The Extermination Of The Holocaust - 1149 Words

In October, 1941 SS General Odilo Globocnik was authorized to institute a plan to systematically murder all Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement. This project received the code name of Operation Reinhard. To accomplish this elimination of approximately 2 million Jews, Globocnik created a Department on his staff. SS Major Hermann Hofle coordinated the deportation of the Jews to three killing centers in German-occupied Poland: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. A small minority of Jews were used as forced laborers prior to killing them. These Jews were transported to Operation Reinhard labor camps and to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. This camp was established primarily as a concentration camp. However, it did also†¦show more content†¦Up to 6 million Jews, two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe in 1939, were executed as a result of the Final Solution. Railroads were the essential link to the killing process. Trains carrying human cargo from every corner of Nazi-occupied Europe rolled into death camps. The death camps were strategically positioned along major rail lines. At Auschwitz alone there were 44 parallel tracks at the train station. A special spur was built to run directly into the exit ramp at Birkenau. Th e Jews were transported to the death camps in cattle cars and freight cars. Initially, there were three forms of deportation. The first one was when the Jews were moved from cities and towns to transit camps or ghettos. Secondly, they were transported from smaller ghettos to larger ones. However, from 1942 on, the only deportation that existed was the trip to one of the six major killing centers, i.e., Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. The train trip was long. The sealed cattle cars held 80 to 100 people. In the summer they were suffocatingly hot and unheated and freezing cold in the winter. There were very few provisions for food and water. They provided a bucket for bodily needs. They were forced to sit in urine and feces. When they arrived, they were grateful thinking the worst was over and behind them. Little did they know their ordeal was just beginning. There were more than 9,000 camps for different purposes