AUSCHWITZ WAS ONE of a dense network of camps of various kinds that the Nazis set

up to deal with people they defined as threats and enemies.

TYPES OF CAMPS
The term concentration camp is often used to describe any detention site that existed in
Nazi Germany after 1933 or in German-occupied Europe during World War II, but it is
useful to differentiate among different kinds of camps in order to understand the Nazi
system and how it operated. In addition to concentration camps, there were labor
camps, prisoner of war camps, killing centers and death camps, and other camps for
special uses, such as brothels or camps for building armaments. Camps of different
kinds developed as German authorities conquered new territories, identified new
enemies, and targeted them for imprisonment, persecution, and destruction.
Nazi authorities opened the first concentration camp at Dachau, just
outside of Munich. No attempt was made to keep the camp a secret. It
opened with fanfare and publicity.
THE FIRST CAMP
Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933. Only two months later Nazi
authorities opened the first concentration camp at Dachau, just outside of Munich. No
attempt was made to keep the camp a secret. It opened with fanfare and publicity, as
part of the new Nazi government's promise to bring order to Germany and as a way to
intimidate potential dissidents.
EARLY INMATES
The first inmates were mostly political prisoners: communists, social democrats, and
other Germans who openly opposed Hitler's rule. The SS and police authorities in
charge of the camp also brought in some criminals from regular prisons as inmates.
These convictsamong them murderers and other serious offenderswere often given
positions of privilege in the camp that allowed them to brutalize other inmates and ease
the job of the camp guards.
TYPES OF CAMPS AND POPULATIONS EXPAND
By the mid-1930s, there were concentration camps for various purposes in
all parts of Germany.
As the new Nazi regime consolidated its power, it attacked more and more groups
within Germany and introduced laws and measures against them. Such assaults, in
turn, produced more potential inmates and spawned construction of additional camps.
By the mid-1930s, there were concentration camps for various purposes in all parts of
Germany, including Sachsenhausen, not far from Berlin; Ravensbrck, a camp for
women; Buchenwald, near Weimar, and many others. Among their inmates were
Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to serve in the German military and persisted in
distributing religious literature after police banned their activities; homosexuals; women
accused of prostitution;s men and women convicted of "Rassenschande" (racial

defilement or sex between so-called Aryans and Jews); and some Catholic priests who
defied laws prohibiting youth work and other church activities.
THE 1936 SUMMER OLYMPICS
In preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, German police rounded up
thousands of people they deemed undesirable and sent them to concentration camps.
These detainees included homeless people, beggars, and others labeled "asocial," as
well as hundreds of Gypsies (Sinti). German authorities set up new camps for Gypsies,
such as the site at Marzahn, on the outskirts of Berlin, which was not so much a camp
as it was an open-air detention site with no facilities, not even toilets.
GERMAN TERRITORY EXPANDS
The annexation of Austria to Germany in early 1938 provided more victims for the Nazi
camps and also sites for new camps. Most notorious of the Austrian camps was
Mauthausen, which continued to function until the end of the war in 1945.
In November 1938, as part of the Kristallnacht pogromalso known as the "Night of
Broken Glass"German police arrested approximately 30,000 Jewish men and sent
them to concentration camps. This was the first time that large numbers of Jews were
imprisoned in the camps for no other reason than that Nazi law defined them as Jews.
KILLING CENTERS FOR THE "EUTHANASIA" PROGRAM
At the concentration camps constructed inside Germany between 1933 and 1939,
guards treated prisoners brutally. They beat, tortured, and humiliated inmates, and in
some cases they killed them. But these concentration camps were not killing centers:
many prisoners served their sentences and then were released.
In some cases these were hospitals and asylums, but under the supervision
of Nazi police and doctors, they became sites of mass murder.
The first actual killing centers were sites for the murder of people deemed handicapped.
The so-called Euthanasia Program began operation in Germany in 1939, initially
targeting institutionalized, handicapped children and then expanding to adults. Rather
than sending these people to concentration camps, Nazi authorities designated certain
locations to be equipped as killing centers. In some cases these were hospitals and
asylums, but under the supervision of Nazi police and doctors, they became sites of
mass murderby injection, poison gas, and other methods. Hadamar and Hartheim are
names of two such killing centers.
CAMPS FOR PRISONERS OF WAR
Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939 led to the need for more kinds of
camps. The capture of hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers required the creation of
POW camps. German occupiers set up labor camps to punish Poles for various
offenses and to exploit Polish labor. In addition, the Germans designated parts of
certain towns and cities as ghettos into which they forced Polish Jews. In all of these
detention sites guards tormented their victims, often fatally, and disease, starvation, and

overwork were allowed to kill many people. But these were not killing centers. Murder
was not their sole purpose, although it was a frequent occurrence.
INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION
In 1941, German forces invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, and in June of that year, the
Soviet Union. Again, with conquest and occupation came more victims and the need for
more camps in which to imprison them. In Yugoslavia, the Germans cooperated with
Croatian fascists to set up camps for enemies of all kinds, including partisans, Jews,
and Gypsies. Those sites were some of the deadliest in Europe. The initial German
victories over the Soviet Army brought in massive numbers of POWs, many of whom
the Germans housed in makeshift camps. Left outside in the freezing cold with at best
tents as shelters and little or no food, over three million Soviet soldiers died in German
captivity. German officers and guards also shot many of them.
These killings did not occur in formally established camps, nor did they use
poison gas, but they nevertheless took the lives of over a million people.
German armies moved into Soviet territories accompanied by special murder squads,
which rounded up people defined as threats to German powerhigh-ranking
communists and above all, Jewsand shot them into hastily dug graves and trenches.
These killings did not occur in formally established camps, nor did they use poison gas,
but they nevertheless took the lives of over a million people at killing sites such as Babi
Yar near Kiev in Ukraine or in the Transnistria region between Romania and Ukraine.
DEVELOPMENT OF PURPOSE-BUILT KILLING CENTERS
It was not until late 1941 that Nazi authorities decided that it would be more efficient to
bring the victims to the killers than the killers to the victims. The result was construction
of death campsfacilities built solely for the purpose of killing. By early 1942 a number
of sites were operating, including Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka in territories
seized from Poland.
At Chelmno, most of the killings were done in gas vans, so that there was no need for
many camp facilities. Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were death camps onlytheir only
purpose was to facilitate the murder of as many people as possible in the shortest
possible time. Almost everyone killed at these sites was Jewish, although some Gypsies
were also sent to be gassed there. In addition to these death camps, German
authorities decided to equip two existing campsMajdanek, near Lublin, and
Auschwitz, not far from Krakowwith gas chambers for mass killing. Majdanek and
Auschwitz thus became multipurpose camps that functioned as concentration and labor
camps as well as killing centers.
AUSCHWITZ EXPANDS ITS FUNCTIONS
They did make some efforts to conceal their genocide of the Jews, but that
turned out to be impossible.
The camp system continued to evolve as the Nazi net expanded. Auschwitz expanded
to include Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II), where the gas chambers were located,

and over one million Jews were murdered. The Auschwitz complex also included
factories with slave labor from all over Europe; facilities for POWs of various kinds;
concentration facilities that held many non-Jewish Poles and others; and a model village
where the guards and their families lived in comfort, enriched by the goods plundered
from their victims. Such an enormous camp system could not be concealed, and
indeed, Nazi authorities intended knowledge and fear of camps such as Auschwitz to
serve as a threat to potential opponents of their rule.
They did make some efforts to conceal their genocide of the Jews, but that turned out to
be impossible. The stink of burning bodies surrounded camps such as Treblinka,
Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. And all of the camps, including death camps,
depended on workers from Germany and the surrounding areassecretaries,
tradesmen, railroad workers, as well as guards and administratorsso that many
people witnessed what was taking place.
Dr. Doris Bergen is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame
where she studies twentieth-century German and Central European history, the
Holocaust, and European women's history. She is the author of War and Genocide: A
Concise History of the Holocaust and Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement
in the Third Reich. Dr. Bergen serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Center for
Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C.