Pic of the Day
Out of context: Reply #37044
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In this famous photograph, Dr Fritz Klein, the camp physician, is standing in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; his main duty was the selection of prisoners to be sent into the gas chambers. From 1942-1944 transport trains delivered Jews, Romani, people with disabilities, Soviet war prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political and religious opponents to “forced labor camps”. Here, after a selection process, prisoners were made to work 12-15 hour shifts, wearing only striped fatigues and wooden shoes. The weaker, older and more defiant were sent directly to the gas chambers (where everyone eventually landed up), to be gassed alive, with their bodies disposed of either in mass graves or incinerated atop pyres.
It is disputable how much of this the world actually knew – photographs circulated and rumors traveled – but it took over three years before action was taken and in the mean time two thirds of Europe's Jewish population had been exterminated.