When deportees arrived at an extermination centre, they underwent the selection process by camp officials to decide who would who would be killed and who would be sent to forced labour. At the death camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka), only a tiny percentage of prisoners were kept alive, often only to help with processing the next transportations. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the selection process was so severe that only an average of 20% of arrivals survived, while the rest were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. Selection often separated inmates into two columns; men in one, and women and children in another. Those who were deemed healthy enough to be used as forced labour were selected to live. Children under 16, pregnant women, those with young children, the elderly, those with disabilities, and anyone else unable to work were killed.
