Various Concentration Camps

Nazi Germany:

A.YoungWorld History

October 12, 2010

- The Nazis had approximately 15,000 concentration camps throughout their occupied territories.

- Not all of them were death camps. Some were just transit or holding camps.

- In this lesson, we are going to focus on some of the more well known or bigger camps and the people who were held in them.

Auschwitz - Birkenau

- Extermination and labour

camp.

- Poland.

- Actively used from April

1940 to January 1945.

- 3 major camps, 51 sub-

camps.- Major camps: Auschwitz I

(Stammlager) or main camp, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) a work camp.

Gate reads “Labour Makes You Free”.

• Estimated 2.1 to 2.5 million killed.

• Gas chambers, mass shootings and crematorium.

• Main camp made to house 30,000. • Men, women, children• Poles, Jews, Gypsies, and Communists.

• Arrived by train• Registered, tattooed, undressed, deloused, shaven &

showered.

• Only 10 percent survived arrival at Birkenau in

1942-43. • Gas chambers were “bunkers”• From Jan. 1942 to March 1943, 175,000 gassed.• 105,000 from Jan to March ‘43.

• 836,525 women’s clothing, 348,820 men’s clothing.

• 43,525 shoes, 460 fake limbs and 7 tons of human

hair.

Railroad entrance

Treblinka- Established in 1941

- Forced labour camp

- Treblinka I (main camp),

Treblinka II (extermination

camp).

- Poland

- July 23, 1942: Warsaw

Ghetto evacuation.Photo of the Treblinka train station.

• 3 gas chambers, expanded

to 6.

• Personals gathered & sent

to Germany.

• Rebellion: August 1943.• Of 750, 70 made it to freedom.

• 17,000 symbolic

tombstones• Represent towns, villages and

countries.

Photo of remembrance stones

Sobibor• Poland

• March 1942

• Two camps, three parts• Administration, barracks and

storage, and extermination, burial and cremation.

• Second extermination camp

in Aktion Reinhard.

(Operation Reinhard). Map of the camp from memory of an SS officer.

• May to June 1942• 100,000 murdered approx.

• Oct 1942 to Spring 1943:• 70-80,000 Galician Jews • 145-150,000 Governmental

Jews

• Roughly 250,000 murdered.

• Uprising on October

14,1943:• 300 escaped, 50 survived it all.

• Liquidated in Oct 1943.

Plaque at Sobibor

Dachau• Opened on March 22,1933.

• Political Prisoners

• First camp in Germany

• Prototype.

• Occupied from 1933 – 1960.

Picture of Dachau entrance today.

• 1945 to 1948: housed SS officers.

• Recorded intake of 206,206. 31,951

died.

• Second camp liberated.

• Between 1933 to 1945, more than 3

million prisoners approximately.

Gate at Dachau. Labour Makes You

Free

Concentration Camps Today• Auschwitz – Birkenau:

• Established museum in 1947. • Plaque.

• Treblinka: • Open field with tombstones. Orginally a

farm after. • Mass grave in middle.

• Sobibor:• 1961: first memorial built. • Memorial and Museum.

• Dachau: • 1965: Memorial site opened. • Seminars and tours offered.

Sources• http://www.cityscouter.com/pictures/munich/Dachau-

Concentration-Camp-Photos.html• http://isurvived.org/AUSCHWITZ_TheCamp.html• http://www.deathcamps.org/sobibor/sobibor.html• http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/index.html• http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/index-e.html• http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/

galleries/auschmodern/index.html• http://isurvived.org/TOC-VI.html• http://www.cephas-library.com/israel/Treblinka%20-%20A

%20Forensic%20Examination.html• http://sobibor.accommo.pl/?lang=en• http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/

dachau1.html