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Methods of mass murder
The Nazis and their helpers used the most terrible methods of murdering Jews, gypsies and other “undesirable” population groups. In the attempt to carry out the Final Solution as effectively as possible, different methods of mass murder were tested. The Nazis began by using mass shootings, then used gassing trucks (in the first extermination camp, Chelmno) and ended up by constructing large industrialised facilities of mass destruction as in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the highly effective Zyklon B gas was used.
From June 1941 until the end of the war, the four Einsatzgruppen (A-D), together with their eager Eastern European auxiliaries killed around 1,5 million Jews in the occupied parts of the Soviet Union. The method was first of all mass shootings. The Jews were captured or arrested, forced to dig their own graves or simply placed along large mass graves, and then shot so that they fell into the grave.> The murder of the Soviet Jews
On of the killing methods was using mobile gassing trucks. It happened as follows: the Jews were forced into a hermetically sealed truck, and then exhaust gas from the engine was led into the truck. The Jews were thus suffocated.
One of the most effective killing methods was by forcing Jews into gas chambers, where they were gassed to death using exhaust fumes or Zyklon B.
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