Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 1, 2021

Generally speaking, a concentration camp is a place where people are concentrated and imprisoned without trial. Inmates are usually exploited for their labour and kept under harsh conditions, though this is not always the case.

In Nazi Germany after 1933, and across Nazi controlled Europe between 1938 and 1945, concentration camps became a major way in which the Nazis imposed their control.

Separating concentration camps and extermination camps

It is key to separate concentration camps from extermination camps.

The aim of the Nazi concentration camps was to contain prisoners in one place. The administration of the camps had a distinct disregard for inmates lives and health, and as a result, tens of thousands of people perished within the camps.

The aim of the Nazi extermination camps was to murder and annihilate all races deemed degenerate: primarily Jews but also Roma.

Development of concentration camps

The first concentration camps in Germany were set up as detention centres for so-called enemies of the state. Initially, these people were primarily political prisoners such as communists, but this soon expanded to also include Jehovahs Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma, and so called asocials.

After March 1938, when Germany annexedAustria in an event known as Anschlussthousands of German and Austrian Jews were arrested and detained in Dachau, Buchenwaldand Sachsenhausenconcentration camps. The mass detention of Jews on the basis of the Nazis racial ideology intensified following Kristallnacht and continued until the end of the Second World War. This imprisonment was an escalation of the Nazis previous persecution of Jews.

Imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps was usually indefinite, and whilst (initially) some people were released in just a few days, most endured weeks, months or years of detention. Sanitation and facilities were extremely poor across all camps. Brutal treatment, torture and humiliation was commonplace.

Inmates in concentration camps were also usually subject to forced labour. Typically, this was long hours of hard physical labour, though this varied across different camps. Many camps worked their prisoners to death.

Approximately one million people died in concentration camps over the course of the Holocaust. This figure does not include those killed at extermination camps.

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Concentration camps The Holocaust Explained: Designed for ...

Category: Holocaust
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