Moreover, Himmler put Globocnik in charge of the single most important element of this “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe”—the destruction of the Jews of the General Government, who constituted the bulk of Polish Jewry. A method different from the firing squad operations used against Russian Jewry was deemed essential for the murder of European Jews, however—one that was more efficient, less public, and less burdensome psychologically for the killers. The organizational and technological answer to these needs was the extermination camp. The victims would be deported to special camps where–by virtue of assembly-line procedures requiring very limited manpower, most of it prisoner labor—they would be gassed in relative secrecy. Preparations for gassing began at three locations in the fall of 1941: Auschwitz/Birkenau near Katowice in Silesia and Chełmno near Łódź in the Warthegau, both in the incorporated territories, and Beżec in Globocnik’s Lublin district.
