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Everybody stand up and remain silent. Three questions that will change your life …. How old are you?. If you are sixteen or older move into the aisle. Do you have a trade?. If you have a trade move into the aisle. Are you in good health, have a trade and are over sixteen?.
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Failure to answer ‘yes’ to all of these questions would result in your immediate selection for death. If you are standing you are dead.
Auschwitz Death Camp Selection Hitler and the Nazis were responsible for an almost unbelievable catalogue of atrocities, but the horrors above all horrors were the extermination camps like Auschwitz, which were true factories of death.
Arrival at Auschwitz Deportees came from all over occupied Europe. Trains usually held two or three thousand victims, and took up to a week to make the journey. Under the fiction that they were being resettled, each deportee was allowed between 30 and 60 kilos of luggage.
On The Ramp By the time the train reached Auschwitz, the conditions inside the freight cars were revolting. There was little food other than any the deportees had brought, no water, no heating and no toilets. Once the doors were flung back, the deportees needed little urging to get out.
Separation of Sexes On leaving the train, the deported Jews were divided into two columns: males to one side, women and children to the other. This is one of hundreds of such trainloads sent to Auschwitz from Hungary in 1944, a year which saw more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews killed in Birkenau’s gas chambers.
Dead On Arrival For the weakest - babies, children and the elderly - the journey itself was often fatal. Bodies were left in almost every wagon, often covered in excrement. After being stripped and looted these pitiful remnants were removed for cremation by special squads of prisoners.
To Live or Die Deportees were marched towards an SS medical officer, who directed the bewildered Jews into two lines. The victims did not know it, but those sent to the right were destined for work and life - for the moment; those sent to the left faced immediate death in the gas chamber.
Slave Labourers Fit victims had their heads shaved and their belongings taken before being marched to the barrack blocks at Birkenau - passing the crematoria on the way. Many would be moved on to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz III. On average, slave labourers lived for about nine months.
Collecting Loot Soon the ramp was deserted, except for the SS guards, their prison helpers and the piles of luggage left behind by the victims. Some of the Sonderkommandos were tasked with sorting through the baggage looking for food, while others loaded lorries to take the loot to sorting and storage sites.
Music To Die By There were lawns and flower-beds around the gas chambers, together with large sings saying ‘Baths’. The Auschwitz orchestra played as slave labourers left the camp in the mornings, and those selected to die sometimes went to their deaths to the tune of Viennese operetta.
Resistance is Futile Elderly Jewish men support an old woman whose strength has given out after the 900 metre walk from the ramp. They only have minutes to live: the building in the background is gas chamber/crematorium IV and within moments the SS men approaching will order them to strip and enter the ‘showers’.
Running to the Gas Chamber A photo taken clandestinely by one of the prisoners working with the Sonderkommandos shows Jews being herded to the gas chamber. Forced to undress in a nearby wooded area, the victims were told to put their clothes in neat piles, “so that they would find them easily afterwards”.
Moments From Death The naked victims descended into the underground gas chamber. When it was full, the last SS men and kapos left the chamber - the camp commandant thought it reassuring if the guards were inside until the last moment - and watch through portholes in the sealed doors.
Poison Guards wearing gas masks dropped Zyklon-B crystals down wire lattice shafts from roof vents. The crystals released cyanide in the warm, sweaty interior of the chamber, and people close to the poison died quickly. Those further away lived longer - but the last hands fighting to get out relaxed their grip on the door after no more than 20 minutes.
Holocaust in Lithuania • Hamman - elite within the SS - eager for promotion. • Removed all Lithuanians who did not fit in with Hitler. • He was a career man who wrote down all his achievements - this was given to the Poles to have him hung in 1946 - He gave no apology for his defence.
Holocaust in Lithuania • Look at the source booklet - this will help you to realise the magnitude of killing in Lithuania alone • SHEET 1: In 11 days - 3,384 have been killed (7 - 28th July) • SHEET 2: 24 days - total now 16, 152 • SHEET 3: By 1st September 47,814 killed • SHEET 5: 29/11/41 Reichs German who converted to the Jewish Faith & attended Rabbinical School. • SHEET 6: Notice the volume of children murdered TOTAL: 137,346 by 25th Nov (4 months)
Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for Lithuania, has been achieved by EK 3 In Lithuania there are no more Jews, apart from Jewish workers and their families. • The distance between from the assembly point to the graves was on average 4 to 5 Km. • I consider the Jewish action more or less terminated as far as Einsatzkommando 3 is concerned. Those working Jews and Jewesses still available are needed urgently and I can envisage that after the winter this workforce will be required even more urgently. I am of the view that the sterilisation programme of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If despite sterilisation a Jewess becomes pregnant she will be liquidated. (signed) Jager SS-Standartenfuhrer
People affected by the Holocaust • 6 million Jews • 2 million Gypsies • 1 million homosexuals/ anti-socials • 20-30 million ‘untermeschen’
THE HOLOCAUST 5,500 times the maximum capacity of Wembley Stadium
You’ve just read through a list of statistics. • If the Nazis had the capability to do this - so could we….. • The HOLOCAUST is often viewed as things that foreigners did, BUT IT COULD HAPPEN HERE - AND AGAIN - since WWII the same has happened in INDIA,CAMBODIA, RWANDA, YUOGOSLAVIA. • Don’t be arrogant enough to think it can’t happen here. • WE ARE ONLY HUMAN……...
