You concentration camps were used by the Nazi regime to imprison thousands of people in the 1930s and 1940s.
At least 20,000 camps were used between 1933 and 1945, in Germany and in 12 other countries that were occupied by the Nazis before and during the period of World War II (1939-1945).
Origin of Fields
Concentration camps were initially used to receive political prisoners, such as socialists and communists.
The first to be built was Dachau, in 1933, near the city of Munich. Throughout the war, however, the number of concentration camps was expanded and each had a specific function.
Camps were built in Austria, Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, France, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine.
Types of Concentration Camps
There were three types of camps: transit, forced labor and extermination.
- Traffic: served to concentrate a large number of prisoners - usually Jews - who would be transported to the extermination camps. They existed in greater numbers in the countries occupied by the Nazis. Examples: Drancy in France and Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic.
- Forced labour: prisoners were forced to work without rest and paid the minimum to survive. Examples: Bor, Serbia, and Plazów, Poland.
- extermination: where prisoners were taken directly to their deaths in gas chambers. Only a few people survived and worked. Examples: Sobibor and Treblinka, Poland.
This did not mean that a forced labor camp could not be extermination and vice versa. In all camps, including transit camps, mortality was high due to the poor infrastructure.
extermination camps
The extermination camps were designed to physically eliminate Jews. This decision was called by the Nazis as final solution and was taken at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942.
This is not to say that Jews were not being extinguished before, but from that date onwards, extermination was made official within the Third Reich and raised to an industrial scale.
After Dachau, which operated for 12 years, six camps were opened for the purpose of mass extermination: Chelmno, Auschwitz-Bikernau, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. All of these were located in Poland.
The construction of the first specific project for mass murder was Chelmno, in 1941. The following year, the rest were already up and running.
Deaths also occurred due to forced labor to which prisoners were subjected, as well as illness, torture, hunger and cold. It is estimated that 11 million people died in Nazi concentration camps.
Prisoner Selection
Concentration camp prisoners were people deported from European territories occupied by the Nazis, especially Jews.
There were, however, homosexuals, communists, gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners, Catholic priests, Protestant pastors, etc.
Regardless of origin, prisoners arriving at concentration camps were carefully selected as they disembarked from freight trains.
They left all their belongings on the railway platform and those who appeared to be stronger and healthier were spared and loaded onto a truck. This would take them to the barracks, where they would have to carry out forced labor in factories.
The elderly, women, the sick and children were loaded onto other trucks and taken directly to the gas chambers. There they were placed in a vestibule, where they were stripped of their clothing and immediately placed in the gas chambers in which they were suffocated.
The work of selection, collection of belongings and transport to the gas chambers was carried out by the prisoners who formed the detachment. Sonderkommando (special command).
Those Responsible for Prisoners: Meet the Sonderkommando
O Sonderkommando it was used in the Auschwitz, Treblinka, Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor extermination camps. They were also responsible for guarding the Jewish ghettos.
These were groups of Jews in good health and who were responsible for dealing with the prisoners, from their arrival at the camp to being taken to the gas chambers. After the murder, they were to remove the corpses' gold teeth, cut their hair, and lead them to the crematoria.
The work took place under the supervision of the Nazis and, upon the arrival of the prisoners, the members of the sonderkommando they were forced to lie about their fate. Those who did not obey orders were also eliminated.
Detachments had some privileges like better food and could get in touch with their families. However, many performed these tasks under the influence of drugs.
Likewise, they were changed periodically and their fate was the same as that of their victims.
Extermination Camp Examples
Several extermination camps were built and became synonymous with horror and shame. We can mention Sobibor, in Poland and Buchenwald, in Germany, among many others.
However, two camps were particularly engraved in the collective memory because of the atrocities committed there: Dachau and Auschwitz.
Dachau field
The first of the concentration camps was established in Dachau, Germany, on March 22, 1933.
The second leader of Dachau, the commander of SS Theodor Eicke (1899-1945), elevated the place to a model for treating prisoners. It fell to him to manage the complex system of Nazi concentration camps throughout the entire period. Second World War.
The place was known not only for being the destination of thousands of war victims, but for the medical experiments carried out on human beings.
Experiments with Human Beings
Medical experiments are among the main marks of the cruelty of the Nazi concentration camps. Among other justifications for its achievement were the improvement in survival rates of German soldiers and the improvement in knowledge of clinical treatments and procedures.
Many were painful, unnecessary and cruel, often leading to their deaths. In the Dachau concentration camp, prisoners were subjected to pressure chambers, freezing for hypothermia analysis or forced to drink salt water to study the potability of water.
There, research was also conducted using inmates to develop vaccines against malaria and tuberculosis.
Auschwitz camp
The biggest and best known of the Nazi concentration camps was Auschwitz, where 1.1 million people were murdered. It included three large camps like Birkenau, aimed at women, and 45 sub-camps.
The city's name in Polish is Oświęcim, but since 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the place has been renamed Auschwitz. It was built right after the German invasion and initially was intended for prisoners who opposed the Nazi regime in Polish lands.
Three kilometers away, the Nazis set up another camp destined to receive Soviet prisoners. About 15,000 were at the site and none survived. Later, Auschwitz would be the final destination for thousands of Jews from all over Europe.
An interesting feature is that only in Auschwitz did prisoners have a serial number tattooed on their arms.
Although it was the field where the most murders were murdered, it was also the place where there were the most survivors. Fortunately, they were able to tell what they had lived through and bear witness to this horror.
Holocaust
In concentration camps destined for extermination, the purpose was to implement the final solution, also called the Jewish holocaust.
This expression was created by American historians to designate the mass murder suffered by Jews. This is a controversial term, as holocaust refers to sacrifice to God.
It is estimated that six million Jews were murdered during this period either in gas chambers or by other methods such as starvation and disease.
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