To keep people from panicking and fighting back, the Nazis told the prisoners they were going to shower and get deloused (get lice removed). Prisoner "Sonderkommando" were forced to help in and around the gas chambers. They encouraged the Jews to undress without a hint of what was about to happen. (If the "Sonderkommando" warned the prisoners, they too would be killed.) The gas chambers were designed to look like shower rooms (with fake water nozzles, and tile walls). The "Sonderkommando" talked to the victims about life in the camp to keep people from getting suspicious. They also helped the elderly and the very young to undress. The "Sonderkommando" also comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion".
Once the gas chamber was full of people and the door was sealed, Nazi guards dropped Zyklon B through special holes in the roof.
As part of their training, some high-ranked Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau to watch the gassings. Höss reported that "all were deeply impressed by what they saw ... [but some] ... who had previously spoken most loudly, about the [need] for this extermination, fell silent once they had actually seen the 'final solution of the Jewish problem'."
After the gassings, the "Sonderkommando" removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then took gold teeth out of the bodies. At first, the victims were buried in mass graves. Later, victims' bodies were cremated. The ashes were either buried, scattered, or dumped in a nearby river.
In his memoir, Auschwitz Commandant Höss wrote that the "Sonderkommando" had to:
Hess wrote that he was impressed by how hard the "Sonderkommando" worked, even though they knew they would also be killed eventually.
Eventually, the Nazis were killing so many people at Auschwitz-Birkenau that they had three buildings with crematoria designed by specialists from Topf und Söhne. At Auschwitz, prisoners worked every hour of the day to destroy corpses. However, people were being gassed so quickly that not every body could be destroyed in the crematoria. Some corpses were also burned in an open air fire pit.<ref name="B/G-199"></ref>
At Sobibór, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Chełmno, the corpses were burned on pyres.
Historians estimate that the Nazis murdered over three million people in these camps:
When they realized they were going to lose World War II, the Nazis tried to destroy the death camps in order to hide the evidence of what they had done. They wanted to hide evidence that so many people had been killed. This meant they needed to destroy the camps, and also hide the corpses of their many victims. The Nazis forced prisoners to destroy the camps and their records, and to dig up mass graves.
Some extermination camps were liberated (taken over and freed) by Soviet soldiers before the Nazis could destroy evidence of their war crimes. For example, Majdanek was captured nearly intact before the Nazis were able to destroy very much. This happened because the Soviet Red Army got to the camp very quickly, which prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp.
Southeast African cheetah
The Southeast African cheetah ("Acinonyx jubatus jubatus") is the nominate subspecies of cheetah native to Southern Africa. It is the most abundant subspecies estimated at more than 6,000 individuals in the wild. Since 1990 and onwards, the population was estimated at approximately 2,500 individuals in Namibia, until 2015, the cheetah population has been increased to more than 3,500 in the country.
The Southeast African Cheetah is the closest relative to the two other distinct subspecies, the Asiatic Cheetahs and the Northeast African Cheetah.
Rose Chibambo
Rose Lomathinda Chibambo (8 September 1928 – 12 January 2016) was a known British-born Malawi politician and activist. She was the Protectorate of Nyasaland in the years leading up to independence as the state of Malawi in 1964, and immediately after.
She was imprisoned in 1959, while pregnant with her 5th child, along with other Malawians whom the Federal government felt were a threat to British rule. After Malawi gained independence, Chibambo was the first woman minister in the new cabinet. She was forced into exile for thirty years, returning after the restoration of democracy.
On 1 January 2012, she was honored by being place on Malawi’s 200 Kwacha banknote.
Chibambo died from a heart attack at a hospital in Blantyre, Malawi at the age of 87.
Lawrence Phillips
Lawrence Lamond Phillips (May 12, 1975 – January 13, 2016) was a professional American football and Canadian football running back. He was a two-time college football national champion at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. Many people consider the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers, on which Phillips played, to be the greatest college football team of all time.
Phillips played in the National Football League for the St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins, and San Francisco 49ers from 1996 through 1999, and for the Montreal Alouettes and Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League in 2002 and 2003.
He was arrested several times during the course of his life. In 2015, Phillips was charged with the murder of his former cellmate, Damion Soward.
Phillips died January 13, 2016, at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California from an apparent suicide attempt, where he was serving a seven-year term for felony assault with a deadly weapon, at the age of 40.
Brian Bedford
Brian Bedford (16 February 1935 – 13 January 2016) was an English actor. He has appeared on the stage and in movies, and is known for both acting in and directing Shakespeare. In movies, Bedford is known for his role as Clyde Tolson in the 1994 movie "Nixon". He won a Tony Award in 1971 and five Drama Desk Awards during hi career.
Bedford was born in Morley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He was openly gay. Bedford married actor Tim MacDonald in the 1980s. Bedford died on 13 January 2016 in Santa Barbara, California from cancer at the age of 80.
Paul G. Kirk
Paul Grattan Kirk, Jr. (born January 18, 1938) is an American lawyer and politician. He served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts from 2009 to 2010, having been appointed to fill the seat created by the death of Ted Kennedy.
From 1985 to 1989, he served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). On January 14, 2016, Kirk announced his endorsement in Hanover, New Hampshire in support of the presidential campaign for Bernie Sanders.
Robert Reich
Robert Bernard Reich (; born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was the United States Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.
Reich is diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbanks disease, and stands at 4 feet 10.5 inches (1.486 m).
In January 2016, Reich announced his endorsement for Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States.
Franco Citti
Franco Citti (23 April 1935 – 14 January 2016) was an Italian actor. He acted in over fifty movies between the early 1960s and the late 1990s. He was best known to non-Italian audiences as Calò in "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather Part III" (1990). He also appeared in the movies "Accattone" (1961) and "Oedipus Rex" (1967).
Citti was born in Fiumicino, Rome. His brother was the director and screenwriter Sergio Citti (1933–2005).
Citti died on 14 January 2016 in Rome, aged 80.
Ken Judge
Ken Judge (15 January 1958 – 15 January 2016) was an Australian rules footballer and coach. He played for East Fremantle, Hawthorn and the Brisbane Bears during the 1970s and 1980s. He also coached Hawthorn from 1996 to 1999 and the West Coast Eagles from 2000 to 2001.
Judge died from multiple myeloma on his 58th birthday (15 January 2016) in Perth, Western Australia.