The+Holocaust+-+Concentration+and+Extermination+Camps

The Holocaust - Concentration and Extermination Camps

Concentration Camps ** Concentration Camps were established throughout the territories controlled by Germany beginning around 1933. The term concentration camp was actually borrowed from the name for the for the British concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, The first concentration camps or labor camps, such as Dachau, were only meant to hold political opposers such as communists. However by 1939, the camps were full blown to the point where Jews and POWs were taken to be forced to do physical labor. There were also several other groups of people people taken to these concentration camps not just Jews, but also Gypsies, Poles, and Jehovah's Witnesses to name a few. Some concentration camps were set up outside cities or near coal mines. Others were set up near factories to make use of the forced labor in making airplane parts or rocket propellant.

Internees were shipped to the camps by the thousands in cramped unsanitary rail cars. Most of them often died of cold or malnutrition before they even reached the camps. The policy of the concentration camps was "extermination by labor" in which the Jews were literally worked to death. The prisoners would be undernourished and tortured daily. They would be forced to work until they dropped from exhaustion at which point they were led away and killed. Also there were many selections in which doctors would walk around and check the health of the prisoners. If they found someone who they deemed to sick to continue they would have the person led away to be killed. ** Extermination Camps


 * There is a difference between concentration camps and extermination camps. Extermination camps or Death Camps were created for the sole purpose of killing the Jews. The most famous Death Camp was in Auschwitz. In 1942, Hitler imposed his idea of a "Final Solution" in dealing with the Jews in which tens of thousands of Jews were shipped off to death camps to be executed. Even though over a million Jews were killed in concentration camps up until this point, it wasn't until Hitler imposed this final solution that the killings in death camps began in earnest. Jews that weren't used as the victems of medical experiments were systematically killed in mass. First by simply being lined up and gunned down. Then with the introduction of the Gas Chambers, Jews would be led into them in groups after being told they were Showers but in reality were gassed with the chemical known as Zyklon B. Over 6000, Jews were killed in Gas Chambers every day. After being executed the bodies were either cremated in large furnaces or pushed by bulldozers into massive graves. The Camps were not liberated until 1943-1945 and by that time more than 6 million Jews had been killed. **