At Auschwitz concentration camp 200 to 300 children were murdered by Germans by injections. The child was placed on a stool, occasionally blindfolded with a piece of a towel. The person performing the execution then placed one of his hands on the back of the child’s neck and another behind the shoulder blade. As the child’s chest was thrust out a long needle was used to inject a toxic dose into the chest. The children usually died in minutes. A witness described the process as deadly efficient: “As a rule not even a moan would be heard. And they did not wait until the doomed person really died. During his agony, he was taken from both sides under the armpits and thrown into a pile of corpses in another room… And the next victim took his place on the stool.”
They had photos lining the walls inside the barracks. For the first year, everyone who came into the camp was photographed until they realized it was just cheaper to tattoo everyone with a number. Beneath each photo was the birthdate, date of arrival, and date of death. The average life expectancy once inside Auschwitz was 2-3 months, though I found a few strong looking 17 year olds who died after 10 days. Of course, those people aren’t even formally counted in the mass murder numbers because they were recorded as “natural” deaths.
