Nazi concentration camps

See also the related List of German concentration camps

Prior to and during World War II Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or KZ) throughout the territory it controlled. The Nazis adopted the term euphemistically from the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War to conceal the deadly nature of the camps. None ever were actual concentration camps, whose purpose was to concentrate and detain large groups of people at specific locations (examples of which are the British camps during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War and the American Internment Camps during the 2nd World War). The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily labor camps. During the war, prisoners in the concentration camps included millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet and other prisoners of war, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. Millions of concentration camp prisoners were killed through mistreatment, disease, starvation and overwork.

Starting in 1941, the Nazis established extermination or death camps for the sole purpose of the industrialized murder of the Jews of Europe, the Final Solution. These camps were established in occupied Poland and Belarus, on the territory of the "General Government". Over three million Jews would die in these extermination camps, primarily by poison gas, usually in "gas chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means. These death camps, including Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau are often referred to as "concentration camps," though scholars of the Holocaust draw a distinction between concentration camps and death camps.

Camps before the war

Concentration camp in Nazi Germany.

Concentration camps dated from the beginning of Nazi rule in Germany in 1933. The Nazis set up concentration camps within Germany, many of which were established by local authorities, to hold political prisoners and undesirables. These early concentration camps were eventually consolidated into centrally-run camps, and by 1939, six large concentration camps had been established: Dachau (1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1938) and Ravensbrück (1939).

In 1938, the SS began to use the camps for forced labor at a profit. Many German companies used forced labor from these camps, especially during the subsequent war.

Camps during the war

Major German concentration camps, 1944.

After 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, the concentration camps increasingly became places where the enemies of the Nazis, including Jews and POWs, were either murdered or forced to act as slave laborers, and kept undernourished and tortured. During the War, concentration camps for "undesirables" were spread throughout Europe, with new camps being created near centers of dense "undesirable" populations, often focusing on areas with large Jewish, Polish intelligentsia, communists, or Roma populations. Most of the camps were located in the area of General Government in Poland. The transportation of prisoners was often carried out under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before they reached their destination. Concentration camps for Jews and other "undesirables" also existed in Germany itself, and while not specifically designed for systematic extermination, many concentration camp prisoners died because of harsh conditions or were executed.

Sometimes the concentration camps were used to hold important prisoners, such as the generals involved in the attempted assassination by bomb of Hitler, U-Boat captain turned Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris who was interned at Flossenburg ing February 7, 1945, until he was hanged on April 9th, shortly before the war's end.

After 1942, many small subcamps were set up near factories to provide forced labor. IG Farben established a synthetic rubber plant in 1942 at Auschwitz III (Monowitz), and other camps were set up by airplane factories, coal mines, and rocket fuel factories. The conditions were brutal, and prisoners were often sent to the gas chambers or killed if they did not keep working fast enough.

General (later US President) Dwight Eisenhower inspecting prisoners' corpses at a liberated concentration camp, 1945

Near the end of the war, the camps became sites for horrific medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how exposure affected pilots, and experimental and lethal medicines were all tried at various camps.

The camps were liberated by the Allies from 1943-1945, often too late to save the prisoners remaining. For example, when the UK entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, 60,000 prisoners were found alive, but 10,000 died within a week of liberation due to typhus and malnutrition.

Nazi concentration camps after the war

In East Germany several concentration camps were re-opened by the Soviet occupation forces and used to imprison political opponents, ranging from former Nazis to social democrats. Tens of thousands died in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald between 1945-1950. Most of the Nazi concentration camps were destroyed after the war, though some (such as Dachau concentration camp) were made into permanent memorials. However, not all of the inmates were released by the Allies; homosexual prisoners were not freed but were instead made to serve out their sentence under Paragraph 175, Germany's (pre-Nazi) anti-sodomy law.

See also

• Concentration camp
• Nazi extermination camp
• List of Nazi German concentration camps
  • List of concentration camps for Poles
  • List of Polish Martyrdom sites

External links

• March of Remembrance and Hope Holocaust Education Site. A student's account of the inaugural March of Remembrance and Hope. Pictures and commentary of visit to Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites.
• Concentration camps in Estonia
• Nazi Killing and Atrocity Centers: Summaries
• Evolution of Tattooing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp
• European Holocaust Memorial
• Memorial to those who suffered and died at the eleven Kaufering concentration camps, which were subcamps of Dachau.

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