What is the difference between death camps and labor camps?

Answer 1

Although the British are said to have invented and used concentration camps in the Boer War, such camps are mainly associated with Nazi Germany.

The Nazis had four main types of camp:
The Stalags: prisoner-of-war camps
Labour camps: where slave labourers were housed
Concentration camps: interim holding camps
Extermination camps; where prisoners were murdered soon after arrival.

Some concentration camps also has extermination facilities such as gas chambers and incinerators.

British and Allied POWs were treated relatively well.
Russian and East European POWs were treated very badly, often being starved or murdered.
Slave labourers were treated sufficiently well to keep them useful to the Nazi state, but such workers did not last long before they became infirm and were shipped off for extermination.
In concentration camps, conditions were hell on earth.
In extermination camps, the poor victims did not have long to suffer before they were killed.

Answer 2

Death Camps (or extermination camps) were used for the immediate extermination of Jews and other groups while Concentration camps were used for the Jews and other groups to make products for the Nazi war machine.

In labour camps people were made to do work; often being mistreated and forced to do hard labour until they died. In death camps they were just killed when they arrived.

Concentration camp inmates were sent to work for a nearby industry. Labor camp inmates may have been treated a very little better than concentration camp inmates because they were useful. Labor camps were brutal in spite of the fact that the inmates were useful and large numbers died, but they were not designed to kill. Death camps, on the other hand, were designed purely for killing. This was their sole purpose and was where you'd find the large gas chambers, etc.

___

There were at least three different types of camps:

1. Extermination camps (often referred to as death camps). These camps were designed only to kill. The aim was to kill nearly all new arrivals within 24 hours. A very small number of new arrivals were selected to help with the killing process, for example by dragging dead bodies to the crematoria. These camps were run by the SS.

2. Concentration camps. These were very harsh punishment camps. The inmates had to work for the SS or were hired out as slave labour to German industry. These camps had a very high Death Rate and were also run by the SS.

3. Labor camps. These were for foreign workers, such as Ukrainians and Italians would were forced to work in Germany. The conditions were harsh, but generally better than in concentration camps. They were run by a variety of agencies.

Auschwitz was a vast complex of camps, with three on the main site and 45 satellite camps. The Auschwitz group combined the functions of types 1 and 2.