Warning: Horrifying: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaskammer_(Massenmord)
> In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. [0]
> They made you believe that life was normal [in concentration camp Westerbork, a waystation to death camps]. A lady gave birth premature, and it looked—even though Westerbork had one of the best hospitals in Holland, they didn’t have an incubator. They looked all over Holland to find an incubator, and when they found one they said to the lady, “See how good care we take of you?” Only six months later, that same lady with the baby was sent to the gas chambers. [1]
> Kurt Bolender, an SS guard in Sobibor, testified to this fact: “Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel [deputy commander of the camp] made a speech to them . . . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases . . . [2]
> Wilhelm Pfannensteil, a German physician and hygienist who visited Belzec and Treblinka, also described the particularly innocuous exterior of the gas chambers in Belzec:
"The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a sign saying ‘Hackenholt Foundation’, above which there was a Star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw, I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had any idea of what would happen to them." [2]
[0] http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/killing.htm...
[1] https://usflibexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/portraying-co...
[2] https://archive.org/details/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.Holocaust...
[3] Ernst Klee, Willie Dressen, and Volker Reiss, editors. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Free Press, 1988), 241.
