https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/whatarecamps.

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The English term concentration camp is commonly used to describe a wide number
of places of internment created by Nazi Germany, which served a variety of
functions and were called by different names: labor camps (Arbeitslager); transit
camps (Durchgangslager); prisoner-of-war camps (Kriegsgefangenlager);
concentration camps (Konzentrationslager KZ), and death camps or killing centers,
often referred to in Nazi parlance as extermination camps (Vernichtungslager).
Concentration camps underwent a series of developments over time - from 1933 to
1936, they were used for incarcerating political adversaries, trade unionists,
political dissidents, communists, and others. In 1936, operational responsibility for
the camps was consolidated under the SS and the camp universe expanded
incrementally. In 1941 to 1942, the major killing centers came on
line: Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek as well as the Aktion Reinhard
camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka . A series of labor camps were created in
direct response to the impact of the war and Germany's growing need for workers.
In 1944 to 1945, the concentration camps were dismantled and evacuated ahead of
the Allied advances and any remaining prisoners were brought back to Germany which had already become Judenrein - on foot in what became known as death
marches. These marches either took the prisoners to other camps within Germany or
were simply continued endlessly until the Jews died or were liberated by the Allies.

Protective Custody of Enemies of the

State
During the night following the declaration of a state of emergency after the
Reichstag fire (Feb. 27, 1933), there was a wave of mass arrests of the Communist
opposition. After the Ermaechtigungsgesetz ("Enabling Act") of March 23, 1933,
the non-Nazi political elite, composed of trade-union members, socialists, and civil
party members, was arrested, together with writers, journalists, and lawyers, who
were Jewish, but arrested because of their activities alleged or actual. In July
1933, the number of protective-custody detainees reached 14,906 in Prussia and
26,789 in the whole Reich. The SA (Storm Troops), the *SS , and the police

improvised about 50 mass-detention camps. *Dachau , Oranienburg, Esterwegen,

and Sachsenburg were thus created. The worst camp of all was the Berlin Columbia
Haus. The methods of arrest, kidnappings, tortures, bribery, and blackmail of
associates created chaos and aroused protest in newly Nazified Germany. In
response to pressure from the judiciary, and upon the advice of the then head of the
Gestapo,
Rudolf
Diels,
to Hermann
*Goering ,
most
of
the SA and SS Wilde KZ ("Wild concentration camps") were broken up.
Oranienburg, Lichtenburg, and Columbia Haus remained, containing no more than
1,000 prisoners each. Later on there was less judicial pressure and a confident and
dominant Nazi regime became less responsive but never unresponsive to public
opinion. Public opposition to the regime was less forthcoming because of fear,
coercion, despair and indifference.
The reduction in concentration camps during the early years of the Nazi regime was
no indication of any move to abolish them; among the new victims of the terror
were those who listened to foreign radio stations, rumormongers, Jehovah's
Witnesses (Bibelforscher, in 1935), and German male homosexuals. There was no
incarceration of lesbians qua lesbians. Jehovah's Witnesses were the only "voluntary
victims" of Nazism. They refused to register in the Wehrmacht or to swear
allegiance to the state. The words "Heil Hitler" never passed their lips. Their
allegiance was to Jehovah and not to the state. Jehovah's Witnesses could be freed
from concentration camps if they signed a simple document renouncing their faith
and swearing to cease their religious activities. Few succumbed to this temptation,
even at the risk of endless internment and conditions that might lead to death. There
was a basic tension in German policy and among German policymakers toward the
male homosexual population. The function of their incarceration varied between
punishment and reeducation.
Under the command of Himmler, who on April 20, 1934, took over direction of the
Berlin Gestapo, the SS gained total control of the concentration camps, and the
judiciary was prevented from intervening in the Gestapo's domain. Small
concentration camps were broken up, and their prisoners transferred to larger
camps, such as Dachau (which was enlarged), *Sachsenhausen (established in
September 1936), and *Buchenwald (established in August 1937). When the
number of concentration-camp detainees dropped to about 8,000 in late 1937, it was
augmented by the dispatch of criminal offenders and persons defined as "asocial."

In April 1938 ordinary prisoners under preventive detention were transferred from
prisons to concentration camps, which, in addition to their original function, then
became Staatliche Besserungs-und Arbeitslager ("State Improvement and Labor
Camps"). At about the same time, Jews qua Jews (not as Communists, Socialists,
etc.) were interned in concentration camps for the first time.
The German state gave legal sanction to arbitrary imprisonment by
the Notverordnung des Reichspraesidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (Feb.
28, 1933), which served as a base for "protective custody" by authorizing the
unlimited detention of persons suspected of hostility to the regime. The regulation
requiring a written protective-custody warrant (Schutzhaftbefehl) was introduced on
April 1216, 1934, in order to placate the judiciary, who still demanded that the
legality of each arrest be examined. A clause postulated on Jan. 25, 1938, extended
protective custody to persons whose conduct endangered the security of the nation
and the state for detention solely in the concentration camps. In an order of Feb. 10,
1936, Heinrich *Himmlerinvested the *Gestapo authority to make arrests and
investigate all activities hostile to the state within the Reich. He also decreed that
the Gestapo's orders were not subject to investigation by courts of law and handed
over the administration of the concentration camps to the Gestapo. The protectivecustody warrant was presented to the detainees, if at all, only after their arrest. They
were first sent to prison and tortured for long periods. The detainee was then forced
to sign the warrant that was sent to the concentration camp as his dispatch note.
The number of political detainees (Marxists, anti-Nazis, and Jews) rose after the
annexations of Austria in March and April 1938 and Sudetenland in October
and November 1938 (see *Czechoslovakia ). Overcrowding in the camps grew
worse, especially after the arrest throughout the Reich of about 30,000 Jewish men
aged 1660 after the November pogrom of 1938 known as *Kristallnacht . The
total number of detainees rose that year from 24,000 to 60,000. In 1939 the
internment
of
individual
Jews
for
the
slightest
violation
of
the Schikanengesetzgebung irksome special legislation began. Jews convicted
forRassenschande (violation of race purity), those Jews who remained married to
"Aryans", were often put into internment camps after having served their sentence.
But prior to World War II, Jews could be released from the camps if they could
prove that they had a chance to leave Germany, and in 1939 the release of Jews
possessing emigration papers, who paid exorbitant ransoms, resulted in a marked

drop in the number of Jewish internees. Many historians argue that Germany's goal
at this point was the forced emigration of the Jews, not their murder, and this policy
is viewed as evidence for their argument. With the outbreak of war, the total number
of detainees rose to 25,000 (including those in the women's camp
of *Ravensbrueck , set up in May 1939 in place of Lichtenburg).

World War

II

World War II wrought changes in the concentration camp system. There was an
increase in the number of prisoners, extension of the network of concentration
camps in and outside Germany, and an alteration in the camps' function. The
security function (i.e., protective custody) was subordinated to the economic
exploitation of detainees and mass murder, especially as the war progressed and
German planners understood that an immediate victory would not be forthcoming
and they had to plan for an extended conflict. Under the renewed security pretext,
ten times as many political prisoners were arrested in the Reich as had been arrested
in the years 193536. In the occupied countries, thousands of "opponents" were
detained in local concentration camps while special groups were "transferred" in
vast numbers to concentration camps within the Reich. From the outbreak of war
until March 1942, the number of detainees rose from 25,000 to 100,000 and in 1944
the number reached 1,000,000; only between 5 and 10% of them were German
nationals.
Late in 1939 the concentration camp organization in Germany was authorized to set
up
about
100
concentration
camps
of
all
types,
including Internierungslager (detention
or
internment
camps)
andAustauschlager (exchange camps). To these were added *Auschwitz (May
1940), Gusen (May 1940), and Gross-Rosen (Aug. 1940). That year, a series of
Jewish and non-Jewish labor camps was established, together with transit camps
(Durchgangslager), as part of Himmler's "transfer and resettlement" plan designed
to get Jews out of Germany and Germany's sphere of influence and move them
eastward to German-occupied territories. In May 1941 *Natzweiler was set up,
followed by Niederhagen (May 1940), *Majdanek(November 1940), Stutthof
(November 1940), and Arbeitsdorf (April 1942). In early 1942 there was further
expansion, when the extermination camps were set up in Poland. The rate at which
camps were established varied but did not decline. Even as late as

1944 Sonderlager ("special camps") were established for Hungarian Jews in Austria
on the borders with Czechoslovakia and Hungary.