The Killing Centers

The killing centers were designed exclusively as places of secret and instant death. All of the four killing centers located on isolated rural Poland. None of them lasted long. Very few victims survived the centers. Those who survived left no descriptions, for their memories of the centers were painful to retrieve. The only thing we are sure about the killing centers is that they had no other function but to kill.

In 1941 an order was made to design and implement an extermination program with Chelmno as the pilot project. Later, Hitler gave the verbal order for the Final Solution, which was an euphemism for the execution of Jews. The workers who built the camp were not told of the program goals and their duties until they arrived the centers. They were forced to keep absolute secrecy about everything they know. From then on, the mobile killing units were replaced with stationary death factories, and gas chamber began its era. Almost all of the prisoners were exterminated immediately upon arrival. Most inmates were Jews, although there was also a noticeable amount of Polish Christians and Gypsies.

The Nazis built Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka as killing centers for the sole purpose of exterminating the Jews. Poland provided the best sites for these inhumane centers. The widespread Polish railway system was perfect for transportation. In addition, the densely forested and thinly populated Polish countryside made secrecy possible. Even though no one killing center existed longer than seventeen months, but together 2,000,000 Jews and 52,000 Gypsies died there, one third of whom were children. Compared to these killing centers, the concentration camps offered a much higher chance for survival. In the killing centers the only inmates kept alive were those selected to process the bodies of their fellow Jews.

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