Extermination camps were built by
Nazi Germany during
World War II to systematically kill millions of
primarily Jewish victims.Non-Jews were also killed in these camps,
including many
gentile Poles and Soviet
prisoners of war. This
genocide of the
Jewish people was
Heinrich
Himmler's "
Final solution to the
Jewish question". The Nazi attempts
at Jewish genocide are collectively known as
The Holocaust.
Background
In 1942, the Lubin District
SS-und Polizei-führer Odilo Globocnik under direct orders from Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, built the first extermination camps during Aktion Reinhard; the operation to annihilate all the Jews in the General Government. Victims’ corpses were initially buried in mass graves but later they were cremated (previously buried bodies were also exhumed and burned in Aktion1005, a Nazi attempt to destroy evidence of The Holocaust). The majority of prisoners brought to Belzec
, Treblinka
and Sobibor
were not expected to survive more than a few hours beyond arrival.
The first
concentration camps were under the direct command of Globocnik and
not the SS-Totenkopfverbände
which managed the Nazi Concentration Camps such as
Dachau
or Ravensbrück
. They were manned by personnel from the
SS Police
battalion and Trawniki
- volunteers from
Eastern Europe.
Definitions
Extermination camp ( ) and
death camp (
Todeslager) are
usually interchangeable and specifically refer to camps whose
primary function was
genocide.
In a generic sense, a death camp was a
concentration camp that was
established for the purpose of killing prisoners delivered there.
They were not intended as sites for punishingcriminal actions;
rather, they were intended to facilitate genocide. Historically,
the most infamous death camps were the extermination camps built by
Nazi Germany in
occupied Poland during
World War II.
Nazi-German extermination camps are different
from concentration camps
such as Dachau
and Belsen
, which were mostly intended as places of
incarceration and forced labor for a
variety of “enemies of the state”—the Nazi label for people they
deemed undesirable. In the early years of the Holocaust, the
Jews were primarily sent to
concentration camps, but from 1942
onward they were mostly
deported to the
extermination camps.
Extermination camps should also be distinguished from
forced labor camps , which were set up in all
German-occupied countries to exploit the labor of prisoners of
various kinds, including prisoners of war. Many Jews were worked to
death in these camps, but eventually the Jewish labor force, no
matter how useful to the German war effort, was destined for
extermination. In most Nazi camps (with the exception of
POW camp for the non-Soviet soldiers
and certain labor camps), there were usually very high death rates
as a result of
executions,
starvation,
disease,
exhaustion, and extreme brutality;
nevertheless, only the extermination camps were intended
specifically for mass killing.
The distinction between extermination camps and concentration camps
was recognized by Germans themselves (although not expressed in the
official nomenclature of the camps. ).
As early as September
1942, an SS
doctor
witnessed a gassing and wrote in his diary: “They don't call
Auschwitz the camp of annihilation (das Lager der
Vernichtung) for nothing!” When one of Adolf Eichmann’s deputies, Dieter Wisliceny, was interrogated at
Nuremberg
, he was asked for the names of
extermination camps; his answer referred to Auschwitz
and Majdanek
as such. When asked “How do you classify the camps
Mauthausen
, Dachau and Buchenwald?” he replied, "They were
normal concentration camps from the point of view of the department
of Eichmann.”
The camps

Picture of extermination camp
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) taken by an American surveillance plane, 25
Aug.
Crematoria II and III and the holes used to throw cyanide into
the gas chambers are visible.
Most accounts of the Holocaust recognize six German Nazi
extermination camps, all located in occupied Poland:
Of these, Auschwitz II and Chełmno were located within areas of
western Poland
annexed by Germany; the
other four were located in the
General Government area.
Other
recognized death camps outside of the main six include the little
known Maly Trostenets
, which was located in present day suburban Minsk
, Belarus
, near or in the occupation-time Lokot Republic. Similar camps existed
in Warsaw and Janowska.
The Jasenovac concentration camp
was the only central extermination camp outside of
Poland, and the only one not operated by Nazis. Run by the Ustaše forces of the Independent
State of Croatia
, the majority of victims at this camp were Serbs,
though tens of thousands of Roma and Jews were murdered there as
well.
The
euphemism “
Final Solution of the Jewish Question”
(
Endlösung der Judenfrage) was used by the Nazis to
describe the systematic killing of Europe’s Jews. The decision to
exterminate the Jews was presumably taken by the Nazi leadership
during the first half of
1941, but no record of
this decision was found.
The first step of the "final solution" was
made by the Einsatzgruppen
that followed the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa (the invasion to
USSR from June 1941). However, the method of shooting the
Jews in pits was found to be not efficient enough, so in late 1941
the Nazis decided to establish purpose-built camps for systematic
murder in gas chambers.
The details of the operation were discussed
at Wannsee
Conference
in January 1942 and carried out under the
administrative control of Adolf
Eichmann. Treblinka
, Bełżec
, and Sobibór
were constructed during Operation Reinhard, the codename for the extermination of Poland’s Jews.
While
Auschwitz II was part of a labor camp
complex, and Majdanek also had a labor camp, the Operation Reinhard
camps and Chełmno
were pure extermination camps—in other
words, they were built solely and specifically to kill vast numbers
of people, primarily Jews, within hours of arrival. The only
prisoners sent to these camps not immediately killed were those
needed as slave labor directly connected with the extermination
process (for example, to remove corpses from the gas chambers).
These camps were small in size—only several hundred meters on each
side—as only minimal housing and support facilities were required.
Arriving persons were told that they were merely at a transit stop
for relocation further east or at a work camp.

Major deportation routes to the
extermination camps
Victim numbers
The number of people killed at the death camps has been estimated
as follows:
- Auschwitz-Birkenau: about 1,100,000
- Treblinka: at least 700,000
- Bełżec: about 434,500
- Sobibór: about 167,000
- Chełmno: about 152,000
- Majdanek: 78,000
These numbers total just under 2,700,000 people.
Among the
lesser known death camps, estimates vary from 85,000 to 600,000
killed at Jasenovac
. At Maly
Trostenets extermination camp
at least 65,000 Jews were murdered, and estimations
for non-Jewish people killed vary from 100,000 to 400,000 (no
survivals, including operating personnel, were found).
Selection of sites for the camps
Nazi
Germany selected occupied Poland
to locate most of the camps for logistic and other
reasons:
- Camps were built where most of the intended victims lived.
Poland was home to the largest Jewish
population in Europe
- The extermination camps could be kept in greater secrecy from
German citizens.
- Simultaneously, the camps were deep inside the Nazi-occupied
landmass and thus less susceptible to detection by the Allies.
- Eastern Europe was
technologically less developed than Western Europe, meaning less
opportunity for reports about the camps to leak out.
- Eastern Europe had comparatively fewer international visitors
or residents, including journalists.
- The entire railway network in Eastern Europe was overwhelmed by
the German war effort; it was logistically
impossible to organize on the Eastern Front, the largest
military operation the world has ever seen, tens of
thousands of trains to transport the Jewish victims over
longer distances; but, hundreds of miles from the front, it was
possible.
- Because the brunt of the fighting was more on the Eastern Front
than on all other fronts combined, the camps were easier to conceal
as facilities for war efforts instead of war crimes.
- Poland was ideal; it was occupied by "half-human" Slavs. (Based on a book: The
Nazi Doctors). Moreover, the greatest complex of the death
camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau
, was located in the easternmost Nazi Greater
Germany, and, from the Nazi perspective, not in Poland.
- The crimes would not be occurring on historic German soil.
- Western Europe was more urbanized. Land was more readily
available in eastern Europe—a consideration with regard not only
for the physical layout of the camps but also for atmospheric
buffer from the ash and smell.
see also:
Polish
death camp controversy
Operation of the camps
The method of killing at these camps was typically
poison gas obtained from the German chemical
company
IG Farben, usually in
gas chambers, although many prisoners died in
mass shootings, by starvation, or by torture.
Rudolf Höss (German spelling: Höß; not to
be confused with Rudolf Hess), the
commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that many of the
Einsatzkommandos involved
in the mass shootings went mad or committed suicide, “unable to endure wading through blood any
longer.” The bodies of those killed were destroyed in crematoria (except at Sobibór
, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno, where they were
cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes
buried or scattered. At Auschwitz-Birkenau
, the number of corpses defied burial or burning on
pyres: the only way to dispose of them was in purpose-designed
furnaces built on contract by Topf und
Söhne, which ran day and night.In terms of operation,
extermination camps divide into three groups:
- "Aktion Reinhardt" extermination camps: These
are three camps established by the Nazis as part of the "Reinhardt
Aktion": Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec. These camps were extermination
camps, but not concentration or labor camps: inmates were brought
in and, without any selection, taken to immediate extermination.
These camps initially utilized carbon monoxide gas in gas chambers
and the bodies, which were at first buried, were burnt in pyres. In
later stages, crematories were built in Treblinka and Belzec, and
Zyklon-B was also put into use in Belzec.
The victims were almost exclusively of Jewish origin, save
deportations of gypsies to Treblinka and Sobibor. These camps were
small and were closed, in large, by late 1943.
- Concentration and extermination camps: Camps
that were also concentration camps, where selections took part and
a minority of inmates, who were also labor-capable, were kept alive
and accommodated as camp inmates. These camps underwent the upgrade
of using crematories and Zyklon-B earlier, and usually remained
operative until the end of the war. These included Auschwitz,
Majdanek and Jasenovac.
- Minor extermination camps: location not
recognised as extermination camps until lately. These sites
included smaller camps, used as detention centers and transit
camps, temporarily used as extermination camps later in the war, by
using portable gas-chambers or gas-vans. Chelmno, or Kulmhof, is
basically such a camp, yet it is listed as a central extermination
camp. Others include Sajmiste, Maly-Trostenets, Janowska and
Gornija Rijeka.
The camps differed slightly in operation, but all were designed to
kill as efficiently as possible. For example
Kurt Gerstein, an
Obersturmführer in the SS medical
service, testified to a Swedish diplomat during the war about what
he had seen at the camps.
He describes how he arrived at Belzec
on August 19, 1942 (the camp's gas chambers used
carbon monoxide from a gasoline engine) where he was proudly shown
the unloading of 45 train cars stuffed with 6,700 Jews, many of
whom were already dead, but the rest were marched naked to the gas
chambers, where, he said:
Unterscharführer Hackenholt was making great
efforts to get the engine running.
But it doesn’t go.
Captain Wirth comes
up.
I can see he is afraid because I am present at a
disaster.
Yes, I see it all and I wait.
My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and
the diesel did not start.
The people wait inside the gas chambers.
In vain.
They can be heard weeping, “like in the synagogue,”
says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the
wooden door.
Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian 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
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!”
According to Höss, the first time
Zyklon B
was used on the Jews, many suspected they would be killed, despite
being led to believe that they were only being deloused. As a
result, pains were taken to single out possibly “difficult
individuals” in future gassings, so they could be separated and
shot unobtrusively. Members of a Special Detachment
(
Sonderkommando)—a group of prisoners from the camp
assigned to help carry out the exterminations—were also made to
accompany the Jews into the gas chamber and remain with them until
the doors closed. A guard from the SS also stood at the door to
perpetuate the “calming effect.” To avoid giving the prisoners time
to think about their fate, they were urged to undress as speedily
as possible, with the Special Detachment helping those who might
slow down the process.

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arriving
at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944.
At Auschwitz, the majority of deportees were killed shortly
after their arrival (without being registered into the camp system)
in gas chambers, such as those housed in Crematoria II and III
whose chimneys are visible in the background.
The Special Detachment reassured the Jews being gassed by talking
of life in the camp, and tried to persuade them that everything
would be all right. Many Jewish women hid their infants beneath
their clothes once they had undressed, because they feared the
disinfectant would harm them. Höss wrote that the “men of the
Special Detachment were particularly on the look-out for this,” and
would encourage the womenfolk to bring their children along. The
Special Detachment men were also responsible for comforting older
children that might cry “because of the strangeness of being
undressed in this fashion.”
These measures did not deceive all, however. Höss reported of
several Jews “who either guessed or knew what awaited them
nevertheless” but still “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 were immediately led away by the Special Detachment
men to be shot. Some others instead “revealed the addresses of
those members of their race still in hiding” before being led into
the gas chamber.
Once the door was sealed with the victims inside, powdered
Zyklon B would be shaken down through special holes
in the roof of the chamber. The camp commandant was required to
witness every gassing carried out through a peephole, and supervise
both the preparations and the aftermath. Höss reported that the
gassed corpses “showed no signs of convulsion”; the doctors at
Auschwitz attributed this to the “paralyzing effect on the lungs”
that Zyklon B had, which ensured death came on before convulsions
could begin.
After the gassings had been carried out, the Special Detachment men
would remove the bodies, extract the gold teeth and shave the hair
of the corpses before bringing them to the crematoria or the pits.
In either case, the bodies would be cremated, with the men of the
Special Detachment responsible for stoking the fires, draining off
the surplus fat, and turning over the “mountain of burning corpses”
so that the flames would constantly be fanned. Höss found the
attitude and dedication of the Special Detachment amazing. Despite
them being “well aware that … they, too, would meet exactly the
same fate,” they managed to carry out their duties “in such a
matter-of-course manner that they might themselves have been the
exterminators.” According to Höss, many of the Special Detachment
men ate and smoked while they worked, “even when engaged on the
grisly job of burning corpses.” Occasionally, they would come
across the body of a close relative, but although they “were
obviously affected by this, … it never led to any incident.” Höss
cited the case of a man who, while carrying bodies from the gas
chamber to the fire pit, found the corpse of his wife, but behaved
“as though nothing had happened.”
Some high-ranking leaders from the
Nazi
Party and the SS were sent to Auschwitz on occasion to witness
the gassings. Höss wrote that although “all were deeply impressed
by what they saw,” some “who had previously spoken most loudly
about the necessity for this extermination fell silent once they
had actually seen the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’.” Höss
was repeatedly asked how he could stomach the exterminations. He
justified them by explaining “the iron determination with which we
must carry out Hitler’s orders,” but found that even “[Adolf]
Eichmann, who [was] certainly tough enough,
had no wish to change places with me.”
Post war

The English-language memorial in
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp
As the Soviet Red Army advanced into eastern Poland in 1944, the
eastern most camps (excluding Auschwitz which was near Upper
Silesia) were partly or completely dismantled by the Nazis to
conceal the crimes which had taken place there. Because most of the
camps in the very east of the country like Belzec and Sobibor were
erected from natural materials locally available, like lumber,
their physical remnants succumbed to the elements more quickly. The
postwar Polish communist
government did create
monuments of
various kinds at the sites of the former camps, but they usually
did not mention the ethnic, religious or national origin of the
inmate population. This was done to create the perception of as
large a homogeneous group of victims of the Nazis so that it could
be used for propaganda purposes by the communist authorities in
their agenda of supporting the historical communist effort in the
conquest over 'German Fascism'. The hope was of the indoctrination
of this theme by the citizens of Poland, the other communist block
countries and the West.
After the
fall of communism in 1989, the camp sites became more
accessible to Western visitors to Poland and have become centers of
tourism, particularly the most-infamous site
at the Former Nazi-German Concentration Camp at Auschwitz
near the town of Oświęcim
. There had been a number of disputes in the
early 1990s between world Jewish organizations and some Polish
Catholics, about what are appropriate symbols of martyrdom at these
sites, namely the site at Auschwitz. Some Jewish groups had
objected strongly to the erection of
Christian memorials at a
quarry adjacent to the camp.
In this, the most notable case—Auschwitz
cross
—a cross was located near Auschwitz I
, where most of the victims were executed Poles,
rather than near Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), which was where
the majority of the Jewish victims perished.
Holocaust denial
Some groups and individuals deny that the Nazis killed anyone using
extermination camps, or they question the manner or extent of the
Holocaust. For example,
Robert
Faurisson claimed in 1979 that “Hitler’s ‘gas chambers’ never
existed.” He contended that the notion of the gas chambers was
“essentially of Zionist origin”.
Another famous denier is British
historian David Irving, who was
sentenced to prison in Austria
for his Holocaust denials: Holocaust denial is a
criminal offense in Austria.
Scholars and historians point out that Holocaust denial is
contradicted by the testimonies of survivors
and perpetrators, material evidence, and photographs, as well as by
the Nazis’ own record-keeping.
Efforts such as the Nizkor Project, the work of Deborah Lipstadt, Simon Wiesenthal and his Simon
Wiesenthal Center
, and more at Holocaust resources,
all track and explain
Holocaust denial. The work of historians such as
Raul Hilberg (who published
The Destruction
of the European Jews),
Lucy
Davidowicz (
The War
Against the Jews),
Ian Kershaw,
and many others relegate
Holocaust
denial to a minority fringe.
Antisemitic political motivation is often
imputed to those who deny the Holocaust.
The current historical debates surrounding the
Nazi-German concentration
camps and the Holocaust involve the questions of complicity of
the local populations. Although many Jews were saved by Christian
neighbors, others ignored their plight or turned them in.
Furthermore, it is becoming evident that many of the camps were in
clear view and were tied up in local economies. For instance, goods
were purchased and delivered to camps and local women provided
housekeeping and company. Nazi officers patronized local taverns
and even bartered with gold collected from victims.
See also
References
Bibliography
- Bartov, Omer (ed.). The Holocaust, 2000.
- Gilbert, Martin. Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of
the Past, Phoenix, 1997. An account of the sites of the
extermination camps as they are today, plus historical information
about them and about the fate of the Jews of Poland.
- Klee, Ernst. “‘Turning the tap on was no big deal’—The gassing
doctors during the Nazi period and afterwards,” in Dauchau
Review, vol. 2, 1990.
- Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved, 1986.
Notes
External links