It shows how far Nazi anti-Semitism had gone. Right of the Jews to exist at all under Nazi rule had become a 'question', needing a 'solution'. The final solution proposed by Göring, with Hitler's full support and carried out by Heydrich and Himmler was to kill everyone.

Finding a way of killing so many people was not easy. At first they were shot. Special squads, Einsatzgruppen, ordered Jews to dig a trench. They were than shot and fell into the trench, which became a mass grave. Shooting proved to be an inefficient way of killing so many people however. The Nazis employed 20th century technology to find a way of killing as many people as possible at one time. Gas chambers, built at Auschwitz by the end of 1941, were the result. They could kill 2,000 people at once. Other death camps were built at Chelmno, Belzec, Maidenek, Sobibor and Treblinka. Auschwitz was the biggest because its position on the railway network meant that train could bring Jews there from all over Europe.

Lists of Jews from all over Europe were drawn up. They were taken from their homes and put on trains. Three hundred and twenty thousand Jews died on the trains. At the camp, most women, all children and the old straight to the gas chamber. Special prisoners - Sonderkommando - opened up the doors of the gas chambers. Gold teeth and rings were taken from their bodies and hair taken to fill mattresses. The bodies were then burnt in special ovens.

The process continued to the end of the war. Transporting the Jews hindered the war effort by using locomotives, men and fuel. By 1945, six million Jews as well as about five million others including Slavs, gypsies and homosexuals had been killed.