The Final Solution |
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Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 which marked the beginning of the "Final Solution." Four mobile Einsatzgruppen (killing groups) were formed named A, B, C and D with each group containing several units of commandos. Their role was to gather Jews town by town and marching them to previously dug pits, strip them, made them form a line on the edge of the top of the pits, and shot them. The dead and dying victims would fall into the pits which would later be buried, creating mass graves. Some 30,000 to 35,000 Jews were killed in two days near Kiev in the infamous Babi Yar massacre. In addition to these round-ups and massacres in the Soviet Union, they also conducted mass murder in eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. By the end of 1942 it is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 1.3 million Jews.
Many of the Einsatzgruppen could not cope with what they were doing and understandably suffered with extreme psychological problems. This was recognised by the top officials of the government and it was agreed that a more efficient and less personal method of mass murder was required. On 20th January 20 1942, a number of these top officials met to officially coordinate a method to organize a system deemed more suitable. The beginning of the full-scale mass murder of the Jews, with comprehensive extermination operation and laid the foundations for its organization. While the Nazis did murder other ethnic groups and nationals i.e gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and Polish intellectuals, it was only the Jews that were marked for systematic and absolute annihilation. The Jewish people were singled out for Sonder Behandlung (which translates to "Special Treatment") , which meant that all of them (men, women and children) were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas (normally Zyklon B). Records that were kept in Auschwitz, the cause of death for Jews who were killed this way was indicated by SB - the German for special treatment
The Nazis had established six death camps (also known as killing centres) in Poland by the spring of 1942: Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Maidanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. All were located near railway lines which enabled easy transportation of the Jews from across Europe. A large network of camps called Lagersystem supported the death camps. These camps varied in purpose, with some serving as slave labor camps, transit camps, concentration camps and their sub-camps. Some of these camps combined all of these functions or at least two or three few of them but the one thing they all had in common was that life in these camps were brutal. The major concentration camps were at Neuengamme, Ravensbruck,, Bergen-Belsen,, Gross Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Stutthof, Flossenburg, Theresienstadt,, Natzweiler Struthof, Mauthausen, Dachau and Dora/Nordhausen. In nearly every country occupied by the Nazis, Jews were forced to wear badges which identified them as being Jewish to everyone else. They were then rounded up into concentration camps or ghettos and gradually taken to the death camps. The death camps were nothing more than factories for murdering Jews on an industrial scale. Nearly every day, the Germans shipped thousands of Jews to these camps and within a few hours of their arrival, they were stripped of their valuables and possessions and gassed to death. Their bodies were burned in specially designed crematoriums with chimneys spewing a thick, dark plume of smoke and ashes. Some figures suggest that as many as 3.5 million Jews were killed in these death camps. Young and strong Jews were not normally immediately selected for "Special Treatment" as the war effort and the “Final Solution” process required a lot of manpower to keep it functioning, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labour. These people who were imprisoned in concentration and labour camps, were forced to work in German munitions and other factories and wherever the Nazis needed labourers. The prisoners would be expected to work from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter from any adverse weather conditions. Thousands died as a result, literally worked to death by the Germans and their collaborators. As the German armies retreated in the closing stages of the war, the Nazis began marching the prisoners that were still alive in the concentration camps to the territory they still under German control. They forced the starving and sick Jews to walk hundreds of miles and it is hardly surprising that hundreds died en route or were shot. About a 250,000 Jews died on the death marches. The Selection process
Liberation and the End of World War IIAs the Allies advanced on the German army the camps were liberated gradually with Auschwitz in January 1945 by the Soviets and Dachau by the Americans in April 1945.
At the end of the war there were between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors living in three zones of territories occupied by either American, Soviet or British forces, a figure that grew to about 200,000 within 12 months. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the displaced Jews. Thy would not and could not return to their homes or communities as they brought back horrible memories and there was still the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbours. Consequently, many displaced Jews remained in camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, then later Israel, South America, the United States and other countries. |