JUDAICA HOLOCAUST NORDHAUSEN NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP PHOTO minister information

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JUDAICA HOLOCAUST NORDHAUSEN NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP PHOTO minister information:
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An exceedingly rare large format photo of NORDHAISEN Concentration Camp on thicker paper measuring approximately 6 5/8 x 7 7/8 inches. The photo dates from the 1940\'s and is stamped on the back from France\'s MINISTERE DE L\'INFORMATION
See my other photos from this collection from Buchenwald, Leipzig, Dachau and Nordhausen
CONCENTRATION CAMPS, 1933–1939
Related ArticlesCommentsHow to cite this articleArrival of political prisoners at the Oranienburg concentration camp. Oranienburg, Germany, 1933.Arrival of political prisoners at the Oranienburg concentration camp. Oranienburg, Germany, 1933.— DIZ Muenchen GMBH, Sueddeutscher Verlag BilderdienstVIEW PHOTOGRAPHSView PhotographsVIEW PERSONAL HISTORIESView Personal HistoriesVIEW MAPSView MapsVIEW HISTORICAL FILM FOOTAGEView Historical Film FootageConcentration camps (Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945.
The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
THE FIRST CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN GERMANYThe first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler\'s appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA (Sturmabteilungen; commonly known as Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons—the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy.
German authorities established camps all over Germany on an ad hoc basis to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives. The SS established larger camps in Oranienburg, north of Berlin; Esterwegen, near Hamburg; Dachau, northwest of Munich; and Lichtenburg, in Saxony. In Berlin itself, the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under investigation by the Gestapo (the German secret state police) until 1936.
CENTRALIZATION OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMP SYSTEMThe SS gained its independence from the SA in July 1934, in the wake of the Röhm purge. Hitler then authorized SS chief leader Heinrich Himmler to centralize the administration of the concentration camps and formalize them into a system. Himmler chose SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke for this task. Eicke had been the commandant of the SS concentration camp at Dachau since June 1933. Himmler appointed him Inspector of Concentration Camps, a new section of the SS subordinate to the SS Main Office.
After December 1934, the SS became the only agency authorized to establish and manage facilities that were formally called concentration camps. Local civilian authorities did continue to establish and manage forced-labor camps and detention camps throughout Germany. In 1937, only four concentration camps were left: Dachau, near Munich; Sachsenhausen near Berlin; Buchenwald near Weimar; and Lichtenburg near Merseburg in Saxony for female prisoners.
CONCENTRATION CAMP ADMINISTRATIONAlready as commandant of Dachau in 1933, Eicke developed an organization and procedures to administer and guard a concentration camp. He issued regulations for the duties of the perimeter guards and for treatment of the prisoners. The organization, structure, and practice developed at Dachau in 1933–34 became the model for the Nazi concentration camp system as it expanded. Among Eicke\'s early trainees at Dachau was Rudolf Höss, who later commanded the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Special “political units on alert” (Politische Bereitschaften) originally guarded the SS concentration camps. They were renamed “SS Guard Units” (SS-Wachverbände) in 1935 and “SS Death\'s-Head Units” (SS-Totenkopfverbände) in April 1936. One SS Death\'s-Head Unit was assigned to each concentration camp. After 1936, the camp administration, including the commandant, was also a part of the SS Death\'s-Head Unit.
Although all SS units wore the Death\'s-Head symbol (skull and crossbones) on their caps, only the SS Death\'s-Head Units were authorized to wear the Death\'s Head Symbol on their lapels. The “SS Death\'s-Head Division” of the Waffen SS was created in 1940. Its officers were recruited from concentration camp service. They also wore the Death\'s-Head symbol on their lapel.
The SS Death\'s-Head Unit at each camp was divided into two groups. The first was the camp staff, which covered:
1) the commandant and his personal staff2) a Security Police officer and an assistant to maintain and update prisoner records3) the commandant of the so-called protective detention camp (Schutzhaftlagerführer) which housed the prisoners, and his staff (including the labor allocation officer, the roll call officer, and the Blockführer, who were responsible for the individual prisoner barracks)4) an administrative staff responsible for the fiscal and supply administration of the camp5) an infirmary run by an SS physician assisted by one or two SS sanitation officers and/or medical orderlies.
The second group constituted the guard detachment (SS-Wachbataillion), which prior to 1939 was at battalion strength.
The model established by Eicke in the mid-1930s characterized the concentration camp system until the collapse of the Nazi regime in the spring of 1945. The daily routine at Dachau, the methods of punishment, and the duties of the SS staff and guards became the norm, with some variation, at all German concentration camps.
AUTHORITY TO IMPRISON PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPSAfter 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp formally rested exclusively with the German Security Police (made up of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police).
The Security Police had held this exclusive authority de facto since 1936. The “legal” instrument of incarceration was either the “protective detention” (Schutzhaft) order or the “preventative detention” (Vorbeugungshaft) order. The Gestapo could issue a “protective detention” order for persons considered a political danger after 1933. The Criminal Police could issue a “preventative detention” order after December 1937 for persons considered to be habitual and professional criminals, or to be engaging in what the regime defined as “asocial” behavior. Neither order was subject to judicial review, or any review by any German agency outside of the German Security Police.
EXPANSION OF THE CAMP SYSTEMNazi Germany expanded by bloodless conquest between 1938 and 1939. The numbers of those labeled as political opponents and social deviants increased, requiring the establishment of new concentration camps.
By the time the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, unleashing World War II, there were six concentration camps in the so-called Greater German Reich: Dachau (founded 1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg in northEastern Bavaria near the 1937 Czech border (1938), Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria (1938), and Ravensbrück, the women\'s camp, established in Brandenburg Province, southeast of Berlin (1939), after the dissolution of Lichtenburg.
FORCED LABORFrom as early as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced laborers for SS construction projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps themselves. By 1938, SS leaders envisioned using the supply of forced laborers incarcerated in the camps for a variety of SS-commissioned construction projects. To mobilize and finance such projects, Himmler revamped and expanded the administrative offices of the SS and created a new SS office for business operations. Both agencies were led by SS Major General Oswald Pohl, who would take over the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in 1942.
Beginning a pattern that became typical after the war began, economic considerations had an increasing impact on the selection of sites for concentration camps after 1937. For instance, Mauthausen and Flossenbürg were located near large stone quarries. Likewise, concentration camp authorities increasingly diverted prisoners from meaningless, backbreaking labor to still backbreaking and dangerous labor in extractive industries, such as stone quarries and coal mines, and construction labor.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR IIAfter Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. The war did not change the original function of the concentration camps as detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The climate of national emergency that the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted the SS to expand the functions of the camps.
The concentration camps increasingly became sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding centers for a rapidly growing pool of forced laborers used for SS construction projects, SS-commissioned extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, the production of armaments, weapons, and related goods for the German war effort.
Despite the need for forced labor, the SS authorities continued to deliberately undernourish and mistreat prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps. Prisoners were used ruthlessly and without regard to safety at forced labor, resulting in high mortality rates.Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (German: Konzentrationslager, KZ or KL) throughout the territories it controlled before and during the Second World War. The first Nazi camps were erected in Germany in March 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor and his Nazi Party was given control of the police by Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and Prussian Acting Interior Minister Hermann Göring.[2] Used to hold and torture political opponents and union organizers, the camps initially held around 45,000 prisoners.[3]
Heinrich Himmler\'s SS took full control of the police and the concentration camps throughout Germany in 1934–35.[4] Himmler expanded the role of the camps to hold so-called \"racially undesirable elements\", such as Jews, criminals, homosexuals, and Romanis.[5] The number of people in the camps, which had fallen to 7,500, grew again to 21,000 by the start of World War II[6] and peaked at 715,000 in January 1945.[7]
The concentration camps were administered since 1934 by the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) which in 1942 was merged into SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and they were guarded by SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV).
Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps (described in this article) and extermination camps, which were established by Nazi Germany for the industrial-scale mass murder of Jews in the ghettos by way of gas chambers.
Contents [hide]1 Pre-war camps2 World War II2.1 Internees2.2 Treatment3 Total number of camps and casualties4 Liberation5 Types of camps6 Post-war use7 See also8 References9 Bibliography10 Further reading11 External linksPre-war camps
The Dachau concentration camp was created for the purpose of holding political opponents. In time for Christmas of 1933, roughly 600 of the inmates were released as part of a pardoning action. The picture above depicts a speech by camp commander Theodor Eicke to prisoners who were about to be released.Use of the word \"concentration\" came from the idea of confining people in one place because they belong to a group that is considered undesirable in some way. The term itself originated in 1897 when the \"reconcentration camps\" were set up in Cuba by General Valeriano Weyler. In the past, the U.S. government had used concentration camps against Native Americans and the British had also used them during the Second Boer War. Between 1904 and 1908, the Schutztruppe of the Imperial German Army operated concentration camps in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) as part of its genocide of the Herero and Namaqua peoples. The Shark Island Concentration Camp in Lüderitz was the largest camp and the one with the harshest conditions.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they quickly moved to suppress all real and potential opposition. The general public was intimidated by the arbitrary psychological terror that was used by the special courts (Sondergerichte).[8] Especially during the first years of their existence when these courts \"had a strong deterrent effect\" against any form of political protest.[9]
The first camp in Germany, Dachau, was founded in March 1933.[10] The press announcement said that \"the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5,000 people. All Communists and – where necessary – Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated there, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons.\"[10] Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the German coalition government of National Socialist Workers\' Party (Nazi Party) and the Nationalist People\'s Party (dissolved on 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as \"the first concentration camp for political prisoners.\"[10]Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler inspecting Dachau concentration camp on 8 May 1936.On 26 June 1933, Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke commandant of Dachau, who in 1934 was also appointed the first Inspector of Concentration Camps (CCI). In addition, the remaining SA-run camps were taken over by the SS.[11][12][13] Dachau served as both a prototype and a model for the other Nazi concentration camps. Almost every community in Germany had members who were taken there. The newspapers continuously reported on \"the removal of the enemies of the Reich to concentration camps\" making the general population more aware of their presence. There were jingles warning as early as 1935: \"Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not come to Dachau.\"[14]
Between 1933 and the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were forced to spend time in concentration camps and prisons for political reasons,[15][16][17] and approximately 77,000 Germans were executed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, and the civil justice system. Many of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which enabled them to engage in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis.[8]
As a result of the Holocaust, the term \"concentration camp\" carries many of the connotations of \"extermination camp\" and is sometimes used synonymously. Because of these ominous connotations, the term \"concentration camp\", originally itself a euphemism, has been replaced by newer terms such as internment camp, resettlement camp, detention facility, etc., regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp, which can vary a great deal.
World War II
Jewish prisoners are issued food on a building site at Salaspils concentration camp, Latvia, in 1941.After September 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps became places where millions of ordinary people were enslaved as part of the war effort, often starved, tortured and killed.[18] During the war, new Nazi concentration camps for \"undesirables\" spread throughout the continent. According to statistics by the German Ministry of Justice, about 1,200 camps and subcamps were run in countries occupied by Nazi Germany,[19] while the Jewish Virtual Library estimates that the number of Nazi camps was closer to 15,000 in all of occupied Europe[20][21] and that many of these camps were run for a limited amount of time before they were closed.[20] Camps were being created near the centers of dense populations, often focusing on areas with large communities of Jews, Polish intelligentsia, Communists or Romani. Since millions of Jews lived in pre-war Poland, most camps were located in the area of the General Government in occupied Poland, for logistical reasons. The location also allowed the Nazis to quickly remove the German Jews from within Germany proper.
By 1940, the CCI came under the control of the Verwaltung und Wirtschaftshauptamt Hauptamt (VuWHA; Administration and Business office) which was set up under Oswald Pohl.[22] Then in 1942, the CCI became Amt D (Office D) of the consolidated main office known as the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Economic and Administrative Department; WVHA) under Pohl.[22] In 1942, the SS built a network of extermination camps to systematically kill millions of prisoners by gassing. The extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) and death camps (Todeslager) were camps whose primary function was genocide. The Nazis themselves distinguished the concentration camps from the extermination camps.[23][24] The British intelligence service had information about the concentration camps, and in 1942 Jan Karski delivered a thorough eyewitness account to the government.
InterneesThe two largest groups of prisoners in the camps, both numbering in the millions, were the Polish Jews and the Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held without trial or judicial process. There were also large numbers of Romani people, ethnic Poles, Serbs, political prisoners, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah\'s Witnesses, Catholic clergy, Eastern European intellectuals and others (including common criminals, as the Nazis declared). In addition, a small number of Western Allied aviators were sent to concentration camps as punishment for spying.[25] Western Allied POWs who were Jews, or who were suspected of being Jews by the Nazis, were usually sent to ordinary POW camps; however, a small number of them were sent to concentration camps because of antisemitic policies.[26]American soldiers view a pile of corpses found in the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945Sometimes the concentration camps were used to hold important prisoners, such as the generals involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler; U-boat Captain-turned-Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller; and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was interned at Flossenbürg on February 7, 1945, until he was hanged on April 9, shortly before the war’s end.
In most camps, prisoners were forced to wear identifying overalls with colored badges according to their categorization: red triangles for Communists and other political prisoners, green triangles for common criminals, pink triangles for homosexual men, purple triangles for Jehovah\'s Witnesses, black triangles for asocials and the \"work shy\", yellow triangle for Jews, and later the brown triangle for Romanis.[27]
TreatmentMany of the prisoners died in the concentration camps due to deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or they were executed as unfit for labor. Prisoners were transported in inhumane conditions by rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their final destination. The prisoners were confined in the boxcars for days or even weeks, with little or no food or water. Many died of dehydration in the intense heat of summer or froze to death in winter. Concentration camps also existed in Germany itself, and while they were not specifically designed for systematic extermination, many of their inmates perished because of harsh conditions or they were executed.A mass grave inside Bergen-Belsen concentration campIn the spring of 1941, the SS – along with doctors and officials of the T-4 Euthanasia Program – introduced the Action 14f13 programme meant for extermination of selected concentration camp prisoners.[28] The Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps categorized all files dealing with the death of prisoners as 14f, and those of prisoners sent to the T-4 gas chambers as 14f13. Under the language regulations of the SS, selected prisoners were designated for \"special treatment (German: Sonderbehandlung) 14f13\". Prisoners were officially selected based on their medical condition; namely, those permanently unfit for labor due to illness. Unofficially, racial and eugenic criteria were used: Jews, the handicapped, and those with criminal or antisocial records were selected.[29]:p.144 For Jewish prisoners there was not even the pretense of a medical examination: the arrest record was listed as a physician’s “diagnosis”.[29]:pp.147–148 In early 1943, as the need for labor increased and the gas chambers at Auschwitz became operational, Heinrich Himmler ordered the end of Action 14f13.[29]:p.150
After 1942, many small subcamps were set up near factories to provide forced labor. IG Farben established a synthetic rubber plant in 1942 at Monowitz concentration camp (Auschwitz III); other camps were set up next to airplane factories, coal mines and rocket propellant plants. Conditions were brutal and prisoners were often sent to the gas chambers or killed on site if they did not work quickly enough.
On 31 July 1941 Hermann Göring gave written authorization to SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), to prepare and submit a plan for a \"total solution of the Jewish question\" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations.[30] The resulting Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered.[31]Commander-in-Chief of all Allied Forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, witnesses the corpses found at Ohrdruf concentration camp in May 1945.Towards the end of the war, the camps became sites for medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how downed pilots were affected by exposure, and experimental and lethal medicines were all tried at various camps. A cold water immersion experiments at Dachau concentration camp were performed by Sigmund Rascher.[32]
Total number of camps and casualtiesFurther information: List of Nazi concentration campsThe lead editors of the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, operating from 1933 to 1945. They estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites.[33]
Some of the most notorious slave labour camps included a network of subcamps. Gross-Rosen had 100 subcamps,[34] Auschwitz had 44 subcamps,[35][35][36] Stutthof had 40 sub-camps set up contingently.[37] Prisoners in these subcamps were dying from starvation, untreated disease and summary executions by the tens of thousands already since the beginning of war.[38]
Liberation
Starving prisoners in Mauthausen concentration camp liberated on May 5, 1945The camps were liberated by the Allied forces between 1944 and 1945. The first major camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on July 23, 1944. Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on January 27, 1945; Buchenwald by the Americans on April 11; Bergen-Belsen by the British on April 15; Dachau by the Americans on April 29; Ravensbrück by the Soviets on the same day; Mauthausen by the Americans on May 5; and Theresienstadt by the Soviets on May 8.[39] Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Colonel William W. Quinn of the U.S. 7th Army said of Dachau: \"There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind.\"[40][41]
In most of the camps discovered by the Soviets, almost all the prisoners had already been removed, leaving only a few thousand alive—7,000 inmates were found in Auschwitz, including 180 children who had been experimented on by doctors.[42] Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at Bergen-Belsen by the British 11th Armoured Division,[43] 13,000 corpses lay unburied, and another 10,000 died from typhus or malnutrition over the following weeks.[44] The British forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves.[45]
Types of campsThe Nazi concentration camps have been divided by historians into several major categories based on purpose, administrative structure, and inmate population profile.[33][46][47] The system of camps preceded the onset of World War II by several years and was developed gradually.The main German camps and extermination centers, 1943–44Early camps, usually without proper infrastructure, sprang up everywhere in Germany when the Nazi reached power in 1933 as many as there were political police forces who grew disorderly and ubiquitous \"like mushrooms after the rain\", as Himmler later recollected.[48] These early camps, called also \"Wild camps\" because some were born with little supervision from higher authorities, were overseen by Nazi paramilitaries, political police and sometimes local police authority utilizing any lockable larger space, e.g. engine rooms, brewery floors, storage facilities, cellars, etc.[49]State camps (e.g. Dachau, Oranienburg, Esterwegen) guarded by the SA; prototypes for future SS concentration camps, with a total of 107,000 prisoners already in 1935.[50]Hostage camps (Geisellager), known also as police prison camps (e.g. Sint-Michielsgestel, Haaren) where hostages were held and later killed in reprisal actions.[51]Labor camps (Arbeitslager): concentration camps where interned captives had to perform hard physical labor under inhumane conditions and cruel treatment. Some of these were sub-camps, called \"Outer Camps\" (Aussenlager), built around a larger central camp (Stammlager), or served as \"operational camps\" established for a temporary need.POW camps / Stalag) a.k.a. Main Camps for Enlisted Prisoners of War: concentration camps where enlisted prisoners-of-war were held after capture. They were usually assigned soon to nearby labor camps (Arbeitskommandos), i.e. the Work Details. POW officers had their own camps (Offizierslager / OFlag). Stalags were for Army prisoners, but specialized camps (Marinelager / Marlag (\"Navy camps\") and Marineinterniertenlager / Milag (\"Merchant Marine Internment Camps\")) existed for the other services. Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager Luftwaffe / Stalag Luft (\"Air Forces Camps\") were the only camps that detained both officers and non-commissioned personnel together.Camps for the so-called \"rehabilitation and re-education of Poles\" (Arbeitserziehungslager - \"Work Instruction Camps\"): camps where the intelligentsia of the ethnic Poles were held, and \"re-educated\" according to Nazi values as slaves.Collection and Transit camps: camps where inmates were collected (Sammellager) or temporarily held (Durchgangslager / Dulag) and then routed to main camps.Extermination camps (Vernichtungslager): These camps differed from the rest, since not all of them were also concentration camps. Although none of the categories are independent, many camps could be classified as a mixture of several of the above. All camps had some of the elements of an extermination camp, but systematic extermination of new arrivals by gas chambers only occurred in specialized camps. These were extermination camps, where all new-arrivals were simply killed – the \"Aktion Reinhard\" camps (Treblinka, Sobibór and Belzec), together with Chelmno. Two others (Auschwitz and Majdanek) were combined concentration and extermination camps. Others like Maly Trostenets were at times classified as \"minor extermination camps\".[47]Post-war use
A concentration camp victim identifies an SS guard in June 1945Though most Nazi concentration and extermination camps were destroyed after the war, some of them were turned into permanent memorials. In Communist Poland, some camps such as Majdanek, Jaworzno, Potulice and Zgoda were used by the Soviet NKVD to hold German prisoners of war, suspected or confirmed Nazis and Nazi collaborators, anti-Communists and other political prisoners, as well as civilian members of the German-speaking, Silesian and Ukrainian ethnic minorities. Currently, there are memorials to the victims of both Nazi and communist camps at Potulice; they have helped to enable a German-Polish discussion on historical perceptions of World War II.[52] In East Germany, the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were used for similar purposes. Dachau concentration camp was used as a detention centre for the arrested Nazis.[53]
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 40,000 camps and other incarceration sites. The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and mass murder. The total number of sites is based upon ongoing research in the perpetrators\' own records.
EARLY CAMPSFrom its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of detention facilities to imprison and eliminate so-called \"enemies of the state.\" Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah\'s Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of \"asocial\" or socially deviant behavior. These facilities were called “concentration camps” because those imprisoned there were physically “concentrated” in one location.
After Germany\'s annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis arrested German and Austrian Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, all located in Germany. After the violent Kristallnacht (\"Night of Broken Glass\") pogroms in November 1938, the Nazis conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews and incarcerated them in camps for brief periods.
FORCED-LABOR AND PRISONER-OF-WAR CAMPSFollowing 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 World War II, the Nazi camp system expanded rapidly. In some camps, Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on prisoners.
Following the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis increased the number of prisoner-of-war (POW) camps. Some new camps were built at existing concentration camp complexes (such as Auschwitz) in occupied Poland. The camp at Lublin, later known as Majdanek, was established in the autumn of 1941 as a POW camp and became a concentration camp in 1943. Thousands of Soviet POWs were shot or gassed there.
KILLING CENTERSTo facilitate the \"Final Solution\" (the genocide or mass destruction of the Jews), the Nazis established killing centers in Poland, the country with the largest Jewish population. The killing centers were designed for efficient mass murder. Chelmno, the first killing center, opened in December 1941. Jews and Roma were gassed in mobile gas vans there. In 1942, the Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers to systematically murder the Jews of the Generalgouvernement (the territory in the interior of occupied Poland).
The Nazis constructed gas chambers (rooms that filled with poison gas to kill those inside) to increase killing efficiency and to make the process more impersonal for the perpetrators. At the Auschwitz camp complex, the Birkenau killing center had four gas chambers. During the height of deportations to the camp, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed there each day.
Jews in Nazi-occupied lands often were first deported to transit camps such as Westerbork in the Netherlands, or Drancy in France, en route to the killing centers in occupied Poland. The transit camps were usually the last stop before deportation to a killing center.
Millions of people were imprisoned and abused 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.