Why the Holocaust casts bitter memories

By John Njiraini

To carry out what would later be known as the Holocaust, the Nazis chose gas chambers as the most effective method to exterminate the Jews.

The building that housed the gas chambers was designed as a factory complete with an assembly line.

Prisoners would remove their clothes, enter a room with an SS man disguised as a physician and have their mouths searched for gold or other valuable metals.

Entry into the barracks.

They would then be taken to the gas chamber disguised as a shower room.

According to Nicolaus Schutte, a tour guide, a shower was not only installed as a deception but the warm water was supposed to enhance the effect of the gas.

"The method of killing was like a factory, with an orderly assembly line," he explained.

After dying, the bodies were taken to the crematorium and burned.

Years later, several trenches were discovered near the extermination building filled with ashes of the victims.

To date, it is not clear the number of people killed at Sachsenhousen between 1936 and 1945 when the World War II ended after Hitler’s forces were defeated.

Numerous mass graves were later discovered in the camp. One of them contained more than 7,000 remains.

Not achieved

Though the objective of exterminating 11 million Jews was never achieved, the Nazis nonetheless managed to kill six million, the largest mass murder ever recorded in history.

Today, 64 years later, the world is still trying to understand how one man managed to oversee evil on such scale.