Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered in the Auschwitz gas chambers. By 1943, four new crematoria, with gas chambers attached, had been built in Auschwitz II. Auschwitz initially had oneĪt the Auschwitz I camp, but this was soon expanded. Following tests in September 1941, the lethal gas Eventually it had a network of more than 40 satellite camps. In the spring of 1942, following the Wannsee Conference, the camp was adapted to become an extermination camp by the addition of gas chambers and crematoria.Īuschwitz-Birkenau was a complex, consisting of a concentration camp, a forced labour camp and an extermination camp. Instead of vans, stationary gas chambers, labelled as showers, were built to murder people with carbon monoxide poisoning created using diesel engines.Ī concentration camp had been established at Majdanek in 1941. These camps were specifically built near railway lines to make transportation easier. Once dead, the vans were driven to a nearby forest and the victims were buried in mass graves.Īfter the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Nazis built additional extermination camps at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. The facility contained three gas vans in which victims were murdered by carbon monoxide poisoning. Its purpose was to murder the Jews of the surrounding area and the Łódź ghetto. Auschwitz-Birkenau (in operation March 1942-January 1945)Ĭhełmno was the first extermination camp to be established in December 1941.Majdanek (in operation September 1942-July 1944).Treblinka (in operation July 1942-August 1943).Sobibór (in operation May-July 1942 and October 1942-October 1943.Bełżec (in operation March-December 1942).Chełmno (in operation December 1941-January 1945).
’, the Nazis established six purpose built extermination camps on Polish soil. This figure does not include those killed at extermination camps.Įxtermination camps were used by the Nazis from 1941 to 1945 to murder Jews and, on a smaller scale, Many camps worked their prisoners to death.Īpproximately one million people died in concentration camps over the course of the Holocaust. Typically, this was long hours of hard physical labour, though this varied across different camps. Inmates in concentration camps were also usually subject to forced labour. Brutal treatment, torture and humiliation was commonplace. Sanitation and facilities were extremely poor across all camps. Imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps was usually indefinite, and whilst (initially) some people were released in just a few days, most endured weeks, months or years of detention. This imprisonment was an escalation of the Nazis’ previous persecution of Jews. The mass detention of Jews on the basis of the Nazis’ racial ideology intensified following Kristallnacht and continued until the end of the Second World War. , but this soon expanded to also include Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma, and so called ‘Īfter March 1938, when Germany annexed Austria in an event known asĪnschluss thousands of German and Austrian Jews were arrested and detained in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Initially, these people were primarily political prisoners such as The first concentration camps in Germany were set up as detention centres for so-called ‘enemies of the state’. The aim of the Nazi extermination camps was to murder and annihilate all races deemed ‘ The administration of the camps had a distinct disregard for inmates’ lives and health, and as a result, tens of thousands of people perished within the camps. The aim of the Nazi concentration camps was to contain prisoners in one place. It is key to separate concentration camps from extermination camps. Separating concentration camps and extermination camps In Nazi Germany after 1933, and across Nazi controlled Europe between 19, concentration camps became a major way in which the Nazis imposed their control. Inmates are usually exploited for their labour and kept under harsh conditions, though this is not always the case. Generally speaking, a concentration camp is a place where people are concentrated and imprisoned without trial. Treatment of prisoners in the early camps.A survivor reflects on life in the ghetto.
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