In the year 1939, the German army took over the western half of Poland, and during this time many Polish Jews were forced out of their homes. These people were moved into ghettoes, which were located in Poland and only consisted of tall walls and a barbwire fence which went around the whole place. The ghettoes functioned as if they were a captive city-state, which was governed by the Jewish Councils. With the thousands of people living in these ghettoes it made them breeding grounds for disease, because of the poverty, hunger, unemployment, and most of all the overpopulation of people. Because of this issue the Nazi officials made the collective decision to select 70,000 Germans who had a mental illness well living at the ghetto and have them be gassed to death, the program that was used for this gassing was called Euthanasia. After thousands were killed by the gassing process, Hitler then decided put an end to this program in the year 1941, because of the German religious leaders protest. Although the gassing was put to and end, the killing of disabled Jews continued to grow more and more and finally by the year 1945 over 275,000 all over Europe were killed. Most say that the start of the Euthanasia Program is the reason to the start of the Holocaust.