Nazi Extermination Camp Research Paper

Nazi Extermination Camps Anti-Semitism reached to extreme levels beginning in 1939, when Polish Jews were regularly rounded up and shot by members of the SS. Though some of these SS men saw the arbitrary killing of Jews as a sport, many had to be lubricated with large quantities of alcohol before committing these atrocious acts. Mental trauma was not uncommon amongst those men who were ordered to murder Jews. The establishment of extermination camps therefore became the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question", as well as a way to alleviate the mental trauma that grappled the minds of Nazi soldiers. The following essay will examine various primary and secondary sources to better illuminate the creation, evolution, practices and perpetrators
Gas vans had been introduced in Poland in 1939, Noakes maintains, and had initially been used to murder Russian POWs. The gassing of Polish Jews began in 1941 after the Nazis had forcefully gathered the majority of them into ghettoes around Lodz and Warthegau. The process was of crude design: Jews (and other ‘subhuman' subjects) were rounded up and told they were to be sent to a labor camp. Before this, however, they were to strip naked and bathe. After stripping, the victims were herded and locked into a gas van. The ‘driver' started the engine, and the exhaust from the vehicle flooded into the van, killing the victims inside. According to Noakes, "a recent estimate has given a total figure of 215,000 killed in Chelmno." After the creation of the more efficient gas chambers of later created extermination camps, the use of gas vans became less favored by SS officials, and Chelmno closed in
This small, isolated town was the perfect setting for carrying the final solution. Rudolf Hoess was granted permission by Himmler to begin constructing the camp in the spring of 1940, and was put in charge of overseeing the camp's activities. Auschwitz was originally constructed as a camp for Polish prisoners captured after the Nazi invasion, but would eventually become the largest killer of European Jews during the Holocaust. Another camp, dubbed simply Auschwitz II, was located near the original in Birkenau, designed to hold more "serious criminals." Auschwitz III was also constructed and consisted of ten camps, Monowitz being the largest. Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, was the extermination camp. The gas chambers at this camp were of enormous size and technologically superior to those found in the Aktion Reinhard camps. New methods of extermination also became practiced at Auschwitz. Zyklon-B, a poisonous gas made up of Prussic acid and originally used for pest control, was used in place of carbon monoxide to exterminate Jews. Zyklon-B was manufactured by the German corporation Tesch and Stabenow and originally tested on Russian POWs. Unlike the camps of Aktion Reinhard, where victims' corpses were buried in surrounding meadows, Auschwitz possessed two large crematoriums (constructed in the spring of 1943) equipped with five ovens that could turn