1. Concentration Camps

2. Concentration Camps
Concentration Camps are large internment camps where people who are enemies of the state are held without legal protection.
In Nazi Germany the government began using them in 1933 to imprison communists and socialists.
The use of them increased throughout the War.

3. Concentration Camps
By 1935 the Germans were putting Jehovas Witnesses and homosexuals in the camps.
They made special camps for women, and sent prostitutes and women who were found guilty of racial defilement there.
They were also imprisoning troublesome priests and other people who fought the state

4. Concentration Camps
In the preparations for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin they amped up their efforts and imprisoned homeless people, beggars, gypsies and other people they did not want anyone to see.

5. Concentration Camps
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6. Concentration Camps

7. Concentration Camps
Heinrich Himmler was one of the most powerful men in the Nazi government.
He was and the chief of the German Police and head of the concentration camps.

8. Concentration Camps
The SS or Schutzstaffel ran the camps. They ran different kinds of camps; labor camps, concentration camps, death camps and POW camps. They also ran the einsatzgruppen squads. It is estimated that there were at least 7,000 camps, possibly more.

9. Concentration Camps The Einsatzgruppen were mobile death squads.
They were run by Himmler’s second in command, Reinhard Heydrich
They went to areas with large Jewish concentrations and killed them en masse.
It is estimated that they killed over 1.3 million Jews

10. Babi Yar
Jews on their way out of the city of Kiev to the Babi Yar ravine pass corpses in the street. Photo credit: Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
View of the ravine at Babi Yar circa On September 29-30, 1941, more than 33,000 Jewish residents of Kiev were marched to this site and systematically gunned down over the edge of the ravine by members of the Sonderkommando 4a of Einstazgruppen C. Thousands of Gypsies and Soviet POWs were also executed at this site between 1941 and Photo credit: Central Archives October Revolution, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

11. Concentration Camps
Up until 1942 the camps had not necessarily been extermination camps- they were labor camps primarily, but they worked people to death.
After a meeting in 1942 called the Wansee Conference, where the ‘final solution’ was devised, more and more efficient ways of killing off all of the Jews were devised.

12. Concentration Camps
Camps like Chelmno, Auschwitz, Belzek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Madjanek and Stutthof were the largest extermination camps.
There were thousands more.
The Nazis were meticulous record keepers and there are written, photographic and film sources of the experiences at the Camps.
They were also hoarders, and took everything away from the Jews and stored or used it all.

13. Concentration Camps Chelmno Belzek Sobibor Stutthof Gas Vans Zyklon-B
Auschwitz- Birkenau
Belzek
Sobibor
Treblinka
Majdanek
Stutthof
Gas Vans
Zyklon-B
Carbon Monoxide gas
Carbon Monoxide and Zyklon B gas
Zyklon-B gas
320,000
1.2 million
600,000
250,000
700,000
1,380,000
65,000

14. Auschwitz Auschwitz was the worst of the camps.
It was in Poland and had two nearby camps, Birkenau and Monowitz, that were known as Auschwitz II and III respectively
Monowitz was built as a labor camp where various chemical companies had factories.
Auschwitz is famous for the medical experiments done there by doctors, primarily Josef Mengele, also known as The Angel of Death.
Bunk beds in the Auschwitz II. There were as many as four inmates per bunk. There could be as many as a thousand inmates per barrack like the one pictured.

16. Auschwitz
In October 1944, a group of Jewish inmates who had been forced to clean the crematoria revolted.
Using smuggled gunpowder they blew up Crematorium IV.
The SS retaliated harshly, but the end was near anyway, because in December, they realized the Soviet Army was near, and began forcing the inmates to tear down the gas chambers and crematoria to hide the evidence.
They then began to move the prisoners to other camps.

17. Auschwitz The death marches started in January, 1945.
60,000 prisoners were moved from the camp.
When the Soviets liberated the camp there were only 7,000 inmates left.
In 1947, Rudolph Hoess, the commander of the camp was executed as a war criminal in front of the Crematorium I.