Palestine

It was the problem Auschwitz was designed to solve. There were big mental strains amongst the mobile death squads, particularly on the Eastern Front, basically making themselves completely insane and uncontrollable.

The Death camps were refined to be as humane as possible… for the SS. So the killing involved user-friendly pellets of Zyklon-B being dropped down chutes or through holes in a wall of a gas-tight room. The SS could not see their victims, but could hear them, and no intervention was necessary. It took 20 minutes for the last to die.

Then prisoners on work detail would be forced to clear out the bodies, remove glasses, jewellery, gold fillings, hair, and artificial limbs for later resale on the commercial market, then they would carry the bodies the short distance to the incinerators, and later would dispose of the ashes by burial, dumping in the river or scattered as fertiliser. The SS were supervising, but didn’t need to get too close. It allowed those who chose to do so to put some emotional distance between themselves and the slaughter.