THE CAMPS

Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, more than half were systematically exterminated in the highly rationalized gas chamber/crematorium system of the Nazi Death Camps between 1942 and 1945. The names of Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzek and Majdanek are indelibly stamped on history. Following the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, January 20, 1942, the "Final Solution" was an official policy and a major obsession of the Nazi regime. It was at that point that camps were constructed for the express purpose of rational mass extermination, principally of Jews, but of other groups as well.

Map of Nazi Concentration and Death Camps

Almost immediately following his rise to power, Hitler began the creation of concentration camps. Initially these were designed to incarcerate political prisoners (enemies of the regime), criminals and security risks. While conditions were, predictably, horrible in these camps, and while the death rates were high, there is no evidence that they were used for extermination purposes. By the late 1930s there were literally hundreds of camps scattered throughout Germany and with the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Holland and France, camps were established throughout the Reich. The death rates were so high, from malnutrition, typhus and exhaustion that the disposal of corpses became a serious problem.

In Dachau, one of the largest camps in Germany proper, crematoria were constructed for disposal of corpses. There was also a gas chambers constructed at Dachau; however, there is no evidence to this point that they were ever used for extermination. Presumably, the crematoria displayed on the left were used for disposing of the corpses of those who perished from other causes. There were other execution devices at Dachau, such as a gallows, and presumably prisoners were executed and disposed of there.

Two important precedents for the death camps deserve attention: The Nazi Euthanasia Project and the Aschaffenburg concentration camp.

The T-4 camouflage organization created for the medical killing of mental and physical defectives defines by the Nazi government as undesirable was also known as the Reich Work Group of Sanitoriums and Nursing Homes [Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil und Pflegeanstalten]. It operated from the Berlin Chancellery, at Tiergartenstrasse 4, hence the "T4" code name. The program was rationalized as the elimination of "life unworthy of life."

This program paved the way for the Holocaust in several important ways. First, it had the effect of legitimizing government-sponsored killing. In keeping with the Nazi emphasis on racial purity, eugenics and national health, euthanasia was presented as a necessary program for eliminating those who carried defective genetic materials which might endanger the quality of the "Aryan" stock.

Second, it was the beginning stage in the corruption of the German medical profession. Robert J. Lifton [Nazi Doctors] asks the question: How did a profession committed to healing, the protection of human life and the relief of human suffering become part of the Nazi killing machine? The apparent answer to this question is that it was a gradual process, a "slippery slope" which began with the Euthanasia Programme of "mercy killing" and resulted in the full scale involvement of some members of the medical profession in the mass extermination of Jews and others in the Nazi death camps.

Third, the T-4 program was crucial in developing the technology which would later be applied to mass murder. Euthanasia centers, such as the ones at Hadamar and Brandenburg were equipped with gas chambers (using carbon monoxide) and crematoria.

For additional information on the T-4 program and for statistical details regarding the number of victims of this program see The Euthanasia Programme .

A second crucial development in the emergence of the death camps was a series of events which occurred at the Aschaffenburg concentration camp - located at Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. In 1933 a group of SS men killed a number of Jews at the camp and were arrested by local authorities. SS officials insisted that their men were not subject to civil authority. Himmler demanded that no charges be brought against the men. This decision set a precedent for future mass murder in the concentration and extermination camps." (cf. Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, New York: Paragon House,1989).

The Nazi Extermination Camps

This essay is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the death camps; only the major ones. Additionally, an attempt is made here to put the major camps in chronological order in terms of their construction and the implementation of procedures for mass murder.

The Rationalization of Murder

A clear distinction must be observed between the death camps, or killing centers, and the concentration camps. In some sense, all of the concentration camps, and there were hundreds of them, were death camps in that thousands of inmates died of starvation, being worked to death, exposure to the elements, epidemics and disease, or simply being executed for alleged crimes. However, the camps are classified on the basis of their primary, or intended, function. Many of the camps were established early in the Nazi regime under the "Protective Custody" law of February 28, 1933 which authorized the police to make arrests on suspicion of criminal activity and incarcerated without benefit of legal counsel or trial. The first such camp was created at Dachau near Munich in the south (1933). In that same year, Buchenwald was established near Weimar in the central part of Germany and Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, in the north. Additional camps were constructed between 1934 and 1941 as the need for them rapidly increased. The first inmates of these camps were Communists, democrats, socialists, political criminals, homosexuals and, of course, Jews.

Some camps, however, were specifically equipped for mass killing by means of gas chambers and crematoria for disposing of the remains. As noted below, several methods were utilized. In the earlier camps, exhaust fumes from truck engines, or tank engines, were pumped into sealed gassing vans, sealed railroad cars, or specially constructed gas chambers. In some of the later camps, Zyklon-B pellets were used. In Stutthof, lethal injections were used to kill sick prisoners. None of these methods completely supplanted shootings, hangings and fatal beatings.

At the turn of the century, German sociologist, Max Weber, called attention to the dominant process underlying western culture - rationalization. In Weber's view, the economic revolution and the Industrial Revolution combined to produce the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The driving force underlying both was rationalism - a quest for and the implementation of the most rational means for goal achievement. In order for capitalism and industrialization to reach their goals, a system of production and organization would emerge based on the principles of efficiency, predictability, calculability and control. The emergent result of this driving force is the bureaucracy.

While Weber certainly recognized the importance and the positive potentialities of rationalization, he also recognized its dangerous potential to erode individual liberties and to dehumanize. Weber feared the long range consequences of a process which focused exclusively on means-end rationality to the exclusion of any concern with the human element of social organization. He expressed these fears in his concept of the "Iron Cage of Rationality," i.e., a process so rational that (a) it is irrational and (b) creates an inevitable cage from which there is no escape.

Contemporary sociologist, George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society, 1996, has extended Weber's analysis to virtually every segment of modern society (the fast food industry, education, health care, child care, recreation and the work place). In a particularly penetrating analysis, Ritzer applies this analysis to the Holocaust. Drawing upon Weber and Holocaust scholar, Zigmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989, Ritzer argues that the Holocaust displays all the characteristics of rationality: efficiency, predictability, calculabibility, control and the ultimate dehumanization of its victims by treating death as a unit of production.

The experiences of the Einsatzgruppen and the mobile gas vans served as the impetus for the Nazis to seek a more rational and efficient killing process.

Timeline for Nazi Extermination Camps

(The above dates mark the beginning of mass extermination rather than beginning of construction)

*These three camps were components of Aktion Rhinehard

Chelmno

Chelmno was a Nazi extermination camp in Poland on the river Ner, 37 M (60 KM) from Lodz. The Germans called it Kulmhof. The village of Chelmno in the district of Kolo is situated 8 M (14 KM) from the town of Kolo. A railway line from Lodz to Poznan runs through this town and is connected with the village of Chelmno with a branch line. Lodz is the second largest city of Poland, and in 1939 had a Jewish population of over two hundred thousand. The camp constructed there was used for the mass extermination of Jews from the Western Polish provinces which had been annexed by the Third Reich.

Under the command of Hauptsturmfuhrerer Herbert Lange, Jews transported to Cholmno were forced, or inticed, into vans, the doors were closed and latched and the motors were started. A hose carried the carbon monoxide fumes into the van. It usually required 10 or 15 minutes to murder all who were in the van. The driver then drove the bodies to the pre-dug graves in the forest where Jewish workers unloaded the bodies into the graves. The van then returned to the camp and the operation was repeated.

Estimates of the number of people killed at Chelmno vary from 170,000 to 360,000 men, women and children, virtually all Jews. Most authroities agree on the higher estimate. Despite this large number, few people in Poland or abroad ever knew of its existence, or were aware of the hundreds of thousands of victims it claimed. The camp was closed in 1943 but reopened in April, 1944. Late in 1944 there were plans to shut down the camp; however, Soviet troops arrived before these plans could be implemented. As the Soviet troops advanced, SS guards liquidated the remaining prisoners.

During 1962-63, twelve former SS officers who had served as guards in Chelmno were brought to trial in Bonn, Germany. All were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging form 1 to 20 years.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Easily the most notorious of all the killing centers, Auschwitz-Birkenau had a dual function: a concentration camp where inmates were used as forced labor and an extermination center. The main camp. The town of Auschwitz (Polish: Oswiecim) is located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, in Eastern Upper Silesia, which was annexed to Nazi Germany following the defeat of Poland, in September, 1939 and the site of the most notorious Nazi death camp. Auschwitz was at the center of several major Polish cities, and was, therefore, ideal for the shipping of prisoners from German occupied Europe.

There were eventually three camps at Auschwitz. The first camp was built, on orders from Heinrich Himmler, shortly after Poland's defeat, in a suburb of Oswiecim and was designed to hold about 10,000 political prisoners.

Upon entering the gates of Auschwitz I, the prisoners saw over the main entrance the words; "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work will make you free). These words were to promote the false hope that hard work by the prisoners would result in their freedom. Indeed the camp, and later the "Buna" of Auschwitz III, made extensive use of slave labor; however, death was the only real escape.

Auschwitz I held the commandant's office and living quarters, the administration building, kitchen, infirmary, the main guard station, one gas chamber and crematorium, the Gestapo camp, medical experiments center and gallows. Barracks housed the criminals in the camp. These barracks held the "court rooms" where the prisoners were "tried" and usually sentenced to death. The execution area was located in the southwest corner of the camp and was used for carrying out the sentences by lining the prisoners against the wall and shooting them. Their bodies were placed in gravel pits in and around the main camp. Auschwitz I was surrounded by double barbed wire electric fences and nine watch towers.

Auschwitz also became a location for medical experiments that used humans as the guinea pigs. Most notorious of the doctors of these experiments was Josef Mengele whose favorite experiments were on twins. Experiments were also done on dwarfs. Hypothermia experiments were carried out using Gypsies as the primary subjects.

The second site, known as Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, was located 1.5 miles from the original camp. Construction began in October 1941. Rudolf Hoess was named the commandant of the camp. Under his command, the main goal of the camp was the extermination and elimination of all the prisoners. Auschwitz III, also known as Monoschwitz, consisted of a small area that contained the subcamp and the "buna." The main function of this sector was the production of synthetic fuel and rubber. As a result of expansion of the main Auschwitz camp in October 1942, Auschwitz III also was utilized for holding prisoners. The main focus of this essay is upon Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

More than any of the killing centers in the Nazi system, Auschwitz exemplifies the rationalization of murder. It was most efficient camp established by the Nazi regime for carrying out the "Final Solution." The total number of Jewish dead in Auschwitz-Birkenau will never be known for certain for most were not registered. Estimates vary between one and two and a half million. The estimates in the following chart are the most widely accepted. Auschwitz - How Many Were Murdered?

                                 Gassed on       Registered Prisoners                             Total
Nationality                  Arrival             Total             Died             Survived           Deaths

Jews	890,000	205,000	95,000	110,000	985,000
Poles	10,000	137,000	64,000	73,000	74,000
Romany	2,000	2,000	21,000	2,000	21,000
Soviet POWs	3,000	12,000	12,000	-------	15,000
Other	25,000	12,000	13,000		13,000

Totals                 905,000           400,000         202,000         198,000      1,208,000

Construction on Auschwitz-Birkenau began in October, 1941 and was completed in March, 1942 although one provisional gas chamber, in a converted farmhouse, went into operation in January 1941. When these experiments proved inadequate, four large Krema, each containing a disrobing area, a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed between March and June, 1943. The crematories and gas chamber equipments, constructed by Hoch und Tiefbau AG Kattowitz, were delivered by the Erfurt firm J.A. Topf & sons. At it's peak, more than 20.000 people could be murdered and their bodies burned in a single day. In fact, the single day highest output was 24,000.

Jews comprised the largest number of victims; at least one-third of the estimated 5 million to 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II died there. For this reason, Auschwitz has come to symbolize Holocaust more vividly than any other symbol. In addition to the Jews, however, large numbers of Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, and homosexuals also died at Auschwitz.

During peak operation from March, 1942 until November, 1944, trains arrived almost daily with transports of Jews from all over occupied Europe. On the unloading ramp, new arrivals would undergo selection (selektion) by SS officers .Most women, children, and those that looked unfit to work were sent to the left; while most young men and others that were fit would be sent to the right. The left line meant immediate death at the gas chambers and the right meant probable death from hard forced labor. The selection split families - mothers from their children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters.

Those selected for forced labor were sent to a part of the camp called the "quarantine, " where their heads were shaved and the were issued prison uniforms before being sent one of the labor camps nearby. These prisoners were registered and received numbers tattooed on their left arm. Initially the numbers were tattooed on the left side of the chest. Approximately 405,000 prisoners were registered in this way. The vast majority of the Auschwitz victims were not registered at all, those men and women who, upon arrival Auschwitz II, were led to the gas chambers and killed there immediately. Only about 65,000 of the tattooed inmates survived the camp experience.

Arrivals at the complex were separated into three groups. One group went to the gas chambers within a few hours; these people were sent to the Birkenau camp, where more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day. At Birkenau, Zyklon-B, a cyanide gas originally manufactured for pest-control. Before the bodies were burned the victim's hair was cut off and gold fillings and false teeth made of precious metals were removed. The hair was used for making haircloth, and the metals were melted into bars and sent to Berlin. After the liberation tons of hair were found in camp warehouses. Laboratory analysis of the hair conducted byThe Kracow Institute of Judicial Expertise found traces of prussic acid, a poisonous component typical of Zyklon -- proof that the victims were gassed..

A second group of prisoners were used as slave labor at large industrial factories for such companies as I. G. Farben and Krupp. Some prisoners survived through the help of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who diverted them from Auschwitz to his factory near Krakow and later at a factory in what is now the Czech Republic.

A third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the hands of doctors such as Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death." Eva Moses Kor, a survivor of Mengele's twin studies, remarked: "I was not on Schindler's list; however, I was on Mengele's list. And it was better to be on Mengele's list than on no list at all."

At the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were recorded as laborers between 1940 and 1945. Of these about 340,000 perished through executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness.

When the SS realized that the end of the war was near, they attempted to remove all evidence of the atrocities committed there. They dismantled the gas chambers, crematories and other buildings. They burned documents and evacuated all the prisoners who could walk to the interior of Germany. When the Soviet army marched into Auschwitz to liberate the camp on January 27, 1945, they found about 7600 survivors abandoned there. More than 58,000 prisoners had already been evacuated by the Nazis and sent on a final death march to Germany.

In 1946 Poland founded a museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in remembrance of its victims. By 1994, about 22 million visitors-700,000 annually-had passed through the iron gates that bear the cynical motto Arbeit macht frei (work makes one free).

Belzek

A few months after Poland was partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Germans established a forced labor facility in the Polish town of Belzek in the Lublin District. Jews began arriving at Belzek from Lublin and the towns and villages in the area in late May, 1940. By the mid-August the camp housed 11,000. Conditions were deplorable and inmated died by the thousands died from overwork, starvation, disease and execution.

By mid-March, 1942, the decision was made to convert the camp into a killing center under the command of Odilo Globocnic, the police commander of Lublin. Globocnic also established the killing centers at Majdanek and Sobibor.. The Nazis began deporting Jews from Poland and later from the German Reich, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. For the first few months, extermination was accomplished by using diesel fumes; by August 1942 Zyklon-B (hydrocyanic acid fumes) gas was used experimentally. The gas proved to be so effective that it was also used at other death camps. Several former participants in the T-4 Euthanasie Program,most notably Christian Wirth, were instrumental in the planning and implementation of the death camps.

The corpses of the victims were stripped of any valuables (rings, gold fillings, etc.) and buried in nearby mass graves. Extermination ceased in late 1942 and early the next year the bodies were exhumed and cremated and the camp was closed. Germans were re-settled to the site for agricultural work. It is estimated that more than six hundred thousand persons died at Belzec, including two thousand non-Jews.

Sobibor

Sobibor extermination camp was built in March, 1942, in a forest near the village of Sobibór in eastern Poland, on the Bug River. Initially, the camp was assigned to SS-Obersturmfuhrer, Richard Thomella. In April he was replaced by Obersturmfuhrer Franz Stangl. With the assistance of Christian Wirth, Stangl expanded the camp and its killing capacity. In August, Stangl was transferred to Treblinka and was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Franz Reichleitner. The camp operated from May 1942 until October 1943. Its five gas chambers killed an approximate total of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews. Most came from Poland and from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union, Slovakia and Western Europe (Bohemia, Moravia, Holland and France.

Though it was the smallest of the Aktion Rhinehard camps, Sobibor gained popular national attention with the release of the 1987 made-for-television movie "Escape From Sobibor." The facts of the event are fairly depicted. On October 14, 1943 about 300 Jewish inmates assigned to Sondercommando duties carried out a well-planned revolt. Several SS and Ukrainian guards were killed along with several of the inmates. Those who escaped fled to the surrounding area

Very few historic facts remain concerning this extermination camp. On 14 October 1943 about three hundred Jewish inmates assigned to the Sondercommando - special work assignment group at the camp rose in revolt killing several SS supervisors and Ukrainian guards. Several inmates were killed during the rebellion or during the escape attempt. The number of inmates who managed to escape is not certain but all who stayed behind were shot the next day. Following the revolt, the installations for mass extermination were destroyed and the area planted with trees. Only about fifty prisoners of Sobibor survived to tell their story to the world.

Treblinka

Treblinka was one of the most important extermination centers during WW II. It was located between the Polish towns of Siedlce and Malkinia, 62 miles northeast of Warsaw, Poland. Construction on the camp began in late May, 1942 and was ready for operation in July, 1942. The construction was carried out by Jewish and Polish slave labor under the direction of the SS. It was located about one and a half miles from the railway station.

Between July 1942 to September 1942, three hundred thousand Jews were transported from Warsaw to Treblinka. Later, in May of 1943, the entire population of the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated and most were transported to Treblinka. By July 11,1945, when Soviet troops entered Warsaw, more than 700,000 Jewish men, women, and children had been murdered at Treblinka.

Under the command of Franz Stangl, the killing process at Treblinka was very similar to that of Belzek and Sobibor. Upon their arrival by railway freight cars, the victims at Treblinka II were separated by sex and adults from children. They were told that they were being transported to other work camps but first they had to bathe and be disinfected. They were stripped of their clothing and other possessions, marched into buildings containing "bathhouses," and gassed with carbon monoxide poison produced by diesel engines and pumped in through ceiling pipes camouflaged as shower heads. The route from the selection area to the gas chambers passed through a narrow fenced-in passage known as "the tube." Many realized that they were going to their death and, when they resisted, were beaten, clubbed with rifle butts and whips by the camp staff. In September, 1942, several new and larger gas chambers were constructed.

The staff at both Treblinka was made up of about 40 SS officers and 150 Ukrainian guards. They made extensive use of Jewish prisoners called Sonderkommandos - special work units. When these workers became too weak to do their work they were killed and replaced by younger and stronger inmates. Their job included the removal of gold teeth, dentures, and other valuables from the corpses. They were forced to transport the corpses to mass graves for burial, and later, when the bodies were exhumed, were used to burn the victim's bodies on iron grates.

On August 2, 1943 a planned rebellion by a Sonderkommando group occurred. Several Ukrainian guards and one SS officer were killed and more than 200 hundred inmates escaped. Most were hunted down and killed or recaptured. Despite its failure, the rebellion and subsequent escape from Treblinka is a testimonial to the courage of the inmates and their resistance accelerated the closure of the camp. The facilities at Treblinka were closed at the end of November, 1943. In 1967, Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, was arrested in Brazil and extradited to the Germany. In December, 1970, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of 400,000 people. He died in prison the following June. .

Majdanek

The German concentration camp at Majdanek was originally constructed on the outskirts of Lublin in October, 1941 as a prisoner-of-war camp. The camp was constructed by prison labor -- mostly Polish and Soviet prisoners of war. Even in its first year of operation the camp housed mostly Jewish inmates. Unlike Belzek and Sobibor, there was some industrial activity at the camp and some non-Jewish inmates were housed there.

In October, 1942, a gassing facility was installed consisting of crude wooden barracks. Later, more sophisticated concrete chambers were constructed with air-tight steel doors. Initially, carbon monoxide gas was utilized; later, after their successful use at Belzek, Zyklon-B gas cannisters were implemented. Jews were transported to Majdanek from Germany and the Netherlands. Upon their arrival, a selektion was carried out. Those able to work were assigned to agricultural and forestry work details. Those too sick, too weak, too young or too old to work were sent directly to the gas chambers.

By the fall of 1943, 200,000 had been gassed. Many thousands of others died from exposure, beatings, epidemics and starvation. Lucy Dawidowicz says, 1,380,000.

In late 1943, plans were made to dismantle the camp. At that time there were several thousand Jews still in the camp. 17,000 were shot as part of a larger program, referred to euphemistically as the Erntefest, or Fall Harvest. Majdanek was evacuated in April, 1944 in advance of the Soviet capture of Lublin.

Stutthof

In September, 1939, the Nazis built the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig in the extreme northeast of Germany. Originally, the camp was under the jursidiction of the Danzig chief of police; however, in 1941, it was reassigned as an SS camp. In 1943, the camp was enlarged and surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences.

While most of the prisoners at Stutthof were non-Jews, there were some Polish Jews interned in the camp. Stutthof was primarily a forced labor camp. The DAW (German Armament Works) installed a factory just out outside the camp and in 1944 a Focke-Wulff airplane factory was constructed there (USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust, 1996:160).

Conclusion

A conservative estimate of those who were murdered in the Nazi death camps stands at about 3.5 million. Most were European Jews who were killed for no other reason than the fact that they were Jews. The process was rationalized, however, by the Nazi ideology of racial superiority/inferiority. These ideas were given official legal sanction in the Nuremberg Laws (1935). Combined with Hitler's quest for lebensraum, "living space," and his goals of world domination, and with World War II as a cover, the Nazi regime was able to carry out the greatest crime in human history.