Countless Frames for Glasses Collected at the Auschwitz
It was difficult to fathom how anyone would even consider how to make killing more efficient but it happened at the Auschwitz. Through the use of poison gas, millions of prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers of the infamous concentration camp. The prisoners were told to strip, leaving behind everything in the guise of a delousing. Once everyone was safely herded into the gas chamber, the gas was pumped into the room. Everyone was dead in twenty minutes. This very efficient way of killing was used to exterminate millions of people. The bodies were then burned at the nearby crematorium. The success of clearing lots of prisoners at a time only encouraged shipping more prisoners into the concentration camps.
Even the Disabled Were Not Spared From Harvesting at the Auschwitz
While extermination was the primary motive, nothing was left to waste. At the time, Germany was still trying to support its war effort, and it was having difficultly sustaining it. Raw materials were not easy to come by. Fortunately for the Nazi Germans, there was a ready supply of raw material coming from the prisoners. The belongings of the now-exterminated prisoners were collected and sifted into groups. Metal, leather, glass, cloth, all these were needed to sustain Nazi Germany’s war effort. Given how many people were exterminated in this halls, the number of belongings grew and grew. The Auschwitz museum displays belongings left behind by the prisoners the number truly astounds. One window displays the largest number of spectacles which one would probably see. There were so many, it was difficult to even tell what they were without a closer look. It seems nothing was left to waste. Even crutches and artificial limbs were collected to be harvested later for raw material. This was truly a difficult sight to see.
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