From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well.
The genocide of the Jews of Europe was the Third Reich's "Final Solution to the Jewish question". == Background == After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the secret Aktion T4 euthanasia programme – the systematic murder of German, Austrian and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities – was initiated by the SS in order to eliminate "life unworthy of life" (Lebensunwertes Leben), a Nazi designation for people who had no right to life.
In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution.
The Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage (The Final Solution of the Jewish Question), based on the systematic killing of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard, after the June 1941 onset of the Nazi-Soviet war.
Responsibility for the logistics was to be handled by the programme administrator, Adolf Eichmann. On 13 October 1941, the SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik stationing in Lublin received an oral order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland.
From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well.
There were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. Unlike at Auschwitz, where the cyanide-based Zyklon-B was used to exterminate trainloads of prisoners under the guise of "relocation", the camps at Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór, built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 – November 1943), used lethal exhaust fumes produced by large internal combustion engines.
Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac were retrofitted with Zyklon-B gas chambers and crematoria buildings as the time went on, remaining operational until war's end in 1945. == Extermination procedure == Heinrich Himmler visited the outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting.
While Höss was away on an official journey in late August 1941 his deputy, Karl Fritzsch, tested out an idea.
The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppen, who followed the Wehrmacht army during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front. The camps designed specifically for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated.
The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt (OT).
Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gas chambers in March 1942.
An SS anatomist, Dr Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: "Dante's Inferno seems to me almost a comedy compared to this.
Prisoners represented about a quarter of the total workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions, and physical brutality. == History == In the early years of World War II, the Jews were primarily sent to forced labour camps and ghettoised, but from 1942 onward they were deported to the extermination camps under the guise of "resettlement".
He recounted that on 19 August 1942, he arrived at Belzec extermination camp (which was equipped with carbon monoxide gas chambers) and was shown the unloading of 45 train cars filled with 6,700 Jews, many already dead.
There were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. Unlike at Auschwitz, where the cyanide-based Zyklon-B was used to exterminate trainloads of prisoners under the guise of "relocation", the camps at Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór, built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 – November 1943), used lethal exhaust fumes produced by large internal combustion engines.
Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac were retrofitted with Zyklon-B gas chambers and crematoria buildings as the time went on, remaining operational until war's end in 1945. == Extermination procedure == Heinrich Himmler visited the outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting.
The Jewish victims of the Holocaust were mostly killed at Auschwitz II Birkenau. The March of the Living is organized in Poland annually since 1988.
In the early 1990s, the Jewish Holocaust organisations debated with the Polish Catholic groups about "What religious symbols of martyrdom are appropriate as memorials in a Nazi death camp such as Auschwitz?" The Jews opposed the placement of Christian memorials such as the Auschwitz cross near Auschwitz I where mostly Poles were killed.
Retrieved 15 September 2015. Holocaust and concentration camps information The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team Official U.S.
The existence of the extermination camps is firmly established by testimonies of camp survivors and Final Solution perpetrators, material evidence (the remaining camps, etc.), Nazi photographs and films of the killings, and camp administration records. === Awareness === In 2017 a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was.
A 2018 survey organized in the United States by the Claims Conference, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and others found that 66% of the American millennials who were surveyed (and 41% of all U.S.
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