Deportations

In the months following the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime continued to carry out their plans for the "Final Solution." Jews were "deported" -- transported by trains or trucks to six camps, all located in occupied Poland: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek-Lublin.

The Nazis called these six camps "extermination" camps." Most of the deportees were immediately murdered in large groups by poisonous gas. The Nazis changed to gassing as their preferred method of mass murder because they saw it as "cleaner" and more "efficient" than shooting. Gassing also spared the killers the emotional stress many mobile killing squad members had felt shooting people face to face. The killing centers were in semi-rural, isolated areas, fairly well hidden from public view. They were located near major railroad lines, allowing trains to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the killing sites.

Many of the victims were deported from nearby ghettos, some as early as December 1941, even before the Wannsee meeting. The SS began in earnest to empty the ghettos, however, in the summer of 1942. In two years' time, more than two million Jews were taken out of the ghettos. By the summer of 1944, few ghettos remained in eastern Europe.

At the same time that ghettos were being emptied, masses of Jews and also Roma (Gypsies) were transported from the many distant countries occupied or controlled by Germany, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Italy, North Africa, and Greece.

The deportations required the help of many people and all branches of the German government. The victims in Poland were already imprisoned in ghettos and totally under German control. The deportation of Jews from other parts of Europe, however, was a far more complex problem. The German Foreign Ministry succeeded in pressuring most governments of occupied and allied nations to assist the Germans in the deportation of Jews living in their countries.

For more information, see "Deportations to Extermination Camps" in the Holocaust Encyclopedia.