CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND LABOUR CAMPS FOR JEWS

ENDLÖSUNG—DIRECT EXTERMINATION STAGE

Jews were sent to specially constructed extermination (death) camps, but also to concentration camps and labour camps. The first Third Reich concentration camp was already set up in 1933.

Source: A-BSMA

The first Nazi concentration camp to be founded in German-occupied Poland was Konzentrationslager (KL) Auschwitz. It was set up in mid-1940 and initially its inmates were almost exclusively Poles. A couple of years later, in mid-1942, mass transports of Jews started arriving in Auschwitz. It is estimated that in Auschwitz approximately 1 million Jews were killed, 70,000‒75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, approx. 15,000 Soviet POWs and approx. 10,000‒15,000 prisoners of other nationalities.

Polish prisoner of war standing to attention in the roll-call square of Stutthof camp, September or October 1939.
Saource: Stutthof State Museum

Zivilgefangenenlager (civil internment camp) Stutthof was set up on territory of the Free-City of Danzig (Gdańsk) immediately after the German invasion Poland. The first transport of prisoners arrived there already on 2 September 1939. Initially the number of Jewish inmates was small. Instead most of the prisoners were Poles from around Danzig (Gdańsk) and Pomerania, as well as later from Warsaw and other parts of occupied northern Poland. Among Stutthof prisoners there were also Soviet POWs, Norwegians, Danes and citizens of other north European countries. The status of Stutthof was officially changed to that of a concentration camp on 7 January 1942. Large numbers of Jews, however, did not start arriving there until 1944, when the camp was included in the realisation of ‘the final solution to the Jewish question’. The total number of prisoners has been estimated at approx. 115,000 (including 50,000 Jews), of these about 40,000 were killed.

SS Obergruppenführer Schmauser visiting the quarry of Gross-Rosen, accompanied by the camp commandant Arthur Roedl, 1941.
Source: USHMM

In the late summer of 1940 the Germans set up a labour camp (Arbeitslager) in the village of Gross-Rosen (modern-day Rogoźnica), in Lower Silesia. Initially it served as a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen, but on 1 May 1941 it was officially given the status of an independent concentration camp. The people sent there were Jews, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. In 1944 the Gross-Rosen concentration camp complex included around 100 sub-camps in Lower Silesia, the Sudeten region and the Lubuskie province. In total, of its over 120,000 inmates around 40,000 were killed there.

Prisoners performing slave labour in Majdanek concentration camp.
Source: Majdanek Memorial and Museum

In the autumn of 1941 the Germans founded in Majdanek near Lublin a prisoner-of-war camp called the Kriegsgefangenenlager der Waffen SS Lublin. In February 1943 its status was changed to that of a concentration camp. The prisoners sent there were chiefly Poles, Jews, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. It is estimated that of the camp’s approximately 150,000 prisoners, almost 80,000 lost their lives, and of those 60,000 were Jews.

Prisoner slave labour at Płaszów concentration camp.
Source: Yad Vashem Institute Photo Archive, Jerusalem, sygn. 4797/69

In the autumn of 1942 the Germans set up the Płaszów labour camp for Jews in the Podgórze district of Krakow. In 1943 its status was changed first to that of a sub-camp of Majdanek, and then in January 1944 as a fully independent concentration camp. Sent there were chiefly Jews from Lesser Poland, but also from Slovakia and Hungary. The prisoners were forced to work in various workshops, quarries and sewing rooms. It is estimated that the camp had over 30,000 prisoners, chiefly Jews, of whom around 8,000 were killed.

In total by 1945 the Germans had set up several thousand camps of various sorts, including 24 concentration camps, several hundred sub-camps, detention centres and labour camps. Conditions in these camps were extremely difficult for Jews, in certain respects more difficult than in the case of prisoners of other nationalities. The Jews were condemned to be exterminated, so they were even deprived of the rights other inmates had. Despite this, being a prisoner in such camps still gave the Jews a small chance of survival, which they did not have in the extermination camps. In the concentration camps, on the other hand, some of the prisoners were subjected to pseudo-medical tests conducted by German physicians. These included experiments in surgery, pharmacology (e.g. deliberately infecting prisoners with diseases), heredity, fertility and reactions of the human body to extreme cold, hunger or pressure. Those subjected to such experiments often suffered therefore death or permanent disability for the rest of their lives. A high mortality rate among camp inmates was also caused by inhuman living conditions. Prisoners were decimated because of hard labour, overcrowding, malnourishment and diseases.

Exercises:

Find out more about the fate of the Jews in labour and concentration camps.
Where were the largest camps?
How were the Jewish inmates treated?
What were their relations with inmates other nationalities like?