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The first transit camps were located in France, Belgium, and in the Netherlands. Nazis set camps mostly in occupied lands. Nazis started raiding homes and kicking people out of their homes, thinking that they were being taken to a safe haven bringing them their most precious belongings with them. Hauling their things on the transit wagons, little did they know that they were being sent to transit camps. Sometimes they were tricked and put in gassing trucks. Gassing trucks were were a way of killing Jews right away with a gas called hydrogen cyanide or Zyklon B. These were one of the deadliest gasses used in war. these wagons were not so comfortable either. They were packed down with at least one hundred people, plus their personal belongings, into a wagon. The personal belongings was later taken away from them and burned in a massive bomb fire.
Arriving at the transit camps most of the men were sent directly to the Gas Chambers. The women and children were humiliated by shaving their hair off and then they were sent to the Gas chambers. Only the people that had the strength to work were spared and sent to the concentration camps but many did not survive for so long. Early Tuesday mornings the deportation would begin. The Jews would be sent to the concentration camps to work in very hard conditions or they were sent to killing centers if they were not already dead. The torture, the killings, and the terrible treatments lasted for 6 years and "at that time just 876 prisoners remained, of whom 569 were Dutch citizens," (Transit Camps). many of these people went back home to find nobody their to receive them and there is a small percentage that is still alive today. |