources could not be diverted from the war effort
It might provoke even more vindictive German actions
Americans gave several reasons why Auschwitz couldn’t be bombed.
It was not within the range of Allied bombers
Military resources could not be diverted from the war effort
bombing Auschwitz might provoke even more vindictive German action
On August 20, 1945, Flying Fortresses, with an escort of 100 Mustang fighter craft, dropped 1,336 five-pound bombs on a factory less than five miles east of Auschwitz. The death camp remained untouched.
It was often said that the most effective relief for the victims of Nazi persecution is to ensure a speedy defeat of the Axis.
The defeat of the Axis came 15 months later, too late for those murdered in 1944 and 1945.
Bombing could have significantly slowed the killing process
How much more vindictive could the Germans be?
See page 144 The World Must Know

48. Liberation
On Jan. 27, 1945 the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz. They liberated over 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying million were murdered.

49. Evil is when a few good men decide to do nothing.
The End
Evil is when a few good men decide to do nothing.