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From the fall of 1941, three months after the invasion of the USSR by the Wehrmacht, the upper echelons of the Allied leadership were aware that the Jews of Eastern Europe were being wiped out in mass shootings. But they did not react. At the same time, the deportation of Jews in Germany and Austria began. Fearing protests, the Nazi authorities sent the convoys to Lodz, Riga or Minsk so they would be harder to track. Upon arrival, certain deportees were executed, others were shut into ghettos. Himmler began thinking up other methods of execution other than mass shootings, ones that would be quicker and less distressing for the Einsatzgruppen, who had complained of the psychological effects of shooting women and children. At the end of 1941, the Nazis began using gas vans, those they had used as part of the T4 program to eliminate the mentally ill, who were considered a threat to the “German race”. The program had been halted in August 1941, following protests by the Catholic church, but the personnel were transferred to the Eastern Front, in particular to Lublin, under the command of Odilo Globocnik, the local head of the SS and district police. His mission was to exterminate the two million Jews of the general government of Poland, which was later given the name “Operation Reinhard”. This marked a turning point in the Holocaust. Now, thanks to the railroads, the victims became mobile and the extermination centers became static. On 8 December 1941, they began using gas to exterminate deported Jews in Chelmno. The day before, the United States has entered the Second World War, after the Japanese bombed the Pearl Harbor naval base. Sometime between 12 and 18 December, Hitler decided to exterminate all of Europe’s Jews. A few weeks later, in Wannsee on the edge of Berlin, the heads of the administrations taking part in the Final Solution assured Heydrich of their collaboration. Eichmann was put in charge of coordinating deportation to the death camps. The Auschwitz camp was integrated into the Final Solution due to its rail links with both western Europe and Hungary. A death camp was built there, Auschwitz-Birkenau, which included gas chambers and crematoriums, as well as a center for prisoners and the work camps of Buna-Monowitz. It would be in Auschwitz where most of the French, Dutch and Belgian Jews were exterminated, along with nearly all the Hungarian Jews. Documentary: Annihilation EP4 : In the Face of Death (2014) Directed by: William Karel Production: Zadig Productions #fulldocumentary #documentary #history #germany #ww2 #holocaust #nazigermany #jew #concentrationcamp