Selection was a process by which the Nazis chose individuals for deportation, forced labor, medical experimentation, or death. In the ghettos, the selection process usually involved rounding up a portion of the population, and assigning them either to forced labor or deportation to a concentration camp or death camp. At death camps, selections were often made upon arrival, to determine which inmates would be sent immediately to gas chambers, and which ones would be held for slave labor and medical experimentation. The middle-aged, the elderly, and the sick, as well as children and their mothers, were usually selected for immediate death. The few prisoners who survived the initial selections were forced to stand on appell for hours every day, facing further, mostly arbitrary, selections.
