Nazi Concentration Camps

I believe that would be Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka. Dachau was the oldest but never did the (excuse me for using this term) volume that these three handled. Sobibor was closed after the successful escape. But do not forget that each of the main camps had feeder camps located near them. So even though there are several well known (or should I say infamous) camps, there were many more in the system that most people do not know about. When I visited Dachau, they had a display showing how this feeder system worked, and that was the first time I had ever heard of it.

The largest camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau, established in 1940.

It's useful to distinguish between extermination (death) camps, which existed almost only for the purpose of killing, and other concentration camps.

The extermination camps were:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau (part of the Birkenau section, but often just referred to as Auschwitz)

• Majdanek (which was also the site of an 'ordinary' concentration camp)

• Chelmno (aka as Kulmhof)

• Treblinka

• Belzec

• Sobibor

All these camps were in Poland.

Maly Trostenets, in Berlarus, was also an extermination camp. Most of the other camps were 'ordinary' camps. The really large numbers were killed at the extermination (death) camps.

An 'ordinary' concentration camp - not talked about much in Western Europe - with a very high death toll was Stutthof, near Gdansk (Danzig) Poland. About 65,000 inmates persished there and at its various sub-camps. Bergen-Belsen had a death toll of about 50,000.

Sometimes the terms concentration camp and extermination (or death) camp are, misleadingly, used interchangeably. The sole purpose of extermination camps (death camps) was to kill (usually by gassing).

Most larger concentration camps had several satellite or sub-camps. There were also several small, temporary concentration camps. If one includes all these as well as transit camps and the small number of specialized camps (for example for unruly children), the Nazis ran a total of nearly 1,500 concentration camps in Germany and German-occupied countries. (It is not possible to list them all here, but under the answer there is a link to a full list). For these purposes a concentration camp is a one run by the SS (or in 1933-34) the SA.

Concentration camps were:

1. Punishment and deterrent camps (for example, for Communists, socialists, liberals and other political opponents of the Nazi regime, later also for 'antisocial elements' and homosexuals).
2. Forced labour camps, where many Jews and others were worked to death on grossly inadequate food.
3. For resistance members.

• The first permanent concentration camp was Dachau, located near Munich (22 March 1933).
• Oranienburg, near Berlin, opened the day after Dachau.
• Sachsenhausen (near Berlin)
• Buchenwald is also located in Germany, near Weimar.
• Ravensbrueck (women's camp), North Germany.
• Mauthausen-Gusen (Austria)
• Neuengamme, near Hamburg.
• Flossenbuerg in Bavaria, near the Czech border.
• Bergen-Belsen near Hanover.
• Dora-Mittelbau (originally a satellite camp of Buchenwald)
• Stutthof (near Danzig)
• Gross Rosen
• Plaszow (near Krakow)
• Natzweiler (Alsace)

In addition, there were transit camps, where prisoners were held till they could be sent elsewhere.

• Auschwitz-Birkenau (= Auschwitz II - part only)
• Belzec
• Chelmno
• Majdanek (part only: it was used as a 'back-up' facility when other camps were killing at full capacity. The role of this camp is being looked at again by some Holocaust historians)
• Sobibor
• Treblinka II

These extermination camps were all in Poland.

In addition, Maly Trostenets (near Minsk, Belarus) and Bronnaya Gora (also in Belarus) were extermination camps, but they are not well known as there are no known survivors.

The Auschwitz group of camps and Majdanek were 'dual purpose' camps: they had sections that functioned as extremely brutal hard labour camps, and also a section that was an extermination (death camp). In fact, Auschwitz-Birkenau (also called Auschwitz II) was the largest death camp of all.

The death toll in 'ordinary' concentration camps was high, but over 80% of the inmates of Dachau (a concentration camp) emerged alive; however, Belzec (an extermination camp where 434,500 Jews and an unknown number of Roma and others were gassed) had only two(!) known survivors. There was a real difference.

The number of 'ordinary' camps main camps was about 24. If one includes all the satellite camps and temporary camps, the total was a staggering 1,500 camps. (There is a link below, giving the full list compiled by the Federal German Ministry of Justice. Many of them are not well known in Western Europe and the U.S. However, the last column gives the main camp (or Stammlager) to which the various smaller camps were attached).

In addition, there were transit and collection camps, where people were held temporarily until the SS had a train load of victims to send on to other camps. There were also a few camps for 'unruly' and 'difficult' children aged 12+ (later 8+).

Note the German Wikipedia list (click link below), which is very thorough and includes the early camps, many of which were shut down later, such as Columbia-Haus, Berlin. In addition, in 1967 the Federal German Ministry of Justice compiled a list of all concentration camps - and the total comes to about 1,500. (See link below).

Towards the end of the war conditions in most concentration camps deteriorated sharply.

Have a look at Martin Gilbert's Atlas of the Holocaust.

Please see the related questions.
The name of concentration camps were Auschwitz.

Since 1945-46, the most commonly quoted figure for the total number of Jews killed has been an estimate of approximately six million. This figure, first given at the Nuremberg Tribunal, has been broadly confirmed by later research.

The Holocaust commemoration center, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, comments:

There is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The figure commonly used is the six million established by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 and repeated later by Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official. Most research confirms that the number of victims was between five and six million. Early calculations range from 5.1 million (Professor Raul Hilberg) to 5.95 million (Jacob Leschinsky). More recent research, by Professor Yisrael Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, estimates the Jewish losses at 5.59-5.86 million, and a study headed by Dr. Wolfgang Benz presents a range from 5.29-6.2 million. The main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar censuses with postwar censuses and population estimates. Nazi documentation containing partial data on various deportations and murders is also used. We estimate that Yad Vashem currently has somewhat more than four million names of victims that are accessible.

Raul Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews, estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from "Ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings"; and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000". Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they typically include only those deaths for which some records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment. British historian Martin Gilbert used a similar approach in his "Atlas of the Holocaust", but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.

One of the most authoritative German scholars of the Holocaust, Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, cites between 5.3 and 6.2 million Jews killed in Dimension des Völkermords (1991), while Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett estimate between 5.59 and 5.86 million Jewish victims in the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (1990).

There were about 9.4 million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by the Nazis. (Some uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The 6 million killed in the Holocaust thus represent about 64% of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, over 90 percent were killed. The same proportion were killed in Latvia and Lithuania, but most of Estonia's Jews were evacuated in time. In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed. More than 50 percent were killed in Belgium, Hungary and Romania. It is likely that a similar proportion were killed in Belarus and Ukraine, but these figures are less certain. Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy and Norway. Finally, of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived. Although many German Jews emigrated before 1939, the majority of these fled to Czechoslovakia, France or the Netherlands, from where they were later deported to their deaths.

The number of people killed at the major extermination camps is estimated as follows:

Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1.4 million; Belzec: 500,000; Chelmno: 152,000; Majdanek: 78,000; Maly Trostinets: 65,000; Sobibór: 250,000; and Treblinka: 870,000.

This gives a total of over 3.3 million; of these, 90% are estimated to have been Jews. These seven camps alone thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.

In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent. Another 800,000 to 1 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the Einsatzgruppen killings were frequently undocumented). Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary before they could be deported.

An estimated 170,000 to 360,000 persons of 22 nationalities (chiefly Jews, Russians, and Poles) died there.

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The most recent estimate - by the research staff at the Majdanek Museum - is about 79,000. (Those very high figures above were issued by the Soviet Union shortly after the war and are unsupported by solid evidence). Please see the link.

Pretty simple. People would have to board trains cartsthat would be crowded with hundreds shoved inside and stay on for hours with no food. Many would die on the ride there and once they arrived to the "unknown destination" which was the death camp, many would meet their deaths while a portion of healthy ones would be allowed to live for a couple of weeks having to deal with back breaking labor.

*The person who controlled the trains and made sure they were running non-stop was the high ranking Nazi official or S.S. man Adolf Eichmann. He is responsible for sending millions of people to their deaths. He met his own death at the Nuremberg Trials in Israel where he was hanged for the murderous crimes he's committed through his Nazi career.

yes

Not everyone survived-actually only a few did. Some were sent to a concentration camp against their will. To get to the camp most people had to go on a 4-9 day train ride. Most people died on the way to the camp.

You may want to look and read the Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolsen for more and deeper infromation... Thanks for reading!!

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The kind of camp that one was sent to was crucially important. The chances of survival at an extermination camp were very remote indeed. For example, there are only 2 (yes, two) known survivors from Belzec, an extermination camp, and 434,508 Jews and an unknown number of Romanies (gypsies) were slaughtered there. (This is the only extermination camp for which a precise figure for the number of Jews killed is available).

The chances of survival at an 'ordinary' concentration camp, such as Dachau or Buchenwald, were better. Other key factors included state of health on arrival and the kind of work one had to do in the camps.

Some well known survivors include:

• Elie Wiesel - Auschwitz and Buchenwald, probably best known for his book Night.
• Eugen Kogon - Buchenwald, best known for his book on concentration camps entitled The Theory and Prcatice of Hell.
• Jean Amery - Auschwitz, author.
• Primo Levi - Auschwitz, author, best known for If This is a Man.
• Esther Bejarano - Auschwitz, musician. She later founded a small group called Coincidence that sings songs from the Jewish ghettos.

In most cases there were special circumstances that enabled them to survive. For example, Esther Bejarano was recruited into the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, which was given adequate food by the SS, so that it could function, so that it could play when the women were marched off to work in the mornings - and, most macabre of all, during executions.

Auschwitz was infamous in all respects but one. The Sonderkommando Revolt in October of 1944 when the crematoria was destroyed by the prisoners. This was an act of resistance and defiance in the face of certain death that can be considered as a unique event in human history.

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The Sonderkommandos at Treblinka and Sobibor also revolted - in 1943 - and about 70 prisoners from Sobibor and 50 from Treblinka were still alive at the end of World War 2.

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Because it was a notoriously diabolical concentration camp during ww2. They committed mass murder, genocide upon thousands of Jewish people.

• It was the biggest Nazi complex of camps (including 45 sub-camps).
• The Birkenau section (Auschwitz II) included the biggest the Nazi extermination camp, with the highest death toll of all.
• A number of prisoners, especially from Auschwitz III, the Auschwitz Women's Camp and some sub-camps, survived and wrote about their experiences. The best known of these are probably Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi.