Nazi concentration camps: Difference between revisions

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. The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily labor camps. During the war, prisoners in the concentration camps included millions of Jews, Catholics, 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, overwork, or executed as unfit for labor.

Starting in 1941, Nazi Germany established extermination or death camps for the sole purpose of the industrialized killing 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 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.

It has also been discussed among historians that the Nazi regime utilized abandoned castles and such to lock up the undesirable elements of society. The elderly, mentally ill, and handicapped were often interred in these makeshift camps where they were locked in and starved to death. The Nazis also began attach exhaust hoses to diesel engines and gas above mentioned to death. The final solution was therefore tested upon German citizens first.

Camps during the war

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 killed 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. The prisoners were confined in these rail cars, often for days or weeks, without food or water. Many died in the intense heat of dehydration in summer or froze to death in the winter. 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 in February 7, 1945, until he was hanged on April 9th, shortly before the war's end.

In the early spring of 1941 the SS, along with doctors and officials of the T-4 Euthanasia Program began killing selected concentration camp prisoners in "Operation 14f13". 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) 14f3". Prisoners were officially selected based on their medical condition, 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.^[1] For Jewish prisoners there was not even the pretense of a medical examination, the arrest record was listed as a physicians "diagnosis".^[2] In early 1943, as the need for labor increased and the gas chambers at Auschwitz became operational, Heinrich Himmler ordered the end of Operation 14f13.^[3]

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 work fast enough.

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.

Use of Nazi German concentration camp facilities 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 Soviet special camps between 1945-1950.

In Communist Poland, some of the camps were used to contain Polish political prisoners and German POWs, as well as a civilian members of a German, Ukrainian and other ethnic minorities between 1945 and 1956.

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.

References

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

• Holocaust sites in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, France
• Concentration Camps at Jewish Virtual Library
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Personal Histories - Camps at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The Holocaust History Project