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As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers.  Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling.  The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

As they arrived the victims were divided in two: those fit for work, usually young to middle aged men, or possessed a special skill needed in the camp, and the remainder sent for delousing in the showers.  Deceived to the end, the “showers” was actually a sealed room in which a chemical tablet known as “[[Zyklon B]]” was dropped through a hole in the ceiling.  The cyanide-based vapors would kill the entire room within minutes; within thirty, the room was emptied by the ''sonderkomandos'', cleaned, and ready for another group of victims.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from captured Soviet tanks. At tehse camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

The "Operation Reinhardt" camps (Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, used a different execution method; the gas chambers were pumped full of carbon monoxide generated by gasoline engines from captured Soviet tanks. At these camps all arrivals were gassed, as the camps were pure extermination facilities with no attached work camps.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland - Auschwitz - was perhaps the most notorious.  Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau).  The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths.  Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.

Of the death camps, the one at Osweicim, Poland - Auschwitz - was perhaps the most notorious.  Auschwitz was three camps: a prisoner-of-war camp (Auschwitz I), a slave-labour camp (Auschwitz III–Buna-Monowitz) and the extermination camp (Auschwitz II–Birkenau).  The arrivals would disembark the trains at Auschwitz II, where the old, handicapped, infirm, sick, and pregnant women would face a German doctor (among them the notorious [[Joseph Mengele]]) in the ''selektion'', where a flick of a thumb could mean the difference between slave labor in the nearby factory run by I.G. Farben (which took advantage of the forced labor by investing some 700 million Reichsmarks in the project), or to their immediate deaths.  Those selected for labor would be worked to death by a combination of hard labor and inadequate food and medical care; a second ''selektion'' of their numbers, if they had survived, would mean a trip to the gas chambers.