Nazi extermination camp

Image:Majdanek piece.jpg Extermination camp (German: Vernichtungslager) or Death Camp was the term applied to a group of facilities set up by Nazi Germany during World War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe, although members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as Roma (Gypsies), Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and many others, were also killed in these camps. Prisoners at these camps were not expected to live more than 24 hours beyond arrival. This was part of what has become known as the Holocaust.

Contents 1 Terminology 2 The Camps 3 Operation of the camps 4 Post War 4.1 Holocaust denial 5 Notes 6 Further reading

Terminology

Extermination camps are distinguished from concentration camps (such as Dachau and Belsen), which were mostly located in Germany and intended as places of incarceration and forced labour for a variety of "enemies of the state" of the Nazi regime (such as Communists and homosexuals). In the early years of the Nazi regime, many Jews were sent to these camps, but after 1942 all Jews were deported to the extermination camps.

They should also be distinguished from slave labor camps, which were set up in all German-occupied countries to exploit the labor of prisoners of various kinds, including prisoners of war. Many Jews were worked to death in these camps, but eventually the Jewish labour force, no matter how useful to the German war effort, was destined for extermination. In all Nazi camps there were very high death rates as a result of starvation, disease and exhaustion, but only the extermination camps were designed specifically for mass killing.

The Camps

Image:Massdeportations.gif Most accounts of the Holocaust recognise six extermination camps, all located in occupied Poland. These were:

• Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau) (Auschwitz I was a concentration camp and Auschwitz III a labor camp)
• Belzec
• Chelmno (German: Kulmhof an der Nehr, Polish: Chelmno nad Nerem)
• Majdanek
• Sobibór
• Treblinka

Of these, Auschwitz II and Chelmno were located within areas of western Poland annexed by Germany - the other four were located within the General Government area.

A seventh camp, much less known than these six, was located at Maly Trostenets, in present-day Belarus. The Croatian Ustaše puppet regime also operated an extermination camp at Jasenovac.

Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibór were constructed during Operation Reinhard, the codename for the systematic killing of the Jews of Europe, widely known under the euphemism, the "final solution of the Jewish question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage). The operation was decided at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 and carried out under the administrative control of Adolf Eichmann.

While Auschwitz II was part of a labour camp complex, and Majdanek also had a labour camp, the Reinhard camps and Chelmno were pure extermination camps, built solely to kill vast numbers of Jews within hours of arrival – the only prisoners sent to these camps not immediately murdered were those used as slave labour directly concerning the extermination process (e.g. to remove the corpses from the gas chambers). These camps were small in size – only several hundred meters on each side – as only minimal housing and support facilities were required. Arriving persons were told that they were merely at a transit stop for relocation east.

In addition, many non-Jews were also killed in these camps, mostly (non-Jewish) Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.

The number of people killed at the seven major camps has been estimated as follows:

• Auschwitz II: about 1,100,000
• Belzec: 436,000
• Chelmno: 340,000
• Majdanek: 78,000 ^{[{{fullurl:}}#endnote_Majdanek]} - 235,000
• Sobibór: 260,000
• Treblinka: at least 700,000, possibly over 1,000,000
• Maly Trostenets: at least 200,000, possibly over 500,000

This gives a total of at least 3,100,000, and possibly 3,800,000. Of these, over 90% were Jews. These seven camps thus accounted for about half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the whole Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.

Operation of the camps

The method of killing at these camps was by poison gas, usually in "gas chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means. The bodies of those killed were destroyed in crematoria (except at Sobibór where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered.

The camps differed slightly in operation, but all were designed to kill as efficiently as possible. SS Lt. Kurt Gerstein, who worked in the SS medical service, for example, testified to a Swedish diplomat during the war about what he had seen at the camps. He describes how he arrived at Belzec on August 19 1942 (at the time, the camp was still using primarily carbon monoxide from a gas engine in its gas chambers), where he was proudly shown the unloading of 45 train cars stuffed with 6700 Jews, many of whom were already dead, but the rest were marched naked to the gas chambers, where, he said:

Unterscharführer Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. Captain Wirth comes up. I can see he is afraid because I am present at a disaster. Yes, I see it all and I wait. My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and the diesel did not start. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue," says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes - the stopwatch recorded it all - the diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead...Dentists hammered out gold teeth, bridges and crowns. In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See for yourself the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day - dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!"

Post War

As the Soviet armed forces advanced into Poland in 1944, the camps were closed and partly or completely dismantled to conceal what had taken place in them. The postwar Polish Communist government further partly dismantled the campsites, and generally allowed them to decay. Monuments of various kinds were erected at the camps, although these usually did not mention that most of the people killed in them were Jews.

After the fall of communism in 1989, the camp sites became more accessible and have become centres of tourism, particularly at Auschwitz, the best-known of them. There has been a series of disputes between the Jewish organisations and the Polish about what is appropriate at these sites. Some Jewish groups have objected strongly to the erection of Christian memorials at the camps, even though in the most notable case (the Auschwitz cross), the cross was located near concentration camp Auschwitz I, where most of the victims were Poles, not the extermination camp Auschwitz II.

Holocaust denial

Main article: Holocaust denial

Some groups and individuals deny the existence of Nazi extermination camps. For example, Robert Faurisson claimed in 1979 that "the Nazis did not have gas chambers and did not attempt a genocide of Jews. He contended that the 'myth' of the gas chambers had been promoted by Zionists...for the benefit of the state of Israel and to the detriment of Germans and Palestinians."

Scholars and historians point out that Holocaust denial is contradicted by the testimonies of survivors and perpetrators, material evidence, and photographs, as well as by the Nazis' own meticulous record-keeping. Efforts such as the Nizkor Project, Deborah Lipstadt, John Keegan, Raul Hilberg who published The Destruction of the European Jews, Lucy Davidowicz published The War Against the Jews, Norman Davies, Primo Levi, Simon Wiesenthal and his Simon Wiesenthal Center, and more at Holocaust resources, all track and explain Holocaust denial.

Notes

• ^  A recent study radically revised downward the estimated number of deaths at Majdanek. According to a piece "Majdanek Victims Enumerated" by Paweł P. Reszka, Lublin, Gazeta Wyborcza 12 Dec 2005, reproduced on the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, Lublin scholar Tomasz Kranz has recently established this number, and the Majdanek museum staff consider it to be authoritative. Earlier estimates were considerably higher: 360,000, in a much-cited 1948 publication by Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz, a judge who was a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, and 235,000, from a 1992 article by Dr. Czesaw Rajca, now retired from the Majdanek museum staff.

Further reading

• Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past, Martin Gilbert, Phoenix 1997, gives a good account of the sites of the extermination camps as they are today, plus a great deal of historical information about them and about the fate of the Jews of Poland.

da:Nazisternes kz-lejre de:Vernichtungslager el:Ναζιστικά στρατόπεδα εξόντωσης es:Campo de exterminio fr:Camp d'extermination he:מחנה השמדה it:Campo di sterminio nl:Vernietigingskamp pl:Obóz zagłady pt:Campo de extermínio sl:uničevalno taborišče fi:Tuhoamisleiri sv:Förintelseläger