Extermination camp
Nazi extermination camps | |
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![]() View of Sobibor extermination camp, 1943
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The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they served as a deterrent to resistance. The extermination camps, on the other hand, were kept strictly secret. To disguise the mass murder, even in internal correspondence, they only referred to it as "special treatment," "cleansing," "resettlement," or "evacuation." The SS referred to the extermination camps as concentration camps. Their internal organizational structures were also largely identical. The term "extermination camp" was only used later in historical scholarship and in court cases and serves to further categorize the camps.
The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities, to which the victims were taken by train, was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities.[8] The technology was adapted, expanded, and applied in wartime to unsuspecting victims of many ethnic and national groups; the Jews were the primary target, accounting for over 90 percent of extermination camp victims.[9] The genocide of the Jews of Europe was Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish question".[10][4][11]
Background
After the
The camps designed specifically for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics was to be handled by the programme administrator, Adolf Eichmann.[22]
On 13 October 1941, the
Definition

The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) and death camp (Todeslager) were interchangeable in the Nazi system, each referring to camps whose primary function was
Death camps were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the
Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as
Murders were not limited to these camps. Sites for the "Holocaust by Bullets" are marked on the map of The Holocaust in Occupied Poland by white skulls (without the black background), where people were lined up next to a ravine and shot by soldiers with rifles. Sites included Bronna Góra, Ponary, Rumbula and others.

Irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps,[37] which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme.[38] Prisoners represented about a quarter of the total workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions, and physical brutality.[37]
History
In the early years of World War II, the Jews were primarily sent to forced labour camps and ghettoised, but
Pure extermination camps
During the initial phase of the
Unlike at Auschwitz, where cyanide-based
The six camps considered to be purely for extermination were
Whereas the Auschwitz II (Auschwitz–Birkenau) and Majdanek camps were parts of a labor camp complex, the Chełmno and Operation Reinhard death camps (that is, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built exclusively for the rapid extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival. All were constructed near
The Nazis deceived the victims upon their arrival, telling them that they were at a temporary transit stop, and would soon continue to German Arbeitslagers (work camps) farther to the east.[46] Selected able-bodied prisoners delivered to the death camps were not immediately killed, but instead were pressed into labor units called Sonderkommandos to help with the extermination process by removing corpses from the gas chambers and burning them.
Concentration and extermination camps
At the camps of Operation Reinhard, including
Extermination procedure

Heinrich Himmler visited the outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting. He was told by the commanding officer there that the shootings were proving psychologically damaging to those being asked to pull the triggers. Thus, Himmler concluded that another method of mass killing was required.
The Nazis had first used gassing with carbon monoxide cylinders to murder 70,000 disabled people in Germany in what they called a 'euthanasia programme' to disguise that mass murder was taking place. Despite the lethal effects of carbon monoxide, this was seen as unsuitable for use in the East due to the cost of transporting the carbon monoxide in cylinders.[49]
Each extermination camp operated differently, yet each had designs for quick and efficient industrialized killing. While Höss was away on an official journey in late August 1941 his deputy,
Gassings
SS
Unterscharführer
Trawniki) assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes – the stopwatch recorded it all – the diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons, in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window, because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists [then] hammered out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns. In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and, showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See, for yourself, the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday, and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day – dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!"— Kurt Gerstein[52]

Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss reported that the first time Zyklon B pellets were used on the Jews, many suspected they were to be killed – despite having been deceived into believing they were to be deloused and then returned to the camp.[53] As a result, the Nazis identified and isolated "difficult individuals" who might alert the prisoners, and removed them from the mass – lest they incite revolt among the deceived majority of prisoners en route to the gas chambers. The "difficult" prisoners were led to a site out of view to be killed off discreetly.
According to Höss, enslaved prisoners, euphemistically called Sonderkommando (Special Detachment), assisted in the process of extermination; they encouraged the Jews to undress and accompanied them into the gas chambers which were outfitted to appear as shower rooms (with nonworking water nozzles, and tile walls); and remained with the victims until just before the chamber door closed. To psychologically maintain the "calming effect" of the delousing deception, an SS man stood at the door until the end. The Sonderkommando talked to the victims about life in the camp to pacify the suspicious ones, and hurried them inside; to that effect, they also assisted the aged and the very young in undressing.[54] Many young mothers hid their infants beneath their piled clothes fearing that the delousing "disinfectant" might harm them. Camp Commandant Höss reported that the "men of the Special Detachment were particularly on the look-out for this", and encouraged the women to take their children into the "shower room". Likewise, the Sonderkommando comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion".[55]
Yet, not every prisoner was deceived by such tactics; Commandant Höss spoke of Jews "who either guessed, or knew, what awaited them, nevertheless ... [they] found the courage to joke with the children, to encourage them, despite the mortal terror visible in their own eyes". Some women would suddenly "give the most terrible shrieks while undressing, or tear their hair, or scream like maniacs"; these prisoners were taken away for execution by shooting.[56] In such circumstances, others, meaning to save themselves at the gas chamber's threshold, betrayed the identities and "revealed the addresses of those members of their race still in hiding".[57]
Once the door of the filled gas chamber was sealed, pellets of Zyklon B were dropped through special holes in the roof. Regulations required that the Camp Commandant supervise the preparations, the gassing (through a peephole), and the aftermath looting of the corpses. Commandant Höss reported that the gassed victims "showed no signs of convulsion"; the Auschwitz camp physicians attributed that to the "paralyzing effect on the lungs" of the Zyklon B gas, which killed before the victim began suffering convulsions.[58] The corpses were additionally found half-squatting, their skin discolored pink with red and green spots, with some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from their ears, exacerbated by the crowding in gas chambers.[59]
As a matter of political training, some high-ranked Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau to witness the gassings. As the Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss justified the extermination by explaining the need for "the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler's orders".[61]
Corpse disposal
After the gassings, the Sonderkommando removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then extracted any gold teeth. Initially, the victims were buried in mass graves, but were later cremated during Sonderaktion 1005 in all camps of Operation Reinhard.
The Sonderkommando was responsible for burning the corpses in the pits,[62] stoking the fires, draining surplus body fat and turning over the "mountain of burning corpses ... so that the draft might fan the flames", wrote Commandant Höss in his memoir while in the Polish custody.[62] He was impressed by the diligence of prisoners from the so-called Special Detachment who carried out their duties despite their being well aware that they, too, would meet exactly the same fate in the end.[62] At the Lazaret killing station they held the sick so they would never see the gun while being shot. They did it "in such a matter-of-course manner that they might, themselves, have been the exterminators", wrote Höss.[62] He further said that the men ate and smoked "even when engaged in the grisly job of burning corpses which had been lying for some time in mass graves."[62] They occasionally encountered the corpse of a relative, or saw them entering the gas chambers. According to Höss, they were obviously shaken by this but "it never led to any incident". He mentioned the case of a Sonderkommando who found the body of his wife, yet continued to drag corpses along "as though nothing had happened".[62]
At Auschwitz, the corpses were incinerated in
Victims
The estimated total number of people who were murdered in the six Nazi extermination camps is 2.7 million, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[64] All six camps are located in present-day Poland.
Camp | Estimated deaths |
Operational | Occupied territory | Nearest settlement | Primary means for mass killings |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Auschwitz–Birkenau | 1,100,000[65] | May 1940 – January 1945 | Province of Upper Silesia | Oświęcim | Zyklon B gas chambers |
Treblinka | 800,000[66] | 23 July 1942 – 19 October 1943 | General Government district | Treblinka | Carbon monoxide gas chambers |
Bełżec
|
600,000[67] | 17 March 1942 – end of June 1943 | General Government district | Bełżec | Carbon monoxide gas chambers |
Chełmno | 320,000[68] | 8 December 1941 – March 1943, June 1944 – 18 January 1945 |
District of Reichsgau Wartheland | Chełmno nad Nerem | Carbon monoxide vans |
Sobibór
|
250,000[69] | 16 May 1942 – 17 October 1943 | General Government district | Sobibór | Carbon monoxide gas chambers |
Majdanek | at least 80,000 [70] | 1 October 1941 – 22 July 1944 | General Government district | Lublin | Zyklon B gas chambers |
Dismantling and attempted concealment

The Nazis attempted to either partially or completely dismantle the extermination camps in order to hide any evidence that people had been murdered there. This was an attempt to conceal not only the extermination process but also the buried remains. As a result of the secretive Sonderaktion 1005, the camps were dismantled by commandos of condemned prisoners, their records were destroyed, and the mass graves were dug up. Some extermination camps that remained uncleared of evidence were liberated by Soviet troops, who followed different standards of documentation and openness than the Western allies did.[71][72]
Nonetheless
Commemoration
In the post-war period the government of the
The March of the Living is organized in Poland annually since 1988.[73] Marchers come from countries as diverse as Estonia, New Zealand, Panama, and Turkey.[74]
The camps and Holocaust denial
Holocaust deniers or negationists are people and organizations who assert that the Holocaust did not occur, or that it did not occur in the historically recognized manner and extent.[75] Holocaust deniers claim that the extermination camps were actually transit camps from which Jews were deported farther east. However, these theories are disproven by surviving German documents, which show that Jews were sent to the camps to be murdered.[76]
Extermination camp research is difficult because of extensive attempts by the SS and Nazi regime to conceal the existence of the extermination camps.[71] The existence of the extermination camps is firmly established by testimonies of camp survivors and Final Solution perpetrators, material evidence (the remaining camps, etc.), Nazi photographs and films of the killings, and camp administration records.[77][78]
Awareness
In 2017 a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was.[79][80] A 2018 survey organized in the United States by the Claims Conference, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and others found that 66 percent of the American millennials who were surveyed (and 41 percent of all U.S. adults) did not know what Auschwitz was.[81] In 2019, a survey of 1,100 Canadians found that 49 percent of them could not name any of the Nazi camps which were located in German-occupied Europe.[82]
See also
- German camps in occupied Poland during World War II
- List of Nazi extermination camps and euthanasia centers
- "Polish death camp" controversy
- Topf and Sons
- War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
Notes
- occupied Poland, to kill 1,558 mental patients delivered from sanatoria.[18][19] Lange used his experience with exhaust gasses in setting up the Chełmno extermination camp thereafter.[20] Widmann conducted first gassing experiments in the East in September 1941 in Mogilev, and successfully initiated the killing of local hospital patients with the exhaust fumes from a truck engine, minimizing the psychological impact of the crime on the Einsatzgruppe.[21]
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Number of foreign laborers employed as of January 1944 (excluding those already dead): total of 3,795,000. From Poland: 1,400,000 (survival rate 25.2); from the Soviet Union: 2,165,000 (survival rate 27.7) Table 5.
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It is estimated that the SS and police deported at a minimum 1.3 million people to Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities murdered 1.1 million." (Number includes victims killed in other Auschwitz camps.)
- Höfle Telegram indicates some 700,000 killed by 31 December 1942, yet the camp functioned until 1943, hence the true death total likely is greater. "Reinhard: Treblinka Deportations". Nizkor.org. Archived from the originalon 23 September 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
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Between March and December 1942, the Germans deported some 434,500 Jews, and an indeterminate number of Poles and Roma (Gypsies) to Belzec, to be killed.
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In total, the SS and the police killed some 152,000 people in Chełmno.
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- ^ A recent study reduced the estimated number of deaths at Majdanek, in: Pawel P. Reszka, "Majdanek Victims Enumerated", Gazeta Wyborcza, Lublin, 12 December 2005, reproduced on the site of the Auschwitz–Birkenau Museum: Lublin scholar Tomasz Kranz established new figure which the Majdanek museum staff consider authoritative. Earlier calculations were greater: c. 360,000, in a much-cited 1948 publication by Judge Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz, of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland; and c. 235,000, in a 1992 article by Dr. Czeslaw Rajca, formerly of the Majdanek museum. However, the number of those whose deaths the camp administration did not register remains unknown.
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The Attempt to Remove Traces
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An account of the locations of the extermination camps as they are today, augmented by the historical information about them, and about the fate of the Jews of Poland.
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External links
- The Holocaust History Project, Quick Facts on the Holocaust. Essays, Documents, Reproductions. Retrieved 15 September 2015.
- Holocaust and concentration camps information
- The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
- Official U.S. National Archive Footage of Nazi camps
- Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard.