Nazi concentration camps

From Open Encyclopedia

See also the related List of German concentration camps

Early elements
The Holocaust (Phases)
Racial policy · Euthanasia Concentration camps (List)
Jews
Nazi Germany, 1933 to 1939
Pogroms: Kristallnacht · Iaşi pogrom Jedwabne pogrom · Lviv pogrom...
Ghettos: Warsaw, Lodz Krakow, Theresienstadt...
Einsatzgruppen: Babi Yar, Rumbula Paneriai, Odessa Massacre...
Final Solution: Wannsee Conference Aktion Reinhard
Death camps: Chelmno, Belzec Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz
Resistance: ZOB · ZZW Ghetto uprising (Warsaw)
End of war: Death marches Berihah· Sh'erit ha-Pletah
Other victims
Slavs and Poles · Romany German dissidents · Communists Gay men · Jehovah's Witnesses
Responsible parties
Nazi Germany: Hitler · Heydrich Eichmann · Himmler · SS · Gestapo
Collaborators: Romania · I.S. Croatia Hungary · Vichy France · Slovakia Italy· Ukrainian/Latvian/Lithuanian units
Functionalism vs intentionalism Nuremberg Trials · Other trials
Survivors, victims, and rescuers
Famous survivors · Rescuers Famous victims

Prior to and during World War II Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or KZ) throughout the territory it controlled. The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily work 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.

1 Camps before the war
2 Camps during the war
3 Nazi concentration camps after the war
4 See also
5 External links

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Camps before the war

Image:NaziConcentrationCamp.gif 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.

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Camps during the war

Image:Majorcampseurope.gif 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. Image:Gen Eisenhower at death camp report.jpg

Near the end of the war, the camps became sites for horrific medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how exposure effected 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.

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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.

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