Which of the Nazi Concentration Camps was the worst?

Answer 1

Auschwitz, of course!

Approximately 1.15 million people died there, about 85% of them Jews.

The Auschwitz Concentration Camp was the largest but...

The three most vicious of these camps were (in order): Treblinka (Poland), Belzec (Poland) & Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland). These rankings are determined by the approximate average number of murders per day of camp operation. This is freaking scary:

Treblinka = 1682.5 people killed each day (roughly 17 months of operation)

Belzec = 1315 people killed each day (15 months of operation)

Auschwitz-Birkenau = 850 people killed each day (58 months of operation).

_____

Auschwitz was in operation from May 1940 till January 1945, but only became an extermination camp in March 1942.

-----------------

Systematic gassing started in Auschwitz in December 1941 and ended in November 1944, they started with the small Krematoria I, expanded with bunkers I and II in Birkenau in early 1942 when Krematoria stopped, Krematorias II, III, IV and V opened over the spring on 1943 when the bunkers were shut down, bunker II was re-opened in the summer of 1944 at the peak of Auschwitz's operation.

___

All the Nazi extermination and concentration camps were appalling. Maly Trostinets near Minsk in Belarus had no known survivors and an estimated 50,000 killed. Belzec (not to be confused with Bergen-Belsen) killed 434,508 Jews - this was the Nazis' own figure - and had only two known survivors. At Majdanek the SS guards sometimes went on killing sprees and clubbed prisoners to death, just to amuse themselves ...

Answer 2

Auschwitz, which was a complex network of camps with 3 camps called Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Also it had 41 Subcamps. The worse satellite camps were; Trzebinia, Świętochłowice, Sosnowiec, Jaworzno, Rajsko, Buna, Siemianowice, Gliwice and Prudnik.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the death (extermination) camp, where the vast majority of those who died at the Auschwitz complex were killed. More recent scholarship puts the estimate of deaths at between 1.1 and 1.3 million total, with upwards of 1 million dying at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Older claims of 2-4 million deaths at this camp complex have been discarded as unreliable or impossible, and many of them were regarded with skepticism from the outset. In addition to the Birkenau extermination camp itself, the other Auschwitz camps were forced (slave) labor, working under horrible conditions and hideous treatment by guards.

Even at a conservative estimate of 1 million deaths, Auschwitz outpaced even other notorious extermination camps (Treblinka - up to 800,000 deaths).

___________

The answer to the question depends on what you regard as worst. Certainly, since about 1946 Auschwitz has had an iconic status that none of the other camps had. On the other hand, at Majdanek for example, the guards sometimes went on killing sprees, clubbing inmates to death. Maly Trostinets (in Belarus) has no known survivors at all. So, take your pick.

Answer 3

They were all bad, and thousands of people died in each one of them.

Some of the camps were work camps only. The average person was worked to death in about nine months in those.

A few of the camps were death factories, where people were sent to be immediately killed. Probably the worst of these was Auschwitz, in Poland. Twelve million people died in the German camps (including six million Jews), and about two million of these were murdered at Auschwitz.

Answer 4

That would depend on what your definition of "worst" consists of. The most Well-known are the collection of work camps alongside the infamous death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where forced laborers were in such close proximity to the notorious death factory, equipped with gas chamber showers and diesel-powered blast furnace-type crematoria that was running around the clock.

While the concentration camps themselves were not actual "death camps", there was plenty of misery, torture, fear, starvation and death in those "konzentrationzlagers"

Answer 5

Auschwitz-Birkenau claimed the most lives, however some Bergen-Belsen survivors say Belsen was worse because the inmates were killed immediately at Auschwitz, but death took weeks and months in Bergen-Belsen.

__________________

Almost any answer is going to be arbitrary as it depends on what you dread most. One of the most appalling camps was Mauthausen (in Austria), where the kapos (trusted prisoners) were mainly psychopaths. It was there that they made the prisoners, close together, carry heavy blocks of stone on their backs up a long stairway. The guards and kapos would sometimes give the prisoner at the top a hard push and often several prisoners would then fall backwards on to their blocks like dominoes. Despite the dreadful treatment, there were some survivors. At Majdanek the guards sometimes went on killing sprees, clubbing prisoners to death, but here too there were some survivors.

On the other hand, some of the extermination camps had no known survivors at all (such as Maly Trostinets, near Minsk). That may be one of the reasons why it is almost unknown. Belzec had only two (!) known survivors and 434, 508 killed (SS's own figures).

Answer 6

There wasn't necessarily a "worst" but some such as Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec were strictly extermination camps, where everyone was murdered, there were no survivors.