What were the Nazi extermination camps?

Answer 1

Nazi extermination camps (sometimes also called death camps) were facilities that the Nazis used to kill the Jews and Roma (gypsies). Unlike other concentration camps, the sole purpose of these camps was to kill.

They were the Final Solution. After removing citizenship and property, extracting the last energy or value they could provide, the raw material no longer had any value to the Nazi state, was too costly to maintain and required disposition.

The extermination camps were:

• Auschwitz II (part of the Birkenau section)
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek (which was used as a back-up killing centre, when the others could not cope with the numbers)
• Sobibor
• Treblinka II

The above were all in Poland. Auschwitz I, III and the satellite camps were very harsh forced labour camps that had a very high Death Rate. Majdanek was also partly a very harsh forced labour camp, too.

Factoid. There are only two (yes, two!) known survivors from Belzec. 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of Romani/Sinti were killed there.

In addition, Maly Trostenets in Belarus is often counted as an extermination camp.

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The term 'death camp' is misleading as the death toll at all the different kinds of Nazi camps was high. There were extermination camps: they existed solely for the purpose of killing and for nothing else. There were also exceptionally harsh concentration camps, where the prisoners were systematically worked to death on grossly insufficient food.

There were two camps - the Auschwitz group and Majdanek - that served both functions, but that was unusual.

The first extermination camp was at Chelmno. It began large-scale routine (as opposed to experimental) gassings on 8 December 1941, using sealed vans with the carbon monoxide exhaust diverted into the vans. The total death toll at Chelmno is estimated at about 152,000-153,000 and there are only two (!) known survivors.

Concentration camps, originally established for political prrisoners, had been established already in March 1933. Dachau, near Munich, was the first concentration camp. It had a high death toll but it was not an extermination camp.

The six exterminations camps of the Holocaust were all in Europe. They were:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau (part)
• Chelmno
• Belzec
• Sobibor
• Majdanek (part)
• Treblinka

The above list has a quasi-canonical status. There were at least two smaller extermination camps in Belarus, and there is debate about the precise role of Majdanek.

Answer 2

Nazi concentration camps were areas which were used to incarcerate political prisoners and opponents of the Nazis. Later on these were also used for Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally ill, amongst others. The Nazis got the idea for concentration camps from the British who used it during the second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. It should be noted that a distinction should be drawn between concentration camps and extermination camps. With concentration camps detainees were usually held there for a certain period of time and were forced to do work. In extermination camps (like Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec) new arrivals were simply killed on arrival and very few survived these. Camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek were combinations of concentration camps and extermination camps.

Answer 3

The six Nazi extermination camps were:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Sobibor
• Treblinka
• Majdanek
• Chelmno
• Belzec