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| − | Prior to and during [[World War II]], [[Nazi Germany]] under [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] maintained '''concentration camps''' (''Konzentrationslager'', abbreviated ''KZ'' or ''KL'') throughout the territories it controlled.
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| − | The first [[Nazism|Nazi]] concentration camps were greatly expanded in [[Germany]] after the [[Reichstag fire]] in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. They grew rapidly through the 1930s as political opponents and many other groups of people were incarcerated without trial or judicial process. The term was borrowed from the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]] [[Second_Anglo-Boer_War#Concentration_camps_.281900_-_1902.29|concentration camps]] of the [[Second Boer War|Second Anglo-Boer War]]. Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between ''concentration'' camps (described in this article) and ''extermination'' camps (described in a [[Extermination camp|separate article]]), which were camps established for the sole purpose of carrying out the extermination of the Jews of Europe—the [[Final Solution]]. Extermination camps included [[Belzec extermination camp|Belzec]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibor]], [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]], and [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]].
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| − | ==Pre-war camps==
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| − | The Nazis were one of a number of political parties in Germany with [[paramilitary]] organizations at its disposal, the [[Schutzstaffel|Schutzstaffel (SS)]] and the [[Sturmabteilung|Sturmabteilung (SA)]], both of which perpetrated surprise attacks on the offices and members of other parties throughout the 1920s. After the 1932 elections it became clear to the Nazi leadership that they would never be able to secure a majority of votes and that they would have to rely on other means to gain power. While gradually intensifying their acts of violence to wreak havoc among the opposition in the run-up to the 1933 elections, the Nazis set up concentration centers in Germany, many of which were established by local authorities, to hold, torture or kill political prisoners and "undesirables" such as outspoken journalists and Communists.{{Fact|date=May 2007}}
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| − | These early prisons (usually basements and storehouses) were eventually consolidated into full-blown, centrally run camps outside the cities and somewhat removed from the public eye. By 1939, six large concentration camps had been established: [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] (1933), [[Sachsenhausen concentration camp|Sachsenhausen]] (1936), [[Buchenwald concentration camp|Buchenwald]] (1937), [[Flossenbürg concentration camp|Flossenbürg]] (1938), [[Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp|Mauthausen]] (1939), and [[Ravensbrück concentration camp|Ravensbrück]] (1939).
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| − | In 1938, the SS began to use the camps as a source of [[Unfree labour|forced labor]] for profit-making ventures. Many German companies used forced laborers from them, especially during the war (see [[Forced labor in Germany during World War II]]).
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| − | Additionally, historians speculate that the Nazi regime used abandoned castles and similar existing structures to lock up the undesirable elements of society. The elderly, [[mental disorder|mentally ill]], and [[Disability|handicapped]] were often confined in these makeshift camps where they were starved or gassed to death with [[diesel engine]] exhaust. The [[Final Solution]] was therefore initially tested on German citizens. (See [[Action T4]], the Nazi program of [[racial hygiene]].)
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| − | ==Camps during the war==
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| − | After 1939 with the beginning of the 2nd World War, concentration camps increasingly became places where the enemies of the Nazis were killed, enslaved, starved, and tortured. During the War concentration camps for “undesirables†spread throughout Europe. New camps were created near centers of dense “undesirable†populations, often focusing on areas with large communities of Jewish, Polish [[intelligentsia]], [[Communism|Communists]] or [[Roma people|Roma]]. Most camps were located in the area of [[General Government]] in occupied Poland for a simple [[logistics|logistical]] reason: [[History of the Jews in Poland|millions of Jews lived in Poland]]. It also allowed the Nazis to transport the German Jews outside of the German main territory.
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| − | ===Internees===
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| − | The two largest groups of prisoners in the camps, both numbering in the millions, were [[Jew]]s and the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[prisoner of war|prisoners of war (POWs)]]. Large numbers of [[Roma people|Roma (or Gypsies)]], [[Poles]], left of center [[political prisoner]]s, [[homosexuality|homosexuals]], people with disabilities, [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], [[Holy Orders|Catholic clergy]], Eastern European intellectuals, and others—including common criminals . In addition, a small number of [[Western Allies|Western Allied]] POWs were sent to concentration camps for various reasons.<ref>One of the best-known examples was the 168 [[Commonwealth of Nations|British Commonwealth]] and [[United States|U.S.]] aviators held for a time at [[Buchenwald concentration camp]]. (See: [http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=historgokhopdkhpofkofkofjkhjkhjkhojkv luvnbdy/secondwar/fact_sheets/pow Veterans Affairs Canada, 2006, “Prisoners of War in the Second World Warâ€] and [http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1575 National Museum of the USAF, “Allied Victims of the Holocaustâ€].) Two different reasons are suggested for this: the Nazis wanted to make an example of the ''[[terror bombing|Terrorflieger]]'' (“terror-instilling aviatorsâ€), or they classified the downed fliers as spies because they were out of uniform, carrying false papers, or both when apprehended.</ref> Western Allied POWs who were Jews, or whom the Nazis believed to be Jewish, were usually sent to ordinary POW camps; however, a small number were sent to concentration camps under [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] policies.<ref>See, for example, [https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=295291169228827 Joseph Robert White, 2006, “Flint Whitlock. Given Up for Dead: American GIs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Bergaâ€] (book review)</ref>
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| − | Sometimes the concentration camps were used to hold important prisoners, such as the generals involved in the [[20 July plot|attempted assassination of Hitler]]; [[U-boat]] [[Captain (naval)|Captain]]-turned-[[Lutheranism|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.
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| − | In most camps, prisoners were forced to wear identifying overalls with [[Nazi concentration camp badges|colored badges]] according to their categorization: red triangles for [[Communism|Communists]] and other [[political prisoner]]s, green triangles for common [[crime|criminals]], pink for [[homosexuality|homosexual]] men, purple for [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], black for [[Roma people|Gypsies]] and [[Black triangle (badge)|asocials]], and yellow for [[Jew]]s.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/background/ideology.html “Germany and the Camp Systemâ€] PBS Radio website</ref>
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| − | ===Treatment===
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| − | In these concentration camps, millions of prisoners died through mistreatment, disease, [[starvation]], and overwork, or were executed as unfit for labour; though they were not [[Extermination camp|''extermination'' or ''death'' camps]] which started in 1942. These camps were located in occupied [[Poland]] and some territories of today's [[Belarus]], on the territory of the [[General Government]]. More than three million Jews would die in them, primarily by [[Chemical warfare|poisonous gas]], usually in [[gas chamber]]s, although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means.
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| − | [[Holocaust trains|Prisoners were often transported]] under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before they reached their destination, and there were instances where only ten prisoners-to-be would be alive to come out of a cart packed with one hundred.{{Fact|date=September 2008}} The prisoners were confined to the rail cars, often for days or weeks, without 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 prisoners perished because of harsh conditions or execution.
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| − | In the early spring of 1941 the SS, along with doctors and officials of the [[Action T4|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 chamber#Nazi Germany|gas chambers]] as 14f13. Under the language regulations of the SS, selected prisoners were designated for “special treatment ([[German language|German]]: ''Sonderbehandlung'') 14f13â€. 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 [[Public order crime|antisocial]] records were selected.<ref>{{cite book |last=Friedlander |first=Henry |year=1995 |title=The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill |pages=p. 144}}</ref> For Jewish prisoners there was not even the pretense of a medical examination: the arrest record was listed as a physician’s “diagnosisâ€.<ref>Ibid., pp. 147-8</ref> In early 1943, as the need for labor increased and the gas chambers at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] became operational, Heinrich Himmler ordered the end of Operation 14f13.<ref>Ibid., p. 150</ref>
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| − | 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|Monowitz concentration camp (Auschwitz III)]]; other camps were set up next to airplane factories, [[coal mining|coal mines]] and [[rocket propellant]] plants. Conditions were brutal and prisoners were often sent to the gas chambers or killed, if they did not work fast enough.
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| − | After much consideration, the final fate of the Jewish prisoners (the “[[Final Solution]]â€) was announced in 1942 at the [[Wannsee Conference]] to high ranking officials.{{Fact|date=September 2008}}
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| − | Near the end of the war, the camps became sites for horrific [[Nazi human experimentation|medical experiments]]. [[Eugenics]] experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how exposure affected pilots, and experimental and lethal medicines were all tried at various camps. Female prisoners were routinely raped and degraded in the camps.<ref>Morrissette, Alana M.: ''[http://www.jhcwc.org/morrissette2004.pdf The Experiences of Women During the Holocaust]'', p. 7.</ref>
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| − | The camps were liberated by the Allies between 1943 and 1945, often too late to save the prisoners remaining. For example, when the [[United Kingdom|UK]] entered [[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.
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| − | The British intelligence service had information about the concentration camps, and in 1942 [[Jan Karski]] delivered a thorough eyewitness account to the government.
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| − | ==Post-war use of Nazi concentration camps==
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| − | Most Nazi concentration camps were destroyed after the war, though some were made into permanent [[memorial]]s.
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| − | In [[People's Republic of Poland|Communist Poland]], ([[Majdanek]], [[Central Labour Camp Jaworzno|Jaworzno]], [[Central Labour Camp Potulice|Potulice]], [[Zgoda labour camp|Zgoda]]) and [[East Germany]] (Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen), German POWs, suspected Nazis and collaborators, anti-Communists and other political prisoners, as well as [[civilian]] members of German, [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] and other [[Minority group|ethnic minorities]] were held in some of the camps between 1945 and 1956. (''See also: [[Soviet special camps]]'')
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| − | In [[West Germany]], [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] was used as a prison for arrested Nazis and after that as cheap working-class housing.
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| − | Auschwitz was easily the largest concentration camp (or Death camp) during the jewish holocaust.
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| − | (a period of jewish exile and extermination. 1933-1945)
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| − | ==Notes and references==
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| − | {{reflist}}
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| − | ==External links==
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| − | *[http://www.druhasvetovavalka.cz/ Pages show pictures and videos of the day taken at places connected with World War II (Second World War)]
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| − | *[http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad VaShem—The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority]
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| − | *[http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/phistories/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Personal Histories - Camps] at [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]]
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| − | *[http://www.holocaust-history.org/ The Holocaust History Project]
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| − | *[http://www.archive.org/stream/nazi_concentration_camps/nazi_concentration_camps_256kb.mp4 Official US National Archive Footage of Nazi camps]
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| − | *[http://www.scrapbookpages.com/HolocaustSites.html Holocaust sites in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, France]
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| − | *[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/cc.html Concentration Camps] at [[Jewish Virtual Library]]
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| − | *''[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/view/ Memory of the Camps]'', as shown by [[Frontline (U.S. TV series)|PBS Frontline]]
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| − | * [http://kz2007.over-blog.com/] Private visit - Aug 2007
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| − | *[http://buchenwald.libsyn.com/ Podcast with one of 2,000 Danish policemen in Buchenwald]
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| − | [[Category:Nazi Germany]]
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