Once at the camps, the prisoners were unloaded and stripped of everything of value. Clothing, jewelry, eyeglasses, shoes, and even gold teeth were confiscated from the arriving captives. After unloading, the people were separated into two groups. One of these groups would be lead to firing squads or, in
some camps, gas chambers, to be dispatched as soon as possible. These people were usually women, children, and the elderly. The second group would be lead to the barracks or used for slave labor. This group was usually comprised of able-bodied men. The prisoners were given little food and forced to live and sleep in filthy, overcrowded bunks where disease ran rampant. Thousands of prisoners in concentration camps died simply of exposure, starvation, or disease. As the war progressed, more and more concentration camps were transformed into extermination or death camps, some of which were equipped with gas vans or gas chambers and crematoria for quick and easy extermination and disposal of the bodies of the captives. Some of these camps also had facilities for scientific research, where men like Josef Mengle, also known as "The Angel of Death", preformed barbaric medical experiments on twins, dwarves, and other genetically different subjects in hopes of advancing and breeding the so-called "Aryan" race of perfect Germans for Hitler. Some of the most notorious of the death camps were located in Poland. Some of these include Auschwitz (1 million Jews killed), Treblinka (700,000-800,000 Jews gassed), Belzec (600,000 Jews gassed), and Sobibor (250,000 Jews gassed). These camps were the major centers for the slaughter of Jews and other groups (The Holocaust: An Historical Summary. Article on the Internet).

In 1945, the great World War in Europe came to an end, with the Axis powers surrendering before the Allied invasion of Europe. When the concentration camps were liberated and the body counts tallied, the resulting numbers appalled people the world over. Millions of people lay dead, and dozens of top Nazis faced punishment for unspeakable war crimes. When the allied powers liberated the concentration camps in Germany, Poland, and other areas of Europe, what they found there was beyond belief. Piles of bodies lay rotting in pits and sheds. The gaunt, sickly prisoners wandered about, barely alive after the ordeal they had faced. Some of the camps had few prisoners remaining, the majority of the others led on a final death march to Germany ("Concentration Camps." Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1996).