The Nazis set up their first concentration camp, Dachau, in the wake of Hitlers takeover of

power in 1933. By the end of the war, 22 main concentration camps were established, together
with around 1,200 affiliate camps, Aussenkommandos, and thousands of smaller camps.

In 1945, when Allied forces liberated the concentration camps at Dachau, Bergen-Belsen,
Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz and elsewhere, the world was shocked at the sight of
images of dead bodies alongside half-dead people in these camps. This was the remains of the
Nazis horrible crime, to imprison people in camps because of their otherness or in order to use
them for forced labour.
A concentration camp was not the same as an extermination camp camps constructed with the
specific purpose of mass murdering Jews and other victim groups. Despite this fact, the
concentration camps claimed many thousands of victims. Imprisonment in a concentration camp
meant inhuman forced labour, brutal mistreatment, hunger, disease, and random executions. It is
certain that several hundred thousand died in the concentration camps. In comparison, more than
three million Jews were murdered in the extermination camps.

At the
political
as Jews,

beginning, the first inmates in concentration camps were

opponents of the Nazi regime. But different people such
gypsies, and criminals were caught and placed in
concentration camps all in the name of the Nazis racial

and regimentation ideology.

It was the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 that provided the Nazis with the authority
to detain people in protective custody (Schutzhaft). This was the stepping stone to an organised
and centrally directed camp system, which was placed under the direction of Heinrich Himmler
as head of the SS and the police.
The camps could be divided into different categories according to their purpose and function:
forced labour camps, work- and reformatory camps, POW camps, transit camps, police camps,
women camps and ghetto camps. The extermination camps had a special position within the Nazi
camp system.

A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed
wire, watchtowers and guards. The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in
bunkbeds. In the forced labour camps, for instance, the inmates usually worked 12 hours a day
with hard physical work, clothed in rags, eating too little and always living under the risk of
corporal punishment.

The sick, the old and those who could not keep up with the work temp were selected and then
killed with gas, injections or shot. Others were chosen for terrible pseudo-scientific experiments
most often losing their life.
To this was added the horrible destiny that hit those prisoners who ended up as Muselmnner.
This was the name for an inmate so undernourished that he or she was a living dead a living,
round-shouldered skeleton. The Muselmnner were either killed or died before they were
executed.
Forced labor

Forced
labour played an important role in the Nazi regimes Jewish
policy as
well as for the economy of the concentration camps. Forced
labour
became particularly important following the outbreak of
World War
II, when the Nazi war economy demanded an enormous
effort.
In connection with the Final Solution, the Jews role as workers diminished as the
extermination process was escalated. This was particularly apparent as far as the Polish Jews
were concerned. A morbid form of forced labour was instituted in 1941, according to which Jews
should be worked to death.

In Auschwitz and Majdanek, which had the role of both being a working and an extermination
camp, Jews were divided upon arrival into those capable of working ands those not. The last
group was sent directly to the gas chambers, whereas those able to work had to work themselves
to death in SSs industries or they were executed when they worn down. In Auschwitz, the
Jews worked in the so-called Monowitz working camp (Auschwitz III) in factories, or they were
hired out to private businesses such as the chemical corporation I.G. Farben or the SSs own
factories.

Jews, especially German, Western European and Russian, also worked as slave labour in work
camps in Germany. The Kraft durch Freude Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg, for example, used
the cheap Jewish slave labourers. A tile work in Sachsenhausen, owned and operated by the
SS, used Jews and other slave labourers. In the Harz, near the concentration camp DoraMittelbau, Jews worked in an underground weapons factory.

The victims
It is impossible to estimate the exact number of victims for the concentration camp system and of
those who fell victim to the death marches.
The most current reliable figures from scholars are at least 500,000 and perhaps as many as over
three-quarters of a million died as a result of the inhuman slave labour, hunger and disease in
concentration camps.

List of main concentration camps

Atotal of 22 main concentration camps (Stamlager) were established, together with
approximately 1,200 affiliate camps. Besides these, thousands of smaller camps existed in all
parts of German-controlled Europe. The 22 main camps, in alphabetical order, were as follows:
Arbeitsdorf, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbrg, Gross-Rosen,
Herzogenbosch, Kaunas, Krakow-Plaszow, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora, NatzweilerStruthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrck, Riga-Kaiserwald, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Vaivara,
Warsaw, Wewelsburg, Germany.

Extermination camps
In the period of 1941-1945, for the first time in the history of mankind, industrial plants were
used to kill people. A total of six extermination camps were established for the genocide of the
Jews, where the Nazis carried out the mass murder of 3 million Jews half of the 6 million
victims of the Holocaust.

Chelmno
the Final
effort to

was the first extermination camp to be established as part of

Solution to the Jewish Question the Nazis systematic
exterminate the Jews. This was quickly followed by the
establishment of three more extermination camps: Belzec,
Treblinka
and Sobibor. They were established under the code-name
Operation
Reinhard the starting signal to the extermination of the
approximately 3 million Jews who lived in Nazi-occupied Poland. In the concentration camps
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek two further extermination camps were established.

The six extermination camps were all situated in former Poland and had mass murder as their
purpose. Outside Poland at least two camps existed that in many ways resembled the six
extermination camps in Poland: Jungfernhof (in Latvia) and Maly Trostinets (in Byelorussia).
All of the extermination camps were thoroughly organised and resembled industrial plants to an
alarming degree. However, only Auschwitz-Birkenau, with its advanced gassing facilities and
crematoria, was marked by high technology. In crematoria I and II there were elevators from the
gas chambers underground, where the Jews were murdered, to the crematoria, where the bodies
were burned.

The six extermination camps were established within a very short time. From December 1941 to
December 1942 Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek all
became operational. These sites were chosen because they were all situated near railway lines, in
quiet rural areas of far away Poland, outside the spotlight of German and international public
opinions.

Six Extermination Camps

In
with the
systematic
exhaust gas
and again

Chelmno, the first extermination camp to be established

single purpose of killing people first of all Jews in a
fashion, 152,000 inmates were gassed to death using
from trucks, in the period of December 1941-March 1943,
from June-July 1944.

The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function until
August 1943. 600,000 Jews fell victim to the merciless efficiency of the gas chambers at Belzec.
Sobibor also began its operations in May 1942. The killings continued through October 1943,
when an uprising among the prisoners put and end to the activities of the camp. 250,000 lost
their lives in Sobibors gas chambers.
The extermination camp Treblinka was working from July 1942 to November 1943. In August
1943 an uprising destroyed many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in this camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also functioned as a concentration camp and a work camp, became
the largest killing centre. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million were killed in the
extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first gassing experiments, involving 250 Polish
and 600 Soviet POWs, were carried out as early as September 1941. The extermination camp
was started up in March 1942 and ended its work in November 1944.

Nine out of 10 victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. The remaining victims were mainly
Poles, gypsies, and Soviet POWs. Majdanek began its gassings in October 1942. The camp
functioned in the same way as Auschwitz-Birkenau, and also included a concentration- and work
camp. In the autumn of 1943 the camp was closed after claiming between 60,000 and 80,000
Jewish victims.

Killing methods
The use of
gas chambers was the most common method of mass
murdering
the Jews in the extermination camps. The Jews were herded
into the gas
chambers, then the camp personnel closed the doors, and
either
exhaust gas (in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) or poison
gas in the
form of Zyclon B or A (in Majdanek and AuschwitzBirkenau) was led into the gas chamber.
Another method was the use of gassing trucks. In Chemno gassing trucks were used, where Jews,
after being driven into the trucks, were suffocated by the exhaust fumes that were led into them
in the truck. A third method was mass shooting of Jews and other groups (Soviet POWs, Poles,
etc.). In Majdanek, on 3-4 November 1943, between 17,000 and 18,000 Jews were killed in one
day as part of a mass shooting. The event was called Erntefest (harvest feast) and included
similar actions all around the Lublin District. More than 40,000 Jews died as a result.
When the victims arrived to the extermination camps in overcrowded trains, they were herded
out onto the arrival ramp. Here, German SS-men and perhaps brutal Ukrainian guards forced
them to hand over their belongings and their clothes. Most of the victims had been told that they
were merely to be moved to the east for new jobs and living places, and most of them had
brought their favourite belongings.

In the pure extermination camps, men were separated from women upon arrival. The first to be
gassed were the men the women had their hair cut off before they went to their death.
In the
Majdanek
work
Those

combined concentration- and extermination camps,

and Auschwitz, the SS chose those able to work for the
camps.
unable to work the old, women and children were
immediately sent to the gas chambers or shot in the "camp
hospital".
Even those able to work ended up in the gas chamber
sooner or later, or they fell victim to random shooting actions within a few months, when they

had been worn out by the tough work. That is, if they had not died already. Those able to work
for instance helped carry the bodies to the crematoria or search the bodies for valuables.
The bodies were looted of gold (from the teeth), before being thrown into large mass graves. In
time, the bodies were burned either in mass graves or in the crematoria when, as the Soviet
armies advanced through Poland, the Nazis tried to hide their terrible crime.
There are few examples of uprisings in the extermination camps. In Sobibor and Treblinka
prisoners tried to rebel in 1943, and the same was tried in Auschwitz in 1944. Only a very few
managed to escape.

http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/history-of-the-holocaust-shoah/the-killingmachine/concentration-camps.html