Early on Camps (1933–38)

Many of the early concentration camps were improvised.From its rise to ability in 1933, the Nazi government congenital a series of incarceration sites to imprison and eliminate real and perceived "enemies of the state." Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were political prisoners—German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats—as well as Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah'due south Witnesses , homosexuals , and persons accused of "asocial" or socially deviant behavior. Many of these sites were called concentration camps. The term concentration military camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually nether harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of abort and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.

After Deutschland's annexation [Anschluss] of Austria in March 1938, Austrian political prisoners came into the Nazi concentration campsite organization. Following the fierce Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms in November 1938, Nazi officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews throughout the country, the offset fourth dimension Jews were arrested en masse precisely because they were Jews. Over xxx,000 German Jews were incarcerated  in the Dachau , Buchenwald , and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Federal republic of germany, initially until each could provide proof of their ability to emigrate.

Types of Camps

Many people refer to all of the Nazi incarceration sites during the Holocaust as concentration camps. The term concentration campsite is used very loosely to describe places of incarceration and murder nether the Nazi government, however, not all sites established past the Nazis were concentration camps. Nazi-established sites include:

  • Concentration camps: For the detention of civilians seen as existent or perceived "enemies of the Reich."
  • Forced-labor camps: In forced-labor camps, the Nazi regime brutally exploited the labor of prisoners for economic gain and to encounter labor shortages. Prisoners lacked proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest.
  • Transit camps: Transit camps functioned as temporary belongings facilities for Jews awaiting displacement. These camps were ordinarily the last cease before deportations to a killing center.
  • Prisoner-of-war camps: For Centrolineal prisoners of war, including Poles and Soviet soldiers.
  • Killing centers: Established primarily or exclusively for the associates-line style murder of large numbers of people immediately upon inflow to the site. There were 5 killing centers for the murder primarily of Jews. The term is likewise used to describe "euthanasia" sites for the murder of disabled patients.

Camp Arrangement: Maps

Other types of incarceration sites numbered in the tens of thousands. These included but were not express to early camps; "euthanasia" facilities for the murder of disabled patients; Gestapo, SS and High german justice detention centers; and then-chosen "Gypsy" camps, and Germanization facilities.

Concentration Camps

Concentration camps are frequently inaccurately compared to a prison in mod social club. But concentration camps, different prisons, were independent of any judicial review. Nazi concentration camps served three main purposes:

  1. To incarcerate real and perceived "enemies of the state." These persons were incarcerated for indefinite amounts of fourth dimension.
  2. To eliminate individuals and small, targeted groups of individuals by murder, abroad from the public and judicial review.
  3. To exploit forced labor of the prisoner population. This purpose grew out of a labor shortage.

The Start Concentration Camp

The major purpose of the earliest concentration camps during the 1930s was to incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime. The start Nazi concentration military camp was Dachau, established in March 1933, near Munich.

An early view of the Dachau concentration camp. Columns of prisoners are visible behind the barbed wire.

In many of the concentration camps, the Nazi SS either installed or had plans to install gas chambers to assist in their daily business organization of killing prisoners who were also weak or sick to work. Before the widespread use of gassing in the concentration camps, weak, ill and wearied prisoners selected past camp physicians were murdered at "euthanasia" (T4) facilities from 1941-1943 in a secret program called 14f13. Gas chambers were also to kill small targeted groups of individuals whom the Nazis wanted to eliminate (Polish resistance fighters, Soviet POWs, etc.). This was the purpose of the installation of gas chambers, for case, at Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Auschwitz I, Ravensbrück, Lublin/Majdanek, etc.

The entrance to the gas chamber in Auschwitz I, where Zyklon B was tested on Soviet prisoners of war.

Army camp Structure

All concentration camps were structured in the same way. Each had an internal camp staff that consisted of five sections:

  1. Commandant's Headquarters (consisting of the commandant and his staff)
  2. A protective detention function run by a Security Police officeholder who maintained prisoner records in terms of arrival, discharge, discipline and expiry and who received his instructions from the Reich Central Function for Security
  3. Commander of the Protective Detention Campsite
  4. Assistants and Supply
  5. SS Physician

Forced-Labor and Prisoner-of-War Camps

Blanka Rothschild describes forced labor in the Ravensbrück camp

Post-obit the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazis opened forced-labor camps where thousands of prisoners died from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure. SS units guarded the camps. During Earth War Ii , the Nazi military camp organisation expanded speedily. In some camps, Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on prisoners.

Post-obit the June 1941 German language invasion of the Soviet Marriage , the Nazis increased the number of prisoner-of-state of war (POW) camps and subcamps. Some new camps were built at existing concentration military camp complexes (such as Auschwitz ) in occupied Poland. The camp at Lublin, after known as Majdanek , was established in the autumn of 1941 every bit a POW camp and became a concentration camp in 1943. Thousands of Soviet POWs were shot or gassed there.

Soviet Prisoners of War

Transit Camps

Jews in Nazi-occupied lands often were first deported to transit camps such equally Westerbork in kingdom of the netherlands, or Drancy in France, en route to the killing centers in German-occupied Poland. The transit camps were usually the last finish before deportation to a killing center.

Dutch Jews from Hooghalen during deportation to the Westerbork transit camp.

Killing Centers

Killing CentersKilling centers first made their advent in Nazi Federal republic of germany in the execution of Operation T4, the so-called "euthanasia" program. It was the Nazi country'southward beginning program of mass murder, where disabled patients in German facilities were murdered in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas.

To help carry out the "Final Solution" (the genocide or mass destruction of Jews), the Nazis established killing centers in German-occupied Poland, the state with the largest Jewish population. Killing centers were designed for efficient mass murder. The first i, which opened in December 1941, was Chelmno , where Jews and Roma were gassed in mobile gas vans. In 1942, the Nazis opened the Belzec , Sobibor , and Treblinka killing centers to systematically murder the Jews of the Full general Authorities (the territory in the interior of High german-occupied Poland). Here Nazi planners borrowed the gassing technique from the "euthanasia" program to murder Jews in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas generated past engine exhaust.

At the Auschwitz camp complex, the Birkenau killing center had four gas chambers, known hither as crematoria. Hither gassing took identify using the pesticide Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid). During the peak of deportations to the camp in 1943-44, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed in that location each day. Over 2,772,000 Jews (or 46% of Jewish victims) were murdered at killing centers.

Millions of people were imprisoned, mistreated, and murdered in the various types of Nazi camps. Under SS management, the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than three million Jews in the killing centers alone. Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC