Genocide
...n the same gene pool through involuntary sterilization programs (Low 16). Many blacks and Gypsies were sterilized and prevented from intermarrying with Germans due to this law. Other victims of Nazi persecution included political opponents of Hitler. Homosexuals as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses were also persecuted and placed in the concentration camps. During this period of the Nazi rise to power, many Jews fled from Germany. The Jews who remained in Nazi Germany were either unwilling to leave or unable to obtain a visa. Some Jews could not get sponsors in host countries, or were too poor to afford the trip. Things got even worse in the years to come during the war. World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. The Germans took the country in a matter of days. This was devastating to the country because the Nazis began to enslave the Poles and destroy their culture. During the war Hitler authorized an order to kill institutionalized, handicapped patients that were incurable. The people who were marked for death were sent to one of the six death camps in Germany and Austria (Dawidowicz 88). Germany continued their conquest of most of Europe. Germany invaded the Soviet Union breaking their peace. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews, political leaders, Communists, and Gypsies were killed in mass executions, the majority being Jewish. The killing of the handicapped and institutionalized made its way to the Soviet Union (Dawidowicz 68). Major changes in the concentration camps were made because of World War II. Prisoners were made to switch camps in German occupied countries. Ghettos, transit camps, and labor camps were all used in addition to concentration camps by the Germans to imprison their victims. The conditions were horrible, food was kept scarce on purpose, disease spread, and life was terrible. Many people committed suicide. Children would smuggle food because they were just small enough to hide from the guards and also were the only ones brave enough. It was between 1942 and 1944 that the Germans decided to eliminate the ghettos and deport the ghetto populations to “extermination camps,” killing centers equipped with gassing facilities in Poland. This was known as “the final solution to the Jewish question,” (Dawidowicz 68). There were six killing sites chosen because of their closeness to the train lines. The locations were Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau (Dawidowicz 68). Most of the victims of these extermination camps were Jews and Gypsies. Few people survived since most were slain upon arrival. Those who weren’t performed forced labor or were put into concentration. They told Jews destined for death factories in Poland that they were going to labor camps in the East (Wyman 4). These people became a number, which was tattooed on their arm. The concentration camps were being sent daily to these camps to work, experiment on, and die. The effects of the secrecy, along with the location of the killing centers deep inside Nazi-held territory, kept clear information about the annihilation process from reaching the outside world for many months (Wyman 5). Genocide had struck Europe and many had no idea. Camp living conditions were terrible. People were crammed into non-insulated, windowless barracks. Inmates were jammed against one another. There were no bathrooms available- a bucket was the only form of waste control. The food was also very scarce in the camps. The food that the inmates had was terrible and sometimes inedible. Auschwitz-Bikenau, not just a killing center but also a concentration camp and slave labor facility, is usually mentioned the moment anyone discusses the Holocaust. This is ...