Transcript The Buses to Nowhere… The Aktion T4 Program (originated at the address #4 Tiergartenstrasse) was responsible for the murder of over 70,000 German citizens.

The Buses to Nowhere…
The Aktion T4 Program (originated
at the address #4 Tiergartenstrasse)
was responsible for the murder of
over 70,000 German citizens with
physical and mental disabilities.
Developed in 1938 and carried on
throughout Germany and Austria
from 1939 to 1941, the T4 Program
provided the Nazis with a
systematic way of eliminating
individuals considered to be
“unworthy of life”.
This euthanasia program represents
the first step in the evolution
towards the Holocaust.
The Chairs
Krakow, Poland
Chairs normally symbolize comfort,
rest, and relaxation.
Chairs were also a dehumanizing tool
used at Nazi forced labour camps.
Something a simple as a chair became
a symbol – a test – of who would live
and who would die at the labour
camps.
How was it used?
The Icicle
Taken from the experiences of Primo Levi
“It was becoming tiring to think. It was better
not to think. As his mind drifted back to
reality, he once again became aware of his
hunger, how could he forget being hungry? It
was a chronic hunger, the kind of hunger
unknown to free men, that makes one dream
at night and settles in all the limbs of one’s
body. Auschwitz is hunger, he himself was
hunger, living hunger…
Driven by his hunger and constant thirst, he
eyed a fine looking icicle outside the window
of his barrack, within hand’s reach. He
opened the window and broke it off, but at
once, a large heavy guard prowling outside
brutally snatched it away from him.
“Warum?” (why?) he asked the guard in his
poor excuse for the German language. The
massive guard replied “Heir ist kein warum!”
(there is no why here at Auschwitz!), pushing
him back inside with a shove.
The explanation for this is simple: in that
place, everything was forbidden, not for
hidden reasons, but because Auschwitz was
simply created for that exact purpose.”
The Shoes…
It is estimated that there were about
230,000 children and young people
under 18 among the approximately
1,300,000 people whom the German
Nazis deported to Auschwitz
Concentration Camp from 19401945.
Aside from the shoes, the camp
liberators found 3,800 suitcases,
12,000 pots and pans, and 40 cubic
meters of metal objects from the
“Kanada” warehouses in
Auschwitz II - Birkenau, as well as
about 2,000 artistic objects made by
prisoners in the concentration
camps.
The Showerheads
To the Jews at the concentration camps, the showers
were not a place of warmth or an opportunity to clean
oneself after a hard days work.
Survivor Testimony – Arrival at Auschwitz
“They marched us to a huge building which had
shower caps, and we were told to undress, and I was
always, I was young and vain, and I dressed in my
best clothes, my nice coat, my, my best dress, so I put
it nicely together when I, when I undressed, and there
comes over this Kapo, and she flings it to the side,
and I say, "This is my clothes." She said, "Yes, but you
won't need it anymore," and, and I was terribly scared
because I didn't know what that meant. Then when
we were undressed, we were ordered, everybody was
ordered to stand up on a stool, and they shaved us,
they shaved our hair, and the private parts, and we
looked, we couldn't even recognize each other once
we were stripped, not only of our clothes, but of our
hair. Then we were shoved into those, um, showers,
and they first opened the hot water, so we were
scalded and as we ran out from under the hot water,
we were beaten back by the SS and by the Kapos to go
under the showers again, so they opened the ice cold
water, which had the same effect, and finally we were
out of this shower. Each of us was given one garment,
which, of course, didn't fit.”
Cecilie Klein-Pollack, United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum - Collections
Physical Evidence
of the Jews at
Auschwitz
Part of the seven tons of hair found by
the Soviet army after it liberated
Auschwitz.
Much of the hair is in locks, some of it
still in beautiful braids. All of it would
crumble to dust if handled.
Tests after the war showed that some of
the hair contained traces of Zyklon B.
The Nazis used the hair to make
haircloth for tailor's lining and to make
fabrics and textile products including
blankets.
Dehumanization

The Nazis targeted the Jews in particular ways in order to
make them so vulnerable that non-Jews would lose any
sympathy for them and only worry about how to avoid
being treat that badly themselves.

This process involved the use of everyday items in barbaric
ways - designed to break down the Jews to the point that
they would accept their plight, lose the will to mount a
resistance, and ultimately, even live.
THE DEHUMANIZATION EFFECT
 “In this place it is practically pointless to wash everyday in the turbid water of the filthy
washbasins for purposes of cleanliness and health; but it is most important as a symptom of
remaining vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival. I must confess however, after
only one week, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared in me. I wandered aimlessly around in the
washroom until one day, I suddenly saw my friend Steinlauf aged almost fifty, scrubbing his neck
and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. He asked me severely why I
do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off that I am? Would I please someone more?
Would I live a day, an hour longer? I would probably live a shorter time, because to wash is an
effort, a waste of energy and warmth. The more I think about it, the more washing one’s face in
our condition seems a stupid feat, even frivolous: a mechanical habit, or worse, a dismal
repetition of an extinct rite. We will all die; we are all about to die: if they give me ten minutes
between reveille and work, I would rather look at the sky and think that I am looking at it perhaps
for the last time. But Steinlauf, now finished washing, interrupts my thoughts and administers me
a complete lesson. He reminded me that precisely because the camp was a great machine designed
to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and
therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must
force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are
slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still
possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last – the power to
refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces with dirty water and dry ourselves on
our jackets. We must not polish our shoes because the regulation states it, but for dignity. We must
walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to discipline but to remain alive, not to begin
to die…”

PRIMO LEVI – IF THIS IS A MAN