The beginning of the creation of this master race - which might take 1,000 years - had begun.

 The trains would arrive at the camps, many of the people coming in cattle-cars, stuffed in, from various locations in Europe.

 Mothers, children, the elderly, and the sick were selected for immediate termination right from the beginning since they were viewed as incapable of labor.

 They would be separated on the platform - those capable of work would be sent in one direction, those who were deemed unfit for work in another.

For those selected for instant death, they were told: “You’ve had a long journey. It’s been difficult, we understand that. 

Be sure that you’ve got your luggage marked carefully so you’ll be able to claim it.

 First you’ll be needing a shower and a chance to recover.”They were then instructed to undress. Women and girls had their hair cut.

 Why? Because human hair would be used for industrial purposes by the SS in their various factories both in Auschwitz and elsewhere. 

Then they were marched between files of auxiliary police. They were taken down into a bunker-like room that looked like a vast shower arrangement. 

They were pushed in one person at a time - the SS had calculated one person per square foot.

 At some point during this process, with the shower-heads above them and the crush of bodies becoming greater and greater until people were jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder and stomach-to-stomach, panic would often break out.

 And then the great steel door at the back of the chamber would be slammed shut and barred. 

Once the door was shut, from the vents above them in the ceiling, the gas would be released into this chamber.

The dying took anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes for everyone to perish. 

Only when the last screams and cries had been heard, and several more minutes had passed, were the steel doors of the chamber opened. The SS would then send in prisoners to clean out the bodies. 

Anything of value - gold teeth, wedding rings, hair, anything that could be used - were claimed from the bodies.

Between 1942 and early 1945, perhaps 4 million Jews would die - 2 million had already died in the activities of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen and SD in Eastern Europe - bringing the total to about 6 million.

 6 million, 7 million, 8 million, no one really knows the exact number, but the amount of lives lost are beyond comprehension. 

Along with the Jews, Russians, Poles, and Gypsies would vanish into the gas chambers and then into the ovens.

What one saw was the true racial essence of National Socialism. This was at the core of Nazi ideology.

 Those people who were deemed as enemies of the Reich, those deemed to be dangerous parasites that would infect the healthy body of the Volk, were now to be removed.

 The beginning of the creation of this master race - which might take 1,000 years - had begun.