were unsatisfied and demanded a more efficient and permanent answer to the problem. The directive to exterminate all the Jews in Europe was issued on July 31, 1941. In December of that year, a law banning Jews from leaving any German territories was put into effect. Then finally, on January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich came up with what was termed “the final solution to the of the Jewish question.” He proposed a plan to erect six camps built for killing large numbers of people. The Germans built six such camps in the two years to follow, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, and Chelmno. Chelmno was the first of the camps to be built. It used large trucks into which they crammed as many Jews as possible who choked on the trucks own exhaust fumes. Most of the other camps had permanent gas chambers, which killed by the fumes of a stationary engine. Although Auschwitz used Zyklon B, a type of hydrogen cyanide. These venues of death were host to over 3 million Jews who lost their lives. (Wyman)The conditions in the camps were so terrible that they drove the poor Jews who lived through it into madness. One such survivor published his experiences in a book entitled Night. Elie Weisel, the book’s author, reports of conditions so horrible that he lost his faith and his sense of humanity. Weisel and his whole family are shipped to Auschwitz in railcars previously used to transport cattle. They were packed in so tight that many died on the journey. The weak were separated and killed immediately upon entering the camps. This often meant most women and all children. Weisel witnessed a pile where they were burning babies. The strong men who survived were put to work, Elie in an electrical-fitting factory. They were under the constant threat of “selections” in which the weak and sick were weeded out and put into the gas chambers. The prisoners got their only solace from their faith, Zionism, a...
