Nazi Concentration Camps

(a somewhat briefer and more concise answer):

Auschwitz I - was the original camp (mainly for political prisoners)

Birkenau (Auschwitz II) - was the expansion, mainly for Jews, where 99% of the Auschwitz gassings took place.

Monowitz (Auschwitz III) - built mainly for slave labour for the Buna works.

Auschwitz-Birkeanu was just one part of Auschitz.

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Yes, and no.

It is camp number II, or 2, of the Auschwitz complex, and is only slightly removed in distance from the first camp, the main Auschwitz I camp closer to the town of Osweicim. Executions and murders took place in both camps, though the main barracks for forced laborers seems to have been in Auschwitz II (Auschwitz Birkenau), while the main gas chambers seem to have run fulltime in camp I, or Auschwitz I.

Both camps had railyards for loading and unloading detainees and prisoners. Auschwitz II seemed much larger to me than Auschwitz I, when I was there. But much time has passed and it may be that parts of each camp have been given over to farming or businesses, over time.

The Polish word for the German name Auschwitz, is Osweicim (I am missing the accent marks over certain letters here, but if you Google either the German or Polish name, you will find it). The town existed before the camps did, but the town is now irretrievably linked with the camp's history. These 2 camps (plus clusters of officers' and other housing for camp workers and their families) were approximately 40 miles from Krakow (Cracow), Poland.

The camps were set amidst homes and farms, off a main road, about a 15 minute walk from the main train station, and the two camps are roughly 15-20 minutes walk from one another. The area was wooded, but was quickly deforested as the camps were being built; the camps were visible to and could be heard (and smelled by) townspeople and farmers in the area at the time, and also would have been visible to travelers going to and from the area by train.

I lived in Poland for 3 years, in Krakow, and often went to the different camps when there.

There were quite a few other camps in the area, not just these 2, and some were within 15 minutes walk or drive from Krakow city center itself; Podgorze ghetto, Plaszow camp, Skawina village, etc.

In Skawina (another close suburb of Krakow) were small, temporary forced labor camps and railroad sidings where prisoners and forced laborers were sent by train to the companies operating there, some of which are the same companies or subsidiaries of the same firms, which stayed open during and after the war.

Not all camps were built as, or were intended to be, killing camps. Some, the ones in Kliny/Borek Falenski (suburbs of Krakow now), were forced labor camps for captured POWs from the UK or US or France, or for Polish army AWOLs. Harsh treatment definitely happened there, forced labor, too, and very little food was given; deaths occurred, and plenty of other bad acts, but there were no gas chambers at many of these other camps nearby.

The camps did not completely disappear after the war. Some camp sites were later re-used in part, for labor or reeducation camps for Polish dissidents, anti-Communists. Some Jews who returned to the area after the conflict of WWII ended, who were later thrown out of the country in the 1940s and again in the 1960s, were sent to these places to await being evicted from the country. However, during those periods, they were run more like jails or way stations and less like the killing camps they were during the war. The worst act was the forced evictions themselves, where those who returned were sent away with nothing, and their Polish passports and lands were stripped from them.

There were 6 camps similar to Auschwitz throughout the country; many more existed, but were not considered extermination camps, where the goal was to kill most or all of those sent there. Many were forced labor or reeducation camps, and some were de facto jails for dissidents, where not much forced labor occurred. In all, I think there were approximately 16-20 camps in Occupied Poland being run by the Germans, and which were manned by Poles or neighboring Ukrainians or Czechs, at times.

None of the conditions were good. All of the people who survived them suffered greatly. The camps which do still exist are sad, dark places to visit, and do reflect that sad past, but it is encouraging that people are trying to properly restore and maintain what they can. Many of the exhibits in the camps are deteriorating rapidly, because of poorly handled restoration efforts long ago, or due to no preservation efforts being made at all.

Vandals and homeless people often attack and deface the walls, gates, statues and open grassy areas within the gates of these places. The main gate sign to Auschwitz I was removed and cut into pieces a few years ago, and hidden away by thieves, but it has been returned and is now repaired. Plaszow, particularly, has been hard hit by vandals with litter, graffiti and people destroying signs, gates and fences, and homeless people and unemployed youth hanging out, drinking and setting fires in the caves on the site.

If you ever visit the areas, be sure and see all that you can while you can, as there is a concerted effort ongoing there, to open up more camp land for road and home building, and farming, and in some places, very little effort is being extended to preserve what is left.

Arbeitsdorf was a concentration camp established by the Nazis in 1942. In 1936, a German car engineer named Ferdinand Porche designed a prototype of a car that would be affordable enough for all Germans to buy. He showed his idea to the then dictator of Germany, Adolf Hitler. Hitler liked his idea and ordered the manufacture of the car which was known as the KDF-Wagen or later known as the Volkswagen vehicle. With Hitler's approval, Porche and his partner Albert Speer set up a factory in Fallersleben, a town 30 miles northeast of the city of Braunschweig, and because of the war, all production from this camp was to be used for military purposes only. In 1942, Porche and Speer started a project to see how to use concentration camp prisoners for the benefit of their industry. So on April 8, 1942, a new camp, Arbeitsdorf, was opened to produce the KDF-Wagen for cheaper and large-scale production. On October 11, 1942, six months after the camp was first established, production of the vehicles was stopped and the camp was closed. A minimum of 600 prisoners perished at Arbeitsdorf.

Dachau was liberated by the US Army on 29 April 1945.

There were camps to concentrate people on both sides during WWII, in German and Japanese controlled areas, as well as in Soviet Union, North America and United Kingdom.

While the Nazi concentration camps not only included prisoners of war and delinquents, they also were used to have civilians for slave labour or extermination, mainly Jews, Poles and other ethnic groups, political dissidents and handicapped people etc.

The hundreds of UK camps were probably amongst the best regarding to the Genève convention and other international laws, with a high survival rate, much better than Soviet. The camps weren't generally used for political prisoners.

The USA, by contrast, interned lots of Japanese born people in concentration camps, which was much debated as unconstitutional.

Note: the British invented the term "concentration camp" for keeping African people detained, but the Germans adopted it from 1933 and made the most use of the word. The Allies preferred to talk about camps for POW, but there was slave labour in many of them, and complaints about bad treatment of the detainees.

Auschwitz and Dachau have been preserved as museums. Some parts of Buchenwald are still standing and are a memorial site.

Hitler.

There were 20,000 concentration camps, ghettos and labor camps throughout Europe with the largest amount being in Germany. Not all of the camps and ghettos were designed or designated to be "murder camps". So they did not all have the same amount of deaths per month as you ask about. I have heard from historians who estimated that at the beginning of the incarceration of the Jews and undesirable people there were thousands who were killed each month or year. Towards the end of the war they guesstimate there were 70,000 deaths a month throughout Europe but that is not a solid figure. If you need the exact averages during certain years or months the United States Memorial Museum of the Holocaust could possibly supply you with those figures. See the link below.

He had no choice. He (and many other Jews) were forced into many camps like this by the Nazis and Hitler.

Anne Frank got to the concentration camp because she was hiding in the secret, little cupboard above the stairs somebody from the company that was working in the building below snitched on them and so they were caught by the Germans. Then the were taken to the Concentration Camps in trucks. This is where she died.

Auschwitz hasn't actually been destroyed. It's still there and is a museum visted by thousands of people a year.

There are two parts to Auschwitz. There's the original camp (the one that has the famous Arbeit Macht Frei sign over the gate) and there's a newer one (Birkenau) which has the famous railway line leading into and under the main gate tower.

Birkenau was where the most killings were done and it's there that the main gas chanbers and crematoria were blown up by the Germans at the end of the war to destroy evidence. So to that extent you are right in asking why Auschwitz was destroyed, but be aware that only a small part of it was.

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The main site at Auschwitz (that is Auschwitz I, II and III) was liberated on 27 January 1945.

Please also see the related question.

No. Well, it was at first, but as Hitler progressed he sent many more people to camps. (Disabled, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jews, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and a incredible amount more.)

He did all this because Hitler thought they were not perfect, and Hitler wanted a perfect Germany.

Both the Axis powers and the allies used concentration camps of different sizes during WWII.

There were at least 1200 in German controlled areas, and hundreds under each rule, ran by Japanese, Russians, British and US military/authorities.

The biggest known camp in Europe was Auschwitz II-Birkenau, that was an extermination camp, with over 100000 living in the camp.

In small camp there could be only dozens of prisoners.

Many of them were desperately ill and malnourished and the Allies' attempts to restore them to good health were not always successful.

Auschwitz is the German name for the Polish town of Oswiecim, which is about 42 miles west of Krakow. The notorious concentration and extermination camps (actually a vast complex of camps) was well outside the town and surrounded by an exclusion zone while the camp was in operation.

Mauthausen was liberated May 5, 1945 by the American 11th Armored Division.

It is estimated that about 1.5 million Jews were left in Europe at the end of World War II. About 50,000 were interned at the end of the war. Many had escaped when the Nazis abandoned the camps.

The modern concentration camp was actually created in the Boer War of

1899-1902. In an effort to restrain and subdue the Afrikaners from their

persistent guerrilla tactics, the British established tent camps to house the

families of the Boers whose farms were burned. Incompetence, the lack

of adequate health care and unsanitary conditions led to the death of no

less than 20,000 persons. It was not the intended outcome.

Large sections of Auschwitz I and II have been preserved as a museum.

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It is at the end of the railway line at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) between where Krematoria II and Krematoria III stood.

About 190,000 People died at Auschwitz I during the Holocaust.

Treblinka II was the main extermination camp after Auschwitz II (Birkenau). An estimated 850,000 Jews were slaughtered there and only about 40-45 survived.

From an estimated 100,000 deported to the camps, 16,000 of whom were women, approximately 30,000 people died within the Flossenbürg camp system - or on one of the death marches that left the camps toward the end of the war.

The distance between Warsaw and Auschwitz is 312km(192miles) by car.

They had to work. They got whatever job was assigned to them. Some people were forced to help the Germans weed out the people that were unfit to work (who were then killed), others were block guards.... some people sorted the clothes of murdered Jews, shaved the bodies and heads, packed the hair into bags to be sent to Germany to be made into mattresses. There were some whose job it was to calm the people who were arriving on the transports, and usher them down the lane to the gas chambers, and then to pull the bodies from the gas chambers to the crematory.