Left and Right

These two words meant the difference between life and death. At the death camps during the Final Solution, the selection process involved men were placed separately from women and children.

The appointed Nazi doctor would then either point for the prisoner to go left or right of the room, with no further explanation. One side was for those deemed healthy to undergo forced labour, the other was for those to be sent to the gas chamber.

At SBA we believe in creating awareness about the Holocaust. With the passage of time, what happened during the Holocaust cannot be allowed to diminish.

At a time when the forces of intolerance, fear and fascism are on the march again globally, at SBA we stand to even more strongly reinforce the importance of remembering what happened during the Holocaust and also what lead up to the Holocaust.

The way of life we enjoy today, the freedoms we enjoy today, was very nearly lost, only a few things going the other way would have meant, Nazi hegemony would have triumphed during World War 2. That is a story we want to create awareness about.

Because while it is easy to say Never Again, it is lot harder to make sure it never truly happens again. Evidence in the world around us shows us that.

So as part of this page on what we stand for, we will create awareness by sharing the documented history of what happened during the Final Solution, during critical moments of World War 2 and in the lead up to World War 2.

So we begin today with sharing an image of the selection at the death camps after the trains have arrived. This particular image was at Auschwitz. ( Image courtesy of Holocaust Museum and Holocaust Virtual Tour and Imagery)

Those who were less likely to be deemed as fit to work by the death camp’s acting physicians were as follows:

• All children under the age of 16, later brought down to 14 years old in 1944.
• Pregnant women.
• The handicapped, both physically and mentally.
• The elderly.
• The sick.

On average, it is thought that around 20% of prisoners brought to the extermination camps were selected for forced labour, with the remaining victims killed in the gas chambers.

(Source: https://www.holocaustmatters.org/holocaust-selection-process/) .