Nazi Camps
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis set up over 44,000 concentration camps, death camps and slave labour camps across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Initially, the Nazis created concentration camps to hold their political enemies, like communists. Later, they began imprisoning people who did not fit Nazi ideals, such as gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma and others they called “asocial.” Most prisoners in the early camps were not Jews, and murder was rare.
In 1938, during Kristallnacht, large numbers of Jews were sent to concentration camps for the first time. In these camps, inmates faced brutality, starvation, forced labour, exhaustion, disease and death. The camps were not hidden from the public. This created fear and discouraged opposition to the Nazis.
During the Second World War, the Nazis’ goal shifted from persecuting Jews to systematically killing every Jew in Europe. They called this plan the “Final Solution” and discussed it at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. At this meeting, leaders planned how to transport Jews from different parts of Europe to centralized killing sites. Between 1941 and 1942, the Nazis built six major death camps for the sole purpose of killing Jews.
The deportation of Jews to the death camps was coordinated by government ministries. Officials made deportation lists. Police arrested those on the lists. Railway workers transported them across borders. Train schedules were carefully coordinated to move large numbers of Jews to death camps. Through this bureaucracy, genocide became routine work. Responsibility for the murder of Jews was spread across many people and organizations. Each person carried out a small task within a vast system.
The death camps were located in Nazi-occupied Poland, close to railways. Jews from all over Europe were deported to death camps by train. They were packed into sealed train cars meant for cargo, not people. Thousands died in the trains from lack of air, food and water. On arrival at the death camps, most Jews were killed in gas chambers. Some were killed in medical experiments. Others died in slave labour subcamps that were attached to the death camps.
About three million Jews were killed in the Nazi death camps. This is half of the total number of Jews murdered over the course of the Holocaust. Another three million were killed in mass shootings or in other camps and ghettos.
