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German Concentration Camps
Network of German conentration and death camps:
Auschwitz concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwi...entration_camp
Auschwitz II-Birkenau was designated by Heinrich Himmler, Germany's Minister of the Interior, as the locus of the "final solution of the Jewish question in Europe." From spring 1942 until the fall of 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe.[2] The camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified after the war at the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there (2.5 million exterminated, and 500,000 from disease and starvation),[3] a figure since revised to 1.1 million, around 90 percent of them Jews.[4] Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities.[5] Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and medical experiments.[6] Denis Avey, recently named a British Holocaust hero by the government of Britain, had escaped and spoke of conditions inside the camps.[7]
Chelmno extermination camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelmno_extermination_camp
Chełmno extermination camp, also known as the Kulmhof concentration camp, was a Nazi German extermination camp that was situated 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr in German). After annexation by Germany Kulmhof was included into Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939. The camp was opened in 1941 to kill the Jews of the Łódź Ghetto and the Warthegau.
At least 153,000 people were killed in the camp, mainly Poles, Jews from the Łódź Ghetto and the surrounding area, along with Gypsies from Greater Poland and some Hungarian Jews, Czechs, and Soviet prisoners of war.
Bełżec extermination camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec [ˈbɛu̯ʐɛt͡s], was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Operating in 1942, the camp was situated in occupied Poland about half a mile south of the local railroad station of Bełżec in the Lublin district of the General Government.
At least 434,500 Jews were killed at Bełżec, along with an unknown number of Poles and Roma;[1] only one[2] or two Jews are known to have survived Bełżec: Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman. The lack of survivors may be the reason why this camp is so little known despite its number of victims.
Majdanek concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army. Although conceived as a forced labor camp and not as an extermination camp, over 79,000 people[1] died there (59,000 of them Polish Jews) during the 34 months of its operation.
The name 'Majdanek' ("little Majdan") derives from the nearby Majdan Tatarski ("Tatar Maidan") district of Lublin, and was given to the camp in 1941 by the locals, who were aware of its existence. In Nazi documents, and for reasons related to its funding, Majdanek was initially "Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen-SS in Lublin". It was renamed "Konzentrationslager Lublin" (Concentration Camp Lublin) in February 1943.
Among German Nazi concentration camps, Majdanek was unusual in that it was located near a major city, not hidden away at a remote rural location.[2] It is also notable as the best-preserved concentration camp of the Holocaust - as it was close to the former Soviet border, there was too little time for the Nazis to destroy the evidence before the Red Army arrived.[3]
Sobibor extermination camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor_extermination_camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp set up in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Jews, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war (PoWs), and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibor by rail, and asphyxiated in gas chambers that were fed with the exhaust of a petrol engine. According to various estimates, between 200,000[1] and 250,000[2] people were killed at Sobibor.
After a successful revolt on October 14, 1943 about half of the 600 prisoners in Sobibor escaped; the camp was closed and planted with trees days afterwards. A memorial and museum are at the site today.
Treblinka extermination camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblin...rmination_camp
Treblinka II was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II. Between July 1942 and October 1943, around 850,000 people were killed there,[1] more than 800,000 of whom were Jews,[2] including several thousand Gypsies and 2,000 Romani people. The camp was closed after a revolt during which a few Germans were killed and a small number of prisoners escaped.
The nearby Treblinka I was a forced labour camp and administrative complex in support of the death camp. Treblinka I operated between 1941 and 1944. In this time half of the 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment. Treblinka I inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area.[3]
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-...entration_camp
Bergen-Belsen (or Belsen) was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as the prisoner of war camp Stalag XI-C, in 1943 it became a concentration camp on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas[1]. Later still the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp it became as conditions deteriorated between 1943-1945. During this time an estimated 50,000 Russian prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there,[2] up to 35,000 of them dying of typhus in the first few months of 1945.[3]
The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 by the British 11th Armoured Division.[4] 60,000 prisoners were found inside, most of them seriously ill,[3] and another 13,000 corpses lay around the camp unburied.[4] The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them:
...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
Bogdanovka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanovka
Bogdanovka was a concentration camp for Jews that was established by the Romanian authorities during World War II as part of the Holocaust. The camp was near Bug river, in Golta district, Transnistria and held 54,000 people by the end of 1941.
Buchenwald concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenw...entration_camp
Buchenwald concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager (KZ) Buchenwald, IPA: [ˈbuːxənvalt]) was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.
Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war— worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories.[1] From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2.
The SS left behind accounts of the number of prisoners and people coming to and leaving the camp, categorizing those leaving them by release, transfer, or death. These accounts are one of the sources of estimates for the number of deaths in Buchenwald. According to SS documents, 33,462 died in Buchenwald. These documents were not, however, necessarily accurate: Among those executed before 1944 many were listed as "transferred to the Gestapo". Furthermore, from 1941 forward Soviet POWs were executed in mass killings. Arriving prisoners selected for execution were not entered into the camp register and therefore were not among the 33,462 dead listed in SS documents.[10]
One former Buchenwald prisoner, Armin Walter, calculated the number of executions by shooting in the back of the head. His job at Buchenwald was to set up and care for a radio installation at the facility where people were executed and counted the numbers, which arrived by telex, and hid the information. He says that 8,483 Soviet prisoners of war were shot in this manner.[11]
According to the same source, the total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545.[12] This number is the sum of:
Deaths according to material left behind by SS: 33,462[13]
Executions by shooting: 8,483
Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500[14]
This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 238,380 prisoners, is accurate.[15]
Dachau concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
Opened on 22 March 1933,[1] it was the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of National Socialist Party (Nazi Party) and the German Nationalist People's Party (dissolved on 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."[1] Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps, and as early as 1935 there were jingles warning: "Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not to Dachau come."[2]
The camp's basic organization: layout as well as building plans, were developed by Kommandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. He had a separate secure camp near the command center, which consisted of living quarters, administration, and army camps. Eicke himself became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for molding the others according to his model.[3]
The camp was occupied from 1933 to 1960, the first twelve years as an internment center of the Third Reich. From 1933 to 1938 the prisoners were mainly German nationals detained for political reasons. In 1938 and after a significant population of German Jews were added. Subsequently the camp was used for prisoners of all sorts from every nation occupied by the forces of the Third Reich.[4] From 1945 through 1948 the camp was used as a prison for SS officers awaiting trial. After 1948 the German population expelled from Czechoslovakia were housed there and it was also a base of the United States. It was closed in 1960 and thereafter at the insistence of ex-prisoners various sorts of memorials began to be constructed there.[5]
Estimates of the demographic statistics vary but they are in the same general range. History may never know how many people were interned there or died there, due to periods of disruption. One source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries for the Third Reich's years, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners and nearly one-third were Jews. 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps,[6] primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide. In early 1945, there was a typhus epidemic in the camp due to influx from other camps causing overcrowding, followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the weaker prisoners died. Toward the end of the war death marches to and from the camp caused the expiration of large but unknown numbers of prisoners. Even after liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery continued to expire.
Over its twelve years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. These numbers do not tell the entire story, however. Although there is no evidence of mass murder within the camp itself by other methods than poor sanitation, deprivation of medical care, withholding of nutrients, medical experiments, and beatings and shootings for infractions of the rules or at random, beginning in 1942 more than 3166 prisoners in weakened condition were transported to Hartheim Castle near Linz and there were executed by poison gas for reason of their unfitness. In 1941 and 1942 an unknown number of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union were executed by shooting at the camp's surrounding firing ranges, some for target practice and for sport.[4]
Together with the much larger Auschwitz, Dachau has come to symbolize the Nazi concentration camps to many people. Konzentrationslager (KZ) Dachau holds a significant place in public memory because it was the second camp to be liberated by British or American forces. Therefore, it was one of the first places where these previously unknown Nazi practices were exposed to the Western world through firsthand journalist accounts and through newsreels.
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross-R...entration_camp
was set up in the summer of 1940 as a satellite camp to Sachsenhausen, and became an independent camp on May 1, 1941. Initially, work was carried out in the camp's huge stone quarry, owned by the SS-Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH. As the complex grew, many inmates were put to work in the construction of the subcamps' facilities.
In October 1941 the SS transferred about 3,000 Soviet POWs to Gross-Rosen for execution by shooting.
Gross-Rosen was known for its brutal treatment of NN (Nacht und Nebel) prisoners, especially in the stone quarry. The brutal treatment of the political and Jewish prisoners was not only due to the SS and criminal prisoners, but to a lesser extent also due to German civilians working in the stone quarry. In 1942 for political prisoners the mean survival time was less than two months.
Due to a change of policy in August 1942, prisoners were likely to survive longer because they were needed as slave workers in German industries. Therefore, some prisoners who were not able to work and not yet dying within a few days, were sent to Dachau in so-called invalid transports. One of these, Willem Lodewijk Harthoorn, an inmate from the end of April to mid-August 1942, wrote an account of his experiences, Verboden te sterven (in Dutch, meaning Forbidden to Die). The largest population of inmates, however, were Jews, initially from the Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps, and later from Buchenwald. During the camp's existence, the Jewish inmate population came mainly from Poland and Hungary; others were from Belgium, France, Netherlands, Greece, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, and Italy.
At its peak activity in 1944, the Gross-Rosen complex had up to sixty subcamps located in eastern Germany and occupied Poland. In its final stage, the population of the Gross-Rosen camps accounted for 11% of the total inmates in Nazi concentration camps at that time. A total of 125,000 inmates of various nationalities passed through the complex during its existence, of whom an estimated 40,000 died on site and in evacuation transports. The camp was liberated on February 14, 1945, by the Red Army.
A total of over 500 female camp guards were trained and served in the Gross Rosen complex. Female SS staffed the women's subcamps of Bruennlitz, Graeben, Gruenberg, Gruschwitz Neusalz, Hundsfeld, Kratzau II, Oberalstadt, Reichenbach, and Schlesiersee Schanzenbau.
A subcamp of Gross-Rosen situated in the Czechoslovakian town of Brunnlitz, was a location where Jews rescued by Oskar Schindler were interned.
Herzogenbusch concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzoge...entration_camp
Herzogenbusch concentration camp (Dutch: Kamp Vught, German: Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch) was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught near the city of 's-Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands. Herzogenbusch was the only concentration camp run directly by SS in western Europe outside of Germany. The camp was first used in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners died in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. After the war the camp was used as a prison for Germans. Now there is a visitors center with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims.
Kaiserwald concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserw...entration_camp
Kaiserwald was a Nazi German concentration camp near the Riga suburb of Mežaparks in Latvia.
Kaiserwald was built in March, 1943, during the period that the German army occupied Latvia. The first inmates of the camp were several hundred convicts from Germany.
Following the liquidation of the Riga, Liepaja and Daugavpils (Dvinsk) ghettos in June, 1943, the remainder of the Jews of Latvia, along with most of the survivors of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, were deported to Kaiserwald.
In early 1944, a number of smaller camps around Riga were brought under the jurisdiction of the Kaiserwald camp.
Following the occupation of Hungary by the Germans, Hungarian Jews were sent to Kaiserwald, as were a number of Jews from Łódź, in Poland. By March 1944, there were 11,878 inmates in the camp and its subsidiaries, 6,182 males and 5,696 females, of whom only 95 were gentiles.
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthau...entration_camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp (known from the summer of 1940 as Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp) grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of the city of Linz.
Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the Mauthausen-Gusen had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in German-controlled Europe.[1][2] Apart from the four main sub-camps at Mauthausen and nearby Gusen, more than 50 sub-camps, located throughout Austria and southern Germany, used the inmates as slave labour. Several subordinate camps of the KZ Mauthausen complex included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and Me 262 fighter-plane assembly plants.[3]
In January 1945, the camps, directed from the central office in Mauthausen, contained roughly 85,000 inmates.[4] The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex. The camps formed one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and were the last ones to be liberated by the Allies. The two main camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were also the only two camps in the whole of Europe to be labelled as "Grade III" camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the "Incorrigible Political Enemies of the Reich".[1] Unlike many other concentration camps, intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia, who were educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries subjugated by the Nazi regime during World War II.[5]
Neuengamme concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuenga...entration_camp
Before and during World War II, Neuengamme concentration camp, a Nazi concentration camp was established by the SS in Neuengamme—a quarter of the district Bergedorf within the City of Hamburg, Germany. The name of the concentration camp became KZ Neuengamme. Over half of its 106,000 prisoners died by the end of the war.[1] One of the few concentration camps in Germany where most of the buildings have been conserved, the site serves as a memorial to the Holocaust. It is situated 15 km southeast of the centre of Hamburg in the Vierlande area.
Ravensbrück concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensb...entration_camp
Ravensbrück or Ravensbrueck (German pronunciation: [ʁaːfənsˈbʁʏk]) was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel).
Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was a camp primarily for women. The camp opened in May 1939. In the spring of 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp.
Between 1939 and 1945, over 130,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system; only 40,000 survived. Although the inmates came from every country in German-occupied Europe, the largest single national group incarcerated in the camp consisted of Polish women.
Stutthof concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttho...entration_camp
Stutthof was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi Germany regime outside of Germany.
Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo (German: Stutthof). The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of Gdańsk, Poland. Stutthof was the last camp liberated by the Allies, on May 9, 1945. More than 85,000 victims[1] died in the camp out of as many as 110,000 people deported there.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsen...entration_camp
Sachsenhausen (German pronunciation: [zaksənˈhaʊzən]) or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD special camp until 1950 (See NKVD special camp Nr. 7). The remaining buildings and grounds are now open to the public as a museum.
On the front entrance gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (German: "Work will set you free"). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Some 30,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition or pneumonia from the freezing winter cold. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal medical experimentation. According to an article published on December 13, 2001 in The New York Times, "In the early years of the war the SS practiced methods of mass killing there that were later used in the Nazi death camps. Of the roughly 30,000 wartime victims at Sachsenhausen, most were Russian prisoners of war".[4][5]
Sachsenhausen was the site of the largest counterfeiting operation ever. The Nazis forced inmate artisans to produce forged American and British currency, as part of a plan to undermine the British and United States' economies, courtesy of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief Reinhard Heydrich. Over one billion pounds in counterfeited banknotes was recovered. The Germans introduced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes into circulation in 1943: the Bank of England never found them. Plans had been made to drop British pounds over London by plane.[6] Today, these notes are considered very valuable by collectors.
Many women were among the inmates of Sachsenhausen and its subcamps. According to SS files, more than 2,000 women lived in Sachsenhausen, guarded by female SS staff (Aufseherin). Camp records show that there was one male SS soldier for every ten inmates and for every ten male SS there was a woman SS. Several subcamps for women were established in Berlin, including in Neukölln.
Camp punishments could be harsh. Some would be required to assume the "Sachsenhausen salute" where a prisoner would squat with his arms outstretched in front. There was a marching strip around the perimeter of the roll call ground, where prisoners had to march over a variety of surfaces, to test military footwear; between 25 and 40 kilometres were covered each day. Prisoners assigned to the camp prison would be kept in isolation on poor rations and some would be suspended from posts by their wrists tied behind their backs (strappado). In cases such as attempted escape, there would be a public hanging in front of the assembled prisoners.
Towards the end of the war, 13 000 Red Army POW's arrived at Sachsenhausen. Over 10 000 were executed in the camp by being shot in the back of the neck through a hidden hole in a wall while being measured for a uniform. Their bodies were then burnt in a crematorium.
With the advance of the Red Army in the spring of 1945, Sachsenhausen was prepared for evacuation. On April 20–21, the camp's SS staff ordered 33,000 inmates on a forced march northeast. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive this death march; those who collapsed en route were shot by the SS. On April 22, 1945, the camp's remaining 3,000 inmates, including 1,400 women were liberated by the Red Army and Polish 2nd Infantry Division of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie.
Uckermark concentration camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uckerma...entration_camp
The Uckermark concentration camp was a small Nazi concentration camp for girls near the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany and then an "emergency" extermination camp.
The camp had been opened in May 1942 as a detention camp for girls aged 16 to 21 that were considered criminal or just difficult. Girls that reached the upper age limit were transferred to the Ravensbrück women's camp. Camp administration was provided by the Ravensbrück camp. In its early years, the head overseer at Uckermark was a woman named Lotte Toberentz, and one other Aufseherin (female warden) is known today by name, Johanna Braach. Both these women were tried by a British court at the Third Ravensbruck Trial.
In January 1945, the juveniles' camp was closed and the infrastructure was subsequently used as an extermination camp for "sick, no longer efficient, and over 52 years old women".[1] Over 5,000 women were murdered there; only 500 women and children survived. Though it was shut down in March 1945 the Soviets liberated the camp on the night of April 29–30, 1945. Today only very few structures of the camp lie in ruins, barely recognizable.
Some of the responsible SS wardens of the camp, amongst them chief warden (Oberaufseherin) Ruth Neudeck, were put to trial in the Third Ravensbrück Trial, the so-called "Uckermark trial".
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