.
Between 1940 and 1943, the German's systematically participated in the mass deportation of many of the Polish Jews, and the population of the Warsaw Ghetto decreased considerably. The same could be seen through out much of occupied Europe, and was integrated into a view of the transformation of many communities under ghettoization. As a result, the overall opposition was reduced and there was a general perception of the acceptance of the death marches as a component of the relocation process. Many people did not know that they faced extermination. They instead perceived the death marches as a relocation process that went hand in hand with the increasing development of the Jewish ghettos. Some social theorists have argued that the narratives of the death marches, including the reflections outlined in Elie Wiesel's Night, often relate an initial sense of fear in the Jewish community, but not a fear that the end results of these marches would be the mass extermination of the population. It was not until individuals like Wiesel experienced the death marches and understood the kind of well-organized violence that would be commonplace that fear actually abolished any sense of existing faith or hope. Of the initial transport process, Weisel wrote: "The days were like nights, and the nights left the dregs of their darkness in our souls. The train was traveling slowly, often stopping for several hours and then setting off again. It never ceased snowing. All through these days and nights we stayed crouching, one on top of the other, never speaking a word. We were no more than frozen bodies. Our eyes closed, we waited merely for the next stop, so that we could unload our dead" (Weisel 94-95). .
During the summer of 1944, the Allies were closing in and the Nazis began a desperate attempt to cover their tracks (Holocaust, 586). In November, circumstances forced the Third Reich to shut down the crematoriums and remove any evidence of the killings at Auschwitz-Birkenau.