Extermination camps

In the period of 1941-1945, for the first time in the history of mankind, industrial plants
were used to kill people. A total of six extermination camps were established for the
genocide of the Jews, where the Nazis carried out the mass murder of 3 million Jews
half of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust.

Chelmno was the first extermination camp to be established as part of the Final
Solution to the Jewish Question the Nazis systematic effort to exterminate the Jews.
This was quickly followed by the establishment of three more extermination camps:
Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. They were established under the code-name Operation
Reinhard the starting signal to the extermination of the approximately 3 million Jews
who lived in Nazi-occupied Poland. In the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and
Majdanek two further extermination camps were established.

The six extermination camps were all situated in former Poland and had mass murder
as their purpose. Outside Poland at least two camps existed that in many ways
resembled the six extermination camps in Poland: Jungfernhof (in Latvia) and Maly
Trostinets (in Byelorussia).

All of the extermination camps were thoroughly organised and resembled industrial
plants to an alarming degree. However, only Auschwitz-Birkenau, with its advanced
gassing facilities and crematoria, was marked by high technology. In crematoria I and II
there were elevators from the gas chambers underground, where the Jews were
murdered, to the crematoria, where the bodies were burned.

The six extermination camps were established within a very short time. From December
1941 to December 1942 Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau and
Majdanek all became operational. These sites were chosen because they were all
situated near railway lines, in quiet rural areas of far away Poland, outside the
spotlight of German and international public opinions.

Six Extermination Camps

I n Chelmno, the first extermination camp to be established with the single purpose of
killing people first of all Jews in a systematic fashion, 152,000 inmates were gassed
to death using exhaust gas from trucks, in the period of December 1941-March 1943,
and again from June-July 1944.
The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function
until August 1943. 600,000 Jews fell victim to the merciless efficiency of the gas
chambers at Belzec.
Sobibor also began its operations in May 1942. The killings continued through October
1943, when an uprising among the prisoners put and end to the activities of the camp.
250,000 lost their lives in Sobibors gas chambers.
The extermination camp Treblinka was working from July 1942 to November 1943. In
August 1943 an uprising destroyed many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in
this camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also functioned as a concentration camp and a
work camp, became the largest killing centre. It is estimated that between 1 and 2
million were killed in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first gassing
experiments, involving 250 Polish and 600 Soviet POWs, were carried out as early as
September 1941. The extermination camp was started up in March 1942 and ended its
work in November 1944.
Nine out of 10 victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. The remaining victims were
mainly Poles, gypsies, and Soviet POWs. Majdanek began its gassings in October
1942. The camp functioned in the same way as Auschwitz-Birkenau, and also included
a concentration- and work camp. In the autumn of 1943 the camp was closed after
claiming between 60,000 and 80,000 Jewish victims.

Killing methods
T he use of gas chambers was the most common method of mass murdering the Jews
in the extermination camps. The Jews were herded into the gas chambers, then the
camp personnel closed the doors, and either exhaust gas (in Belzec, Sobibor and
Treblinka) or poison gas in the form of Zyclon B or A (in Majdanek and AuschwitzBirkenau) was led into the gas chamber.
Another method was the use of gassing trucks. In Chemno gassing trucks were used,
where Jews, after being driven into the trucks, were suffocated by the exhaust fumes
that were led into them in the truck. A third method was mass shooting of Jews and
other groups (Soviet POWs, Poles, etc.). In Majdanek, on 3-4 November 1943,
between 17,000 and 18,000 Jews were killed in one day as part of a mass shooting.
The event was called Erntefest (harvest feast) and included similar actions all around
the Lublin District. More than 40,000 Jews died as a result.

When the victims arrived to the extermination camps in overcrowded trains, they were
herded out onto the arrival ramp. Here, German SS-men and perhaps brutal Ukrainian
guards forced them to hand over their belongings and their clothes. Most of the victims
had been told that they were merely to be moved to the east for new jobs and living
places, and most of them had brought their favourite belongings.

In the pure extermination camps, men were separated from women upon arrival. The
first to be gassed were the men the women had their hair cut off before they went to
their death.
In the combined concentration- and extermination camps, Majdanek and Auschwitz, the
SS chose those able to work for the work camps.
Those unable to work the old, women and children were immediately sent to the gas
chambers or shot in the camp hospital. Even those able to work ended up in the gas
chamber sooner or later, or they fell victim to random shooting actions within a few
months, when they had been worn out by the tough work. That is, if they had not died
already. Those able to work for instance helped carry the bodies to the crematoria or
search the bodies for valuables.
The bodies were looted of gold (from the teeth), before being thrown into large mass
graves. In time, the bodies were burned either in mass graves or in the crematoria
when, as the Soviet armies advanced through Poland, the Nazis tried to hide their
terrible crime.
There are few examples of uprisings in the extermination camps. In Sobibor and
Treblinka prisoners tried to rebel in 1943, and the same was tried in Auschwitz in 1944.
Only a very few managed to escape.