page_title: Extermination camp
section_title: Gassings
hierarchical_section_title: Extermination camp / How prisoners were killed / Gassings
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Drut kolczasty w pobliżu wejścia do niemieckiego obozu koncentracyjnego Auschwitz I. Zdjęcie wykonane na zewnątrz obozu. English: Barbed wire perimeter fencing near by the entrance to the German death camp Auschwitz I in Poland. Note the electrical insulators on the concrete fence-posts. The barbed wire was electrified with lethal voltages, to kill any escapers. Additionally, the top of the fencing is deliberately designed to slope inwards thereby making it more difficult to climb over, even without electrical current running through it. The view is taken from the outside, looking into the camp. In addition to the 2 electrified fences there is a third "dead-line" fence just beyond, visible in the middle distance. Any prisoner stepping over the low third fence would immediately be shot dead without warning by perimeter guards. Deutsch: Stacheldraht-Umzäunung in der Nähe der Einfahrt in das Konzentrationslager Auschwitz I. Bemerkenswert sind die elektrischen Isolatoren an den Zaunpfosten aus Beton. Der Stacheldraht wurde unter Strom gesetzt um jegliche Fluchtversuche zu unterbinden. Das Foto ist von außen, mit Blickrichtung in das Lager aufgenommen. Zusätzlich zu den 2 Elektrozäune, ist im hinteren Bereich noch ein dritter, niedrigerer Zaun sichtbar.
context_page_description: Extermination camps were built by Nazi Germany during World War II. The goal of the death camps was to kill millions of people as quickly as possible. At the death camps, people were murdered mostly by being given poison gas in gas chambers. However, the Nazis also killed many people in other ways at the death camps. They killed some in mass executions. They killed others through "extermination through labor." This was by making prisoners do very hard forced labor without giving them the food, medical care, or other basic things they needed to survive. Many other people died at the death camps from starvation, illness, and freezing to death.
  The Nazis sent many different kinds of people to the death camps. However, about 90% of the people killed in the death camps were Jewish. Nazi Germany wanted to 'exterminate' the Jewish people. This plan was called the Final Solution. It is now called the Holocaust.
  The fascist Ustaše government in the Independent State of Croatia also set up death camps during World War II. At death camps like Jasenovac, they murdered many Serbs, Jews, and other people. As many as 750,000 Serbs may have been killed at these death camps.
context_section_description: During the war, Nazi official Kurt Gerstein told a Swedish diplomat about life in a death camp.  On 19 August 1942, Gerstein arrived at Bełżec extermination camp, which had carbon monoxide gas chamber. At the time 45 railroad cars, filled with 6,700 Jews, were being unloaded.  Many of the Jews had died on the trip. The rest were marched naked to the gas chambers.  There Gerstein said:
  [The Nazi guards were] making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. ... My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and the [[diesel [engine]]] did not start. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue," says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth [[[whip]]s] the Ukrainian [prisoner being forced to help] twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes – the stopwatch recorded it all – the diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons, in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window, because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists [then] hammered out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns. In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and, showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See, for yourself, the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday, and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day – dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!" — Kurt Gerstein 
  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'."
caption: The Nazi death camp Auschwitz
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