PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Nazi Concentration Camps From 1933-1945
Thesis-
During 1933-1945, Nazi concentration camps in Europe were used to imprison and force labor out of Jews, Poles, Free Masons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others.
What Were Concentration Camps?
Concentration camps were camps where people were incarcerated without observation of the standard norms applying to arrest and custody. They were called concentration camps because prisoners were physically concentrated into them.
Why Were Concentration Camps Invented?
The idea of concentration camps emerged after the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, 1933, which provided Nazis with the authority to detain people. They needed places to hold and force labor out of the detained, so concentration camps were born.
Types of Concentration Camps-
Concentration camps could be divided into different types of camps. These camps included forced labor camps, POW camps, work and reformatory camps, police camps, transit camps, women camps, and ghetto camps. In Germany, most of the camps were labor camps.
Transportation to Camps-
Prisoners of concentration camps were usually transported by trains which were often unsanitary and unbearable. Since it was usually very crowded on these trains, convicts would have to stand upright for the entirety of the trip, which sometimes took several days to complete. Many of the prisoners would actually die on the trains before they even made it to their designated camps.
Camp Entry-
Upon entering camps, prisoners would be stripped of their few belongings, shaved, and disinfected. Shortly after, men and women were separated, while children stayed with their mothers.
These processes that the prisoners went through were designed to remove all dignity and personal identity. More often than not, the Nazis accomplished this goal.
Dachau-
Dachau was constructed in March, 1933, and was the first concentration camp built during the Nazi regime. It was located near Munich, and was built to hold 8,000 prisoners, but soon became overcrowded. Painful experiments in a compression chamber occurred in 1942.
The Dachau camp spawned about 100 sub-camps which were liberated by U.S. forces on April 29, 1945. The liberations occurred a little too late as there are about 32,000 documented deaths at the camps.
Sachsenhausen-
Between its construction in 1936 and its liberation in 1945, Sachsenhausen reported more than 200,000 prisoners and 100,000 deaths due to working and living conditions.
Although that's quite a lot of deaths for something other than an extermination camp, Operation Bernhard is what really made this camp stand out. It was one of the largest currency counterfeiting operations ever recorded, as over one billion pounds (the type of currency, not unit of measuring weight) in counterfeit bank notes were recovered.
Mauthausen-
Mauthausen was a concentration camp located in a stone quarry and was constructed in 1938. Through 1945, 195,000 prisoners were detained, and more than 95,000 of them died. Many of the prisoners committed suicide by simply jumping off of the quarry or getting crushed by large boulders, though a large amount of executions also occurred.
Mauthausen, although being a concentration camp, was intended for extermination through labor, which was odd due to the fact that extermination was often the job of death camps. Sub-camps of Mauthausen included munitions factories, other quarries, mines, and arms factories.
At the End of WWII-
By the end of WWII, 22 main concentration camps had been established, while 40,000 total camps had been administered. Several hundred-thousand victims died in concentration camps due to the harsh working and living conditions. Inmates were deliberately undernourished and mistreated while usually working up to 12 hours a day.
Although Jews suffered the most during the Holocaust, many other groups of people suffered heavily as well. People such as German Communists, Socialists, Trade Unionists, Social Democrats, Liberals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, and Free Masons. All of these people were arrested and experienced slave labor simply because they had different beliefs than the Nazis.
