Auschwitz

Nazi Concentration Camps Nazi Germany began creating concentration camps in 1933 They were places to hold political prisoners and opponents of the Nazi regime They grew rapidly in number throughout the 1930s

Nazi Concentration Camps After WWII started in 1939, concentration camps became places where enemies of Nazis were enslaved, starved, tortured and killed. The camps held Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, Polish people, political prisoners, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, Eastern European intellectuals, and others—including common criminals.

Auschwitz Auschwitz was built in 1940 in the Polish city of Oswiecim, a town that had been taken by Nazi Germany and renamed Auschwitz. The original reason the camp was established was that the mass arrests of Polish people that followed the seizing of their country was becoming unmanageable by the regular prisons. In 1942 it became one of the largest death camps as a part of Hitler’s “final solution.”

“The Final Solution” Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Mass killings of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialised mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest.

“The Final Solution” The Final Solution to the ‘problem of the Jews’ saw the execution of an estimated 6 million Jewish people during WWII Auschwitz concentration camp alone accounted for the death of 4 million Jews and non-Jews under Nazi Germany.

Quiz – Answer the following questions in your book, in full sentences In what decade did Nazi concentration camps rapidly increase in number? What was the original purpose of the Nazi concentration camps? Who were sent to the camps? Where is Auschwitz? Why was the Auschwitz camp built? What is the “final solution” in your own words? How many people died at Auschwitz?