Final answer:
The SS officer declared that those incapable of labor were sentenced to death, reflecting the atrocities of the Holocaust where Jewish people and others suffered in ghettos, were shot, or sent to death camps to be exterminated through labor, starvation, or gas chambers.
Step-by-step explanation:
An SS officer announced that those who could not work would die in the furnaces. This grim pronouncement was a reflection of the horrific reality of the Holocaust, a systematic campaign of extermination carried out by Nazi Germany against the Jewish people and other targeted groups.
People who were unable to perform labor were often immediately killed upon arrival at concentration camps or extermination centers. Living conditions in ghettos were brutal, with many dying from disease, starvation, or mass shootings. The Wannsee Conference in January 1942 marked the formalization of the 'Final Solution,' where the intent to systematically murder European Jews was made explicit. Deplorable methods of extermination included mass shootings, starvation, gas chambers, and the crematoria of concentration camps like Dachau, where scenes of indescribable human suffering and death were uncovered by liberating soldiers.