https://www.britannica.

com/topic/extermination-camp

extermination camp
Nazi concentration camp
Alternate titles: Vernichtungslager, death camp
By Michael Berenbaum • Edit History

Auschwitz II
See all media
Key People:
Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Josef Mengele

extermination camp, German Vernichtungslager, Nazi German concentration camp that

specialized in the mass annihilation (Vernichtung) of unwanted persons in the Third Reich and
conquered territories. The camps’ victims were mostly Jews but also included Roma (Gypsies),
Slavs, homosexuals, alleged mental defectives, and others. The extermination camps played a
central role in the Holocaust.
Listen to the horrible events of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where the Jews
were exterminated or used as slave labor by the Nazis
Overview of Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article

The major camps were in German-occupied Poland and included Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno,
Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. At its peak, the Auschwitz complex, the most notorious of
the sites, housed 100,000 persons at its death camp (Auschwitz II, or Birkenau). Its poison-gas
chambers could accommodate 2,000 at one time, and 12,000 could be gassed and incinerated
each day. Prisoners who were deemed able-bodied were initially used in forced-labour battalions
or in the tasks of genocide until they were virtually worked to death and then exterminated.

Read More on This Topic

Holocaust: The extermination camps
On January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference at a lakeside villa
in Berlin to organize the “final solution to...

The creation of these death camps represented a shift in Nazi policy. Beginning in June 1941
with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews in the newly conquered areas were rounded
up and taken to nearby execution sites, such as Babi Yar, in Ukraine, and killed. Initially, mobile
killing units were used. This process was disquieting to local populations and also difficult for
the units to sustain. The idea of the extermination camp was to reverse the process and have
mobile victims—transported by rail to the camps—and stationary killing centres where large
numbers of victims could be murdered by a greatly reduced number of personnel. For example,
the staff of Treblinka was 120, with only 20–30 personnel belonging to the SS, the Nazi
paramilitary corps. The staff of Belzec was 104, with about 20 SS personnel.

Corpses of Auschwitz victims

Corpses of female victims of Auschwitz.
© Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/Institute of National Memory/United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum

Killing at each of the centres was by poison gas. Chelmno, the first of the extermination camps,
where gassing began on December 8, 1941, employed gas vans whose carbon-monoxide exhaust
asphyxiated passengers. Auschwitz, the largest and most lethal of the camps, used Zyklon-B.

New from Britannica

For about 15 years, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has employed a hawk named Rufus to
keep the games free from bothersome pigeons.
See All Good Facts

Majdanek and Auschwitz were also slave-labour centres, whereas Treblinka, Belzec, and
Sobibor were devoted solely to killing. The Nazis murdered between 1.1 million and 1.3 million
people at Auschwitz, 750,000–900,000 at Treblinka, and at least 500,000 at Belzec during its 10
months of operation. The overwhelming majority of the victims were Jews. Treblinka, Sobibor,
and Belzec were closed in 1943, their task completed as the ghettos of Poland were emptied and
their Jews killed. Auschwitz continued to receive victims from throughout Europe until Soviet
troops approached in January 1945.
Holocaust
Members of the SS burning the bodies of gassed prisoners in the open air at Auschwitz II
(Birkenau) in German-occupied Poland.
Archiwum Panstwowego Muzeum w Oswiecimiu-Brzezince, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Michael Berenbaum
concentration camp

 Introduction

Fast Facts

 2-Min Summary
 Facts & Related Content

Media

 Videos
 Images

More

 More Articles On This Topic

 Contributors
 Article History

Home World History The Modern World

concentration camp
Alternate titles: internment camp
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
concentration camp
See all media
Key People:
Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Reinhard Heydrich Karl Otto Koch Rudolf Franz Höss
Related Topics:
extermination camp imprisonment
Summary

Read a brief summary of this topic

concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or
minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment,
usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the
basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and
without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished
from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war
camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be
distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary
accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.

During war, civilians have been concentrated in camps to prevent them from engaging in
guerrilla warfare or providing aid to enemy forces or simply as a means of terrorizing the
populace into submission. During the South African War (1899–1902) the British confined
noncombatants of the republics of Transvaal and Cape Colony in concentration camps. Another
instance of interning noncombatant civilians occurred shortly after the outbreak of hostilities
between Japan and the United States (December 7, 1941), when more than 100,000 Japanese and
Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were taken into custody and placed in camps in the
interior.
concentration camp
Camp for Japanese Americans set up by the government in California, 1942. In the foreground is
baggage of incoming inhabitants.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USF34-T01-072546-D)

Japanese American internment camps

Map showing the extent of the exclusion zone and the locations of the internment camps for
Japanese Americans.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Read More on This Topic

What Was Life Like in Japanese American Internment Camps?
Internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II were a combination of barbed
wire and baseball games.

Political concentration camps instituted primarily to reinforce the state’s control have been
established in various forms under many totalitarian regimes—most extensively in Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union. To a considerable extent, the camps served as the special prisons
of the secret police. Nazi concentration camps were under the administration of the SS; forced-
labour camps of the Soviet Union were operated by a succession of organizations beginning in
1917 with the Cheka and ending in the early 1990s with the KGB.

Jewish children being deported to Chelmno

Jewish children being deported from the Łódź ghetto, Poland, to the Chelmno death camp.
© Jacob Igra—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 Hear about the Nazi use of forced labor at Krupp's weapon production and the Dora Central
Works and the miseries and the poor working conditions of the laborers
Discussion of the Nazi use of forced labourers from occupied territories to supply weapons and
armaments.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article


 Listen to the horrible events of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where the Jews
were exterminated or used as slave labor by the Nazis
Overview of Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article

 Witness the plight of the Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp after their
liberation by the Allies in April 1945

Residents of Weimar, Germany, being forced to tour nearby Buchenwald concentration

camp after its liberation by the Allies, 1945.

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this article
The first German concentration camps were established in 1933 for the confinement of
opponents of the Nazi Party—Communists and Social Democrats. Political opposition soon was
enlarged to include minority groups, chiefly Jews, but by the end of World War II many Roma,
homosexuals, and anti-Nazi civilians from the occupied territories had also been liquidated. After
the outbreak of World War II the camp inmates were used as a supplementary labour supply, and
such camps mushroomed throughout Europe. Inmates were required to work for their wages in
food; those unable to work usually died of starvation, and those who did not starve often died of
overwork. The most shocking extension of this system was the establishment after 1940 of
extermination centres, or “death camps.” They were located primarily in Poland, which Adolf
Hitler had selected as the setting for his “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” The most
notorious were Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka. (See extermination camp.) At some camps,
notably Buchenwald, medical experimentation was conducted. New toxins and antitoxins were
tried out, new surgical techniques devised, and studies made of the effects of artificially induced
diseases, all by experimenting on living human beings.

Auschwitz; concentration camp

Arbeit Macht Frei, acrylic and mixed media on paper by Alice Cahana. The entrance to the
Auschwitz I camp in German-occupied Poland bore the motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work
Makes One Free”).
© Alice Lok Cahana

In the Soviet Union by 1922 there were 23 concentration camps for the incarceration of persons
accused of political offenses as well as criminal offenses. Many corrective labour camps were
established in northern Russia and Siberia, especially during the First Five-Year Plan, 1928–32,
when millions of rich peasants were driven from their farms under the collectivization program.
The Stalinist purges of 1936–38 brought additional millions into the camps—said to be
essentially institutions of slavery.

New from Britannica

For about 15 years, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has employed a hawk named Rufus to
keep the games free from bothersome pigeons.
See All Good Facts

The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and the absorption of the Baltic states in 1940
led to the incarceration of large numbers of non-Soviet citizens. Following the outbreak of war
with Germany in 1941, the camps received Axis prisoners of war and Soviet nationals accused of
collaboration with the enemy. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, many prisoners were
released and the number of camps was drastically reduced.See alsoGulag.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by
Michael Ray.
Gross-Rosen

 Introduction

Fast Facts

 Facts & Related Content

Media

 Images

More

 Contributors
 Article History

Home World History The Modern World

Gross-Rosen
concentration camp, Germany
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Gross-Rosen
See all media
Date:
August 1940 - May 1945
Related Topics:
Nazi Party genocide gas chamber Jew Night and Fog Decree
Related Places:
Poland

Gross-Rosen, small Nazi concentration camp established in August 1940 near the German town
of Striegau in Lower Silesia (now Strzegom, Poland) that sent many prisoners to a killing centre
for the T4 Program. Under the orders of Heinrich Himmler, it received prisoners seized under the
Night and Fog Decree. Gas chambers (eventually employing the virulent Zyklon-B) were
established nearby in late 1941 or 1942 and were used to exterminate concentration camp
inmates from throughout Germany. (The gas chambers at Dachau and Theresienstadt were never
put into operation.) Beginning in January 1942 the camp was also the site of a laboratory for
human medical experiments using inmates. Gross-Rosen was also a killing site for Soviet
prisoners of war, who died of starvation. Soviet troops liberated the camp in early May 1945.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
War Refugee Board

 Introduction

Fast Facts

 Facts & Related Content

Media
  Images

More

 More Articles On This Topic

 Contributors
 Article History

Home Politics, Law & Government Politics & Political Systems

War Refugee Board

United States government agency
Alternate titles: WRB
By Michael Berenbaum • Edit History

War Refugee Board

See all media
Date:
January 22, 1944 - c. 1945
Areas Of Involvement:
concentration camp extermination camp Jew
Related People:
Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

War Refugee Board (WRB), United States agency established January 22, 1944, to attempt to
rescue victims of the Nazis—mainly Jews—from death in German-occupied Europe. The board
began its work after the Nazis had already killed millions in concentration and extermination
camps. A late start, a lack of resources, and conflicts within the U.S. government limited the
board’s effectiveness.

The United States began its rescue efforts on behalf of European Jews caught in the Holocaust in
January 1944 after Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., gave President Franklin D.
Roosevelt a document with decisive new evidence of State Department inaction that Roosevelt
knew would be politically explosive if it became public. On January 13, 1944, Morgenthau had
received a memo from his general counsel, Randolph Paul, and his staff entitled “Report to the
Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.” It charged that
the State Department had used the machinery of the government to prevent the rescue of Jews
and to prevent news of the Holocaust from reaching the American public and that the department
had covered up the government’s guilt by “concealment and misrepresentation.” Three days
later, Morgenthau, the ranking Jewish official in the president’s inner circle, went to the White
House to see Roosevelt with a more restrained but still forceful version of the document retitled
“Personal Report to the President.”

Roosevelt listened to a summary of the report but did not keep a copy at the White House.
Morgenthau presented the president with a proposal to involve the United States actively in the
business of rescue. Within a week of the meeting, Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board
(WRB). It was charged with taking all measures within its power to rescue “the victims of enemy
oppression who are in imminent danger of death.” The members of the board were the secretaries
of state, treasury, and war. The executive order allotted about $1 million in federal funds for
administrative purposes, but virtually all other funding for the board’s work had to come from
private sources. As a result, throughout its operation the board was underfunded, and, because of
an ongoing internal struggle between the pro-rescue Treasury Department, the anti-rescue State
Department, and the War Department, which did not want domestic concerns to interfere with
the war effort, the board never achieved unanimity of purpose or direction.

Although American rescue efforts began after more than 85 percent of the victims of the
Holocaust were already dead—two years after the Wannsee Conference and the establishment of
the extermination camps—the creation of the WRB was fortuitous. Operations started just
months before the deportation of Jews from Hungary and well after it was evident that Germany
would be defeated. Therefore, neutral countries and even some of Germany’s allies were
prepared to cooperate in rescue efforts in order to position themselves for the postwar world.

Under the direction of John Pehle, a Treasury Department lawyer who had worked to expose the
State Department’s alleged cover-up of the Holocaust, the WRB set out to find a haven for
rescued Jews. The board elicited statements from Roosevelt condemning the murder of Jews,
drew up plans for postwar war-crimes trials, and after much hesitation forwarded requests for the
bombing of Auschwitz (See Sidebar: Why wasn’t Auschwitz bombed?).

Among its activities were efforts to persuade neutral governments, including the Holy See, to
cooperate in rescue efforts. It financed the rescue operations of Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest,
which pitted the Swedish diplomat against Adolf Eichmann’s efforts to deport the last remaining
large Jewish community on the continent. Moreover, Ira Hirschmann, the WRB operative in
Turkey, persuaded Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, to forward thousands of
baptismal certificates to the papal nuncio in Hungary to provide Jews with false identities.

The War Refugee Board also sought to establish free ports to which Jews could flee. Notably, it
received permission to bring 982 Jews to a U.S. refugee camp in Oswego, New York, and in the
waning months of World War II it was the most forceful American agency to consider and, at
times, facilitate ransom proposals to exchange German citizens for Jews.

New from Britannica

For about 15 years, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has employed a hawk named Rufus to
keep the games free from bothersome pigeons.
See All Good Facts

Historians are reluctant to judge the success of the WRB. While the board may have helped save
as many as 200,000 from death, the Nazis were able to murder some 6 million Jews. Clearly the
intensity of Nazi commitment and the resources dedicated to the murder of European Jewry
overwhelmed all efforts at rescue, including the meager and belated American rescue. When
Pehle reviewed the work of the WRB, he commented, "What we did was little enough. It was
late…Late and little, I would say."