As the Nazis invaded and took over more of Europe, larger death camps capable of murdering more people were built. Examples of these are Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. Many death camps were built in Poland because the majority of Jews were living there. Cost of transport wouldn't cost as much and the camps are well away from the enemy, so they won't find out.!
After the Nazis saw that gassing the Jews with carbon monoxide was also taking too long, they had to find another quicker method. The gas chamber was a great idea for the Nazis but the carbon monoxide wasn't. They finally decided to use Zyklon B pellets, which did the job much quicker. Five to seven kilograms of pellets would kill about 1,500 people.
A Jew going to one of these death camps would be sent there by train. As the Nazis wanted few people to know about these death camps, they told the Jews that they were going to be resettled in the East where they will be able to work. The deception didn't stop there. They would step off the train seeing Stars of David everywhere to make them feel welcome. Then after they were separated into two groups (workers and non-workers) the group of non-workers would have been sent to showers to be deloused. These showers were disguised gas chambers where the Jews would have been killed.
Before they would enter the showers, they would undress, and be given a number that they would have to remember. If they forgot their number, they would be able to retrieve their clothes. However, they weren't going to retrieve their clothes because they were going to die. They were then gassed in very convincing showers and then cremated by other Jews.
When they were losing the war, the Nazis were still trying to eliminate the Jewish race from Europe. Once the news got to the death camps it was time to kill as many as they could in on final swoop. They ordered the Jews to march to Berlin. It didn't matter where you were, three steps away or even thousands of kilometers, they had to walk to Berlin. This was later to be known as the death march where the Jews trekked from one side of Germany to the other.
Altogether, the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jews in Europe as quickly, and cheaply as they possibly could. They tried to keep it secret from the enemy and also from the German public. They didn't care about who they were, just as long as they were Jews they would die.
Why did the Nazis treatment of the Jews change from 1939 – 45?
The invasion of Poland in September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war on Germany. This acted as a catalyst for change in the treatment of the Jews. The conquest of Poland brought more than 3 million polish Jews under Nazi rule, as this was the country with the highest Jewish population. In fact the polish city of Warsaw alone had a larger Jewish population than the whole German Reich. Naturally, the situation grew worse as German captured more land, they found more Jews and this meant that step by step more countries could be occupied in the same way, hence more Jews being exterminated.
Hitler had stated repeatedly that if a war were to break out in Europe, he would unleash tremendous suffering on European Jewry, whom he blamed for war – mongering. He made good on his promise.
The Jews, which had been captured in Poland, were heavily terrorized with public humiliation, beatings and random killings. They were also driven into crowded ghettos in an area of Poland known as the general government. To mark them out, Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David.
Between the periods of 1939 -45, the Nazis dominated most of Europe and created 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. This is because they believed, that Jews were a disease and a permanent threat to the 'Aryan' race, and they were ready to take any action, which could make the areas under their control 'Jew-free'. With all the countries occupied, the Germans knew all the Europeans Jews could now be watched. Therefore the Jews became prisoners inside Europe and anywhere they went they could get captured. However, this soon became a problem, because the soldiers assigned to watch them in the ghettos, were becoming outnumbered as the number of Jews doubled rapidly. The soldiers also became involved in the war with the allies at the time, therefore the number of soldiers decreased. So the question is what could be done with the Jews? The initial solution to the 'Jewish problem' was ghettoriasation. This meant that Jews were deported to large ghettoes away from the Aryans, where they could not infect the blood of the 'Aryans'. However, it is important to note that at this point in time the ghettoes were not death camps, they were as the name suggests, buildings concentrated with Jews in an area, which the Nazis could manage. Yet in camps like these many people were starved to death, some rotted away while others died of dieses. Many commanders raped women in the camps, and others were used as guinea pigs in scientific experiments. However, as suggested above this solution could no longer operate as well due to the low number of soldiers available. Therefore, the Nazis considered the possibility of forcing all Jews to emigrate. One plan was to create a Jewish homeland somewhere in Eastern Europe. Another was to send all the Jews to Madagascar, a French island off the coast of southern Africa. But in 1941 both these options were discarded by a simpler, more direct plan for ending the 'Jewish problem,' this was known as the 'final solution.'
In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. In the path of the invasion lay the countries of Ukraine and Byelorussia, namely part of the Baltic States, which contained about 5 million Jews.
Before the invasion, Hitler gave out orders to his generals that they were to be merciless to the Slavs and doubly merciless towards Slav communists. He also said that special SS units known as the Einsatzgruppen were to shoot all communist. But the real order given to the SS units was to exterminate all soviet Jews. What followed could only be described as the brutal, in humane mass murder of the Jews.
This killing took place on a massive scale. Outside Kiev in September 1941, over 33,000 Jews were massacred in two days. They were forced to stand and watch as row upon row of men, women and children were lined up along the edge of the ravine and systematically shot do that their bodies fell into depths which the Jews themselves were made to dig. In this way they were made to dig their own graves.
Originally the executions were carried out by mobile killing squads, called the SS, however it was not soon before they became emotionally distressed an traumatized by the pleading cries of Jewish children and women. Therefore, Himmmler came up with a plan that could systematically kill the Jews in minutes. He introduced the idea of extermination camps, which could kill Jews in minutes.
The first death camp was set up in Chelmo in December 1941, a month before the wanasee conference. The death camp was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, anti -Nazis, gypsies and the mentally ill. Polish Jews were targeted first, where gas vans were used to kill them, the exhaust was turned back into the van so that they died of Carbon monoxide poisoning while being driven to mass graves. Other Jews met a similar fate however they were deceived into getting into trucks where they were told to have a shower. However when the taps were turned on gas was released instead of water. Carbon monoxide was also used in gas chambers constructed between autumn 1941 and spring 1942 at Belzec. At Auschwitz, and extermination camp, and insecticide called zyklon -b was used for killing. It is important to understand that the systematic killing of the Jews with gas had not yet been made official at the Wannsee Conference, in fact many of the acts stated above, were merely experiments. .
At the Wannsee Conference, that took place on January 1942, was where the German civil servants and the SS functionaries met and together tried to derive a plan on what could be done to the 14 million Jews in Europe. A man called Heydrich headed the conference. It became obvious that the rising number of Jews was too much for the Nazis to deal with, as they could not spare any soldiers due to the war. Heydrick decided that those who were fit enough to do so, would be appointed to work for the German industry while others who were not would be escorted to death camps in Poland and Austria, here they would be killed by gas. Poland was a popular choice for these camps as the country consisted of a large Jewish population. 'The final solution' added to the terror that Jews were already facing. No longer were Jews allowed to move out of areas under Nazi control. They were now being dent to death camps.
The Nazis did everything in their power to keep the extermination programme a secret. Therefore the death camps were located in remote areas in the East. However most people knew that Jews were being deported eastwards. But the Nazis never used such words as 'extermination' or 'killing'. Instead, they used code word such 'final solution' and 'evacuation'. This secret however was revealed in mid 1944.
In May 1945 Nazis Germany collapsed the guards fled and the camps ceased to exist as extermination forced labor or concentration camps were turned into camps for displaced persons, which included former holocaust victims unable to be repatriated. The Nazis legacy was an empire of murder and exploitation that has affected people in all parts of the world. The toll in lives was enormous.
It is fair to say that the change in the treatment of the Nazis may not have taken place, if the allied nations had not declared war on Germany. Firstly, because there would have been more soldiers and so there might not have been a need to establish gas chambers and therefore many more Jews would have been saved. Also, Hitler had openly threatened that if the allied nations resisted Germany's invasion of Europe, than Hitler would hold the Jews hostage and as a result many Jews were unable to leave Europe and became prisoners in their own country.
