"The Final Solution." After World War II began in 1939, Germany's powerful war machine conquered country after country in Europe. Millions more Jews came under German control. The Nazis killed many of them and sent others to concentration camps. Sometime in early 1941, the Nazi leadership finalized the details of a policy decision labeled "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question." This policy called for the murder of every Jew--man, woman, and child--under German rule.

The slaughter began with Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Special squads of Hitler's SS (Schutzstaffel) troops accompanied advancing German forces. These killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, 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 (extermination of an entire people). They began using sealed vans. The prisoners choked to death on exhaust fumes as the van traveled to a burial pit. 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

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 opening. Within 20 to 30 minutes, the new arrivals were dead. The guards shaved the heads of the corpses and removed any gold teeth from their mouths. Then they burned the bodies in crematoriums or open pits.

Excerpt from the "Holocaust" article, The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999