One way for the Germans to accomplish the extermination of the Jews was to work them to death. Every prisoner, without exception, was forced to work: men, women, old people, young people, pregnant women, the sick. The work was often senseless, undertaken solely to inflict suffering. It might entail lugging heavy stones from one end of a quarry to the other and up a stairway of one hundred steps at top speed. A work day might consist of as many as seventeen hours of work with only two to five hours of sleep. According to witnesses, most average healthy people would have been able to last six months at most.

Given the meager food rations and the harsh conditions, many people did not have the strength to work. Additionally, many of the prisoners were not accustomed to hard physical labor at all, much less...