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KILLING CENTERS: AN OVERVIEW/ .

AUSCHWITZ

VIEW HISTORICAL FILM FOOTAGE

The Nazis established killing centers for efficient mass murder. Unlike concentration camps, which served
primarily as detention and labor centers, killing centers (also referred to as "extermination camps" or "death
camps") were almost exclusively "death factories." German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in
the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.
CHELMNO, BELZEC, SOBIBOR, AND TREBLINKA

The first killing center was Chelmno, which opened in the Warthegau (part of Poland annexed to Germany) in
December 1941. Mostly Jews, but also Roma (Gypsies), were gassed in mobile gas vans there. In 1942, in the
Generalgouvernement (a territory in the interior of occupied Poland), the Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor,
and Treblinkakilling centers (known collectively as theOperation Reinhard camps) to systematically murder
the Jews of Poland. In the Operation Reinhard killing centers, the SS and their auxiliaries killed approximately
1,526,500 Jews between March 1942 and November 1943.
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the camps were sent immediately to death in the gas chambers (with
the exception of very small numbers chosen for special work teams known as Sonderkommandos). The largest
killing center was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which by spring 1943 had four gas chambers (using Zyklon B poison
gas) in operation. At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at AuschwitzBirkenau in Poland. Over a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war
were killed there by November 1944.
MAJDANEK

Though many scholars have traditionally counted the Majdanekcamp as a sixth killing center, recent research
had shed more light on the functions and operations at Lublin/Majdanek. Within the framework of Operation

Reinhard, Majdanek 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: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. It also contained a storage depot for property and
valuables taken from the Jewish victims at the killing centers.
The SS considered the killing centers top secret. To obliterate all traces of gassing operations, special prisoner
units (the Sonderkommandos) were forced to remove corpses from the gas chambers and cremate them. The
grounds of some killing centers were landscaped or camouflaged to disguise the murder of millions.

KILLING CENTERS (ABRIDGED ARTICLE)


Almost all of the deportees who arrived at the killing centers were sent immediately to death in
the gas chambers. The largest killing center was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which by spring 1943 had
four gas chambers (using Zyklon B poison gas) in operation. At the height of the deportations, up
to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Over a million Jews and
tens of thousands of Roma they thought they were not well ordered to society as they never
settled down in one placed, often did not have a stabled work, and had different dialect, Poles,
and Soviet prisoners of war were killed there by November 1944. The SS considered the killing
centers top secret. To obliterate all traces of gassing operations, special prisoner units were
forced to remove corpses from the gas chambers and cremate them. The grounds of some killing
centers were re-landscaped or camouflaged to disguise the murder of millions.

DEPORTATIONS TO KILLING CENTERS


The Nazi regime used rail transport as one method to forcibly rearrange the ethnic composition of eastern
Europe within the framework of World War II. In 1941, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the "Final
Solution," the systematic mass murder of European Jewry. The German authorities used rail systems across the
continent to transport, or deport, Jews from their homes, primarily to eastern Europe. Once they had begun to
methodically kill Jews in specially constructed killing centers, German officials deported Jews to these
facilities by train or, when trains were not available or the distances were short, by truck or on foot.
OFFICIALS COORDINATE MASS TRANSPORT BY TRAIN

At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, held near Berlin, SS, Nazi Party, and German state officials
met to coordinate the deportation of European Jews to killing centers (also known as extermination camps)
already in operation or under construction in German-occupied Poland. Trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau
almost daily with transports of Jews from almost daily with transports of Jews from the other camps of
AuschwitzIII,The participants of the conference estimated that the "Final Solution" would involve the

deportation and murder of 11 million Jews, including Jewish residents of nations outside German control, such
as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain.Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous
German government agencies including the Reich Security Main Office (ReichssicherheitshauptamtRSHA),
the Main Office of the Order Police, the Ministry of Transportation, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA or
regional SS and police leaders coordinated and often directed the deportations. The Order Police, often
reinforced by local auxiliaries or collaborators in occupied territories, rounded up and transported the Jews to
the killing centers. Working with department IV B 4 of the RSHA commanded by SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf
Eichmann, the Ministry of Transportation coordinated train schedules. The Foreign Office negotiated with
Germany's Axis partners over the transfer of their Jewish citizens to German custody.
The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions. They sought to portray the deportations as a "resettlement"
of the Jewish population in labor camps in the "East." In reality, the "resettlement" in the "East" became a
euphemism for transport to the killing centers and mass murder.

INSIDE THE RAILCARS

German railroad officials used both freight and passenger cars for the deportations. German authorities
generally did not give the deportees food or water for the journey, even when they had to wait for days on
railroad spurs for other trains to pass. Packed in sealed freight cars and suffering from overcrowding, they
endured intense heat during the summer and freezing temperatures during the winter. Aside from a bucket,
there was no sanitary facility. The stench of urine and excrement added to the humiliation and suffering of the
deportees. Lacking food and water, many of the deportees died before the trains reached their destinations.
Armed police guards accompanied the transports; they had orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape.
Between December 1941 and July 1942, the SS and police officials established five killing centers in Germanoccupied Poland:Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka 2 (Treblinka 1 was a forced-labor camp for Jews), and
Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II. SS and police authorities in the Lublin District of the
Generalgouvernement (that part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to
German East Prussia, or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union) managed and coordinated the
deportations to Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka within the framework of Operation Reinhard.

THE VICTIMS

The principal victims at Belzec were Jews from southern and southeastern Poland, but also Jews deported from
the so-called Greater German Reich (Germany, Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia) to District Lublin between October 1941 and the end of summer 1942. Most Jews deported to
Sobibor came from the Lublin District; but German authorities also transported French and Dutch Jews to
Sobibor in spring and summer 1943 and small groups of Soviet Jews from Belorussian and Lithuanian ghettos
in late summer 1943. German officials transported the Jews from the Warsaw and Radom districts of the
Generalgouvernement and from the Bialystok administrative district to Treblinka 2, where SS and police
officials murdered them. German authorities deported most of the Jewish residents of the Lodz ghetto as well
as the ghetto's surviving Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) residents to Chelmno between January 1942 and spring 1943,
and then in early summer 1944.
In 1943 and 1944, the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center played a significant role in the German plan to kill
the European Jews. Beginning in late winter 1943, trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on a regular basis
carrying Jews from virtually every German-occupied country of Europefrom as far north as Norway to the
Greek island of Rhodes off the coast of Turkey in the south, from the French slopes of the Pyrenees in the west
to the easternmost reaches of German-occupied Poland and the Baltic states. Another concentration camp,
located near Lublin and known as Majdanek, served as a site for murdering targeted groups of Jewish and nonJewish prisoners by gas and other means.
The Germans killed nearly three million Jews in the five killing centers.

WESTERN AND NORTHERN EUROPE

German officials and local collaborators deported Jews from western Europe via transit camps, such as Drancy
in France,Westerbork in the Netherlands, and Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium. Of the approximately 75,000
Jews deported from France, more than 65,000 were deported from Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and
approximately 2,000 to Sobibor. The Germans deported over 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands, almost all
from Westerbork: about 60,000 to Auschwitz and over 34,000 to Sobibor. Between August 1942 and July 1944,
28 trains transported more than 25,000 Jews from Belgium to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Mechelen.
In the autumn of 1942, the Germans seized approximately 770 Norwegian Jews and deported them by boat and
train to Auschwitz. An effort to deport the Danish Jews in September 1943 failed when the resistance in
Denmark, alerted to the impending roundup, assisted the mass escape of Danish Jews to neutral Sweden.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

The Germans deported Jews from Greece, from Italy, and fromCroatia. Between March and August 1943, SS
and police officials deported more than 40,000 Jews from Salonika, in northern Greece, to AuschwitzBirkenau, where the camp staff killed most of them in the gas chambers upon arrival. After the Germans
occupied northern Italy in September 1943, they deported about 8,000 Jews, most of them to AuschwitzBirkenau. Based on an agreement with their Croatian Axis partner, German officials took custody of around
7,000 Croat Jews and deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Bulgarian gendarmes and military units rounded up and deported around 7,000 Jewish residents of Bulgarianoccupied Macedonia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia, via a transit camp at Skopje. Bulgarian authorities
concentrated approximately 4,000 Jews residing in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace at two assembly points in
Bulgaria and transferred them to German custody. In all, Bulgaria deported more than 11,000 Jews to Germancontrolled territory. The German authorities deported these Jews to Treblinka 2 and killed them in the gas
chambers.
CENTRAL EUROPE

German authorities began to deport Jews from the Greater German Reich in October 1941, while the
construction of the killing centers was still in the planning stage. Between October 15, 1941, and November 4,
1941, German authorities deported 20,000 Jews to the Lodz ghetto. Between November 8, 1941, and October
1942, German authorities deported approximately 49,000 Jews from the Greater German Reich to Riga,
Minsk, Kovno, and Raasiku, all in the Reich Commissariat Ostland (German-occupied Belorussia,
Lithuania,Latvia, and Estonia). SS and police officials shot the overwhelming majority of the deportees upon
arrival in the Reich Commissariat Ostland. German authorities deported another approximately 63,000
German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to the Warsaw ghetto and to various locations in District Lublin, including
the transit camp-ghettos at Krasnystaw and Izbica and the killing center in Sobibor, between March and
October 1942. German Jewish residents of the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos were later deported with Polish Jews
to Chelmno, Treblinka 2, and, in 1944, to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The first transport of Jews from the Greater German Reich directly to Auschwitz arrived on July 18, 1942,
from Vienna. From late October 1942 until January 1945, German authorities deported more than 71,000 Jews
remaining in the Greater German Reich to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Germans deported elderly or prominent
Jews from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and western Europe to the
Theresienstadt ghetto, which also served as a transit camp for deportations further east, most often to
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Between May and July 1944, Hungarian gendarmes, in cooperation with German security police officials,
deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary. Most of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. With the
cooperation of Slovak authorities, the Germans deported more than 50,000 Slovak Jews to the concentration
camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. The Slovak Jews were the first to be selected for the gas
chambers at Birkenau. In the autumn of 1944, German SS and police officials deported 10,000 Slovak Jews to
Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Slovak uprising. This deportation was the last major one to a killing center

The camp includes sections for women, men, Roma (Gypsies), and families deported from the Theresienstadt
ghetto. Auschwitz-Birkenau plays a central role in the German plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Four
large crematoria buildings are constructed between March and June 1943. Each has three components: a
disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. Gassing operations continue until November
1944. Originally planned to accommodate Soviet POWs, it was much larger than the original camp, with a
capacity of about 100,000 prisoners (compared with 20,000 at the Stammlager). The extermination facilities
were built at Birkenau in the Spring of 1942 (after some experiments at the original camp using Soviet POWs
as guinea pigs). Eventually between 1.1 and 1.5 million people (according to current estimates prepared by
Franciszek Piper of the Auschwitz State Museum) were gassed at Birkenau. 90% of them were Jews, and most
were gassed on arrival, never being registered as prisoners at the camp.

Between March 1942 and November 1943, the SS and police deported approximately 1,526,000 Jews, most of
them by train, to the killing centers of Operation Reinhard: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Between December
8, 1941, and March 1943 and again in June-July 1944, SS and police officials deported approximately 156,000
Jews and a few thousand Roma and Sinti to the killing center at Chelmno by train, by truck, and on foot.
Between March 1942 and December 1944, the German authorities deported approximately 1.1 million Jews
and 23,000 Roma and Sinti to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the overwhelming majority by rail. Fewer than 500
survived the Operation Reinhard killing centers. Only a handful of Jews survived the transports to Chelmno.
Perhaps as many as 100,000 Jews survived deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau by virtue of having been
selected for forced labor upon arrival.

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