Jews came under German control. The Nazis killed many of them and sent others to concentration camps. The Nazis also moved many Jews from towns and villages into city ghettos. They later sent these people, too, to concentration camps. Although many Jews thought the ghettos would last, the Nazis saw ghetto confinement as only a temporary measure. The slaughter began with Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Special squads of Hitler's SS troops accompanied advancing German forces. They rounded up Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet leaders, and shot them to death one by one. The face-to-face killing became difficult for the killers, and the Nazis soon sought a more impersonal and efficient method of genocide. They began using sealed vans. The prisoners choked to death on exhaust fumes as the van traveled to a burial pit. Later at the Wannsee Conference, held in Berlin in January 1942, Nazi leaders further systematized the killing. They decided that Jews throughout German-occupied territory would be evacuated to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. These camps would become centers for slave labor and extermination.The first Nazi concentration camps were organized in 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power. By the late 1930's, the facilities held tens of thousands of political prisoners arrested by the Nazis. In the early 1940's, several new camps were established, with specially constructed gas chambers disguised as showers. For the Jews who had been confined in ghettos, the next step was what the Nazis called deportation. The Nazis herded the Jews into railroad freight cars to be taken to the camps. When the Jews arrived at a camp, an SS physician singled out the young and able-bodied. The others were sent directly to the gas chambers. The guards seized the belongings of those who were to die. As many as 2,000 prisoners were sent into the gas chambers at one time. SS personnel poured containers of poison gas down an...
