What+Methods+were+used+to+Kill+the+Prisoners?



The Nazis started with the euthanasia of mentally ill people or people that the Germans chose that were “Not worthy of life” (United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum).  The Nazis experimented with poison gas in 1939. They used carbon Monoxide to kill these people. Gassing people was not as costly as shooting them. In 1942 the infamous gas chambers were installed. They would tell the people that they are going to go get showers but really they were heading into the chambers. At the peak of the killing up to 6,000 people were killed each day at Auschwitz. The first official death camp opened in 1941, it was designed to kill millions of Jews. Overall the Nazis killed over three million Jewish people in the killing centers. Only a small amount of people who were put in the Nazi camps survived.When Jewish prisoners arrived to Auschwitz-Birkenau most were sent to their death. One man recalls how some people were buried alive. Here is Eddie Hellmuth Willner describing what he saw “At the camp of Langenstein, they buried many people who were alive. People who were, who were too weak, who couldn't get off their knees anymore, to get up, to stand up to go to work, and they were put in a pile with the dead people and buried. And one time somebody refused to bury after they were all thrown in...the...uh...a few live people were still moving--he had recognized somebody that he knew and refused to throw earth on him, and the man was shot at the mass grave”(Willner). At the beginning of the war they originally had Nazi soldiers shoot the prisoners, but the soldiers requested that they were relieved of this duty because of the emotional turmoil of killing women and children. That is when they invented the gas chambers. After the invention of the gas chamber the older method of shooting people was practically gone.They also put people in Crematoriums and burned them alive. Elie Wiesel describes what he saw the first night of being in the concentration camps "A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames." (Wiesel 32)

The Nazis also killed mentally challenged people. They started with sterilization of these people, but then it moved to killing them. When they euthanized mentally ill people they would use gas chambers then once they were dead they would cremate them. They would throw their ashes into an urn and send them to the families. They sent them with a written cause of death and a death certificate. On August 18, 1939 they put a law into place that said that all medical professionals were to report all newborns and children up to three who had any disability. After a little while they were killing children up to 17 years old. The Nazis also had doctors that would perform medical experiments on people from the concentration camps. Some of the experiments included doctors freezing prisoners and trying to treat Hypothermia. They also tested experimental drugs on them. A doctor at Auschwitz would experiment on twins and other people.