Methods of MurderMany methods were used by the Nazis in an attempt to achieve the "Final Solution". Shooting operations were heavily used for the purpose of extermination, but there were too many people to kill, and soldiers and SS officers felt disturbed from having to kill so many women and children. Gas chambers were developed and used as efficient ways to kill hundreds of people at once. The cellar of Block 11 is the most famous gas chamber from the Holocaust, and was used for multiple gassing experiments early on. Massive crematoriums were built to dispose of the bodies, some had a capacity of 1440 bodies.
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Concentration camps were not the only places where Nazi targets were exterminated, however. The trains that were used to transport people to concentration camps often ensured that the people did not reach their destination. Many died from lack of food, water or overheating and suffocation in the regular cars. Certain train cars, however, were constructed to double as gas chambers, killing everyone within the car.
Gas vans were also used. People were forced to undress and enter these large vans where they were killed with carbon monoxide. The victims of gas vans were largely Jewish people and the mentally ill. |
It is difficult to determine the exact number of people killed during the Holocaust, since Nazi records can be unreliable. Researches believe that approximately 6 million Jewish people were killed, 1.5 million victims were children, and 7 million were Soviet citizens. The only reason that the extermination stage ended was the end of the war. Nazis had to be forced to retreat before they began abandoning the concentration camps, and even then they left a bloody trail, forcing victims on death marches, quickly performing massacres of large populations. It is clear by the time the Nazis reached the extermination stage, they saw no semblance of humanity in the victims they were slaughtering.