Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office in a remote area of the Upper Palatine Forest of Bavaria, Germany, near Flossenbürg and the border with Czechoslovakia. The camp's initial purpose was to exploit the forced labor of prisoners for the production of granite for Nazi architecture. In 1943, the bulk of prisoners switched to producing Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and other armaments for Germany's war effort. Although originally intended for "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the camp's numbers swelled with political prisoners from Eastern Europe. It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually outgrew the main camp.
The Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp complex consisted of the Mauthausen concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen plus a group of nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp.
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD special camp until 1950. The camp ground with the remaining buildings is now open to the public as a museum.
The Dachau liberation reprisals were a series of incidents in which German prisoners of war were killed by American soldiers and concentration camp internees at the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, during World War II. It is unclear how many SS members were killed in the incident but most estimates place the number killed at around 35–50. In the days before the camp's liberation SS guards at the camp had forced 7,000 inmates on a death march that resulted in the death of many from exposure and shooting. When Allied soldiers liberated the camp, their reactions varied from being shocked, horrified, disturbed, and angered by the masses of dead they found and the combativeness of some of the remaining German guards who had allegedly fired on them.
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), literally translated as Death's Head Units, was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the Totenkopf (skull) was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore the Death's Head insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) formations.
The Dachau trials were held for all war criminals caught in the United States zones in occupied Germany and Austria, as well as for those individuals accused of committing war crimes against American citizens and its military personnel. The trials, which were held within the walls of the former Dachau concentration camp, were conducted entirely by American military personnel whose legal authority had been conferred by the Judge Advocate General's Department within the U.S. Third Army.
Martin Gottfried Weiss alternatively spelled Weiß was the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 at the time of his arrest. He also served from April 1940 until September 1942 as the commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp, and later, from November 1943 until May 1944, as the fourth commandant of Majdanek concentration camp. He was executed for war crimes.
Hinzert was a German concentration camp located in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, 30 km from the Luxembourg border.
The Dachau subcamp at München-Schwabing was the first subcamp where concentration camp prisoners were permanently used as a labor force outside the main concentration camp. Unlike most of the later subcamps which were constructed, organized, and managed by the SS Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) and the Dachau camp commandant, this subcamp's construction, administration, and organization was in the hands of Eleonore Baur, also known as Schwester Pia. This subcamp was also smaller than most others, and is included here as a representative case for instances in which prisoners were used by individuals or small organizations.
Kaufering was a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp located around the town of Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria, which operated between 18 June 1944 and 27 April 1945. Previously, Nazi Germany had deported all Jews from the Reich, but having exhausted other sources of labor, Jews were deported to Kaufering to create three massive underground bunkers, Weingut II, Diana II, and Walnuss II, which would not be vulnerable to the Allied bombing which had devastated German aircraft factories. The bunkers were intended for the production of Messerschmitt Me 262 aircraft, but none were produced at the camps before the United States Army liberated the area.
A prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks in the camp. Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was also designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other prisoner functionaries. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.
The Postenpflicht was a general order issued to SS-Totenkopfverbände guards in Nazi concentration camps to use summary execution against insubordinate prisoners. The order required guards to shoot prisoners who engaged in resistance or escape attempts without warning, and that failure would result in dismissal or arrest. The Postenpflicht was originally issued on October 1, 1933 for guards at Dachau concentration camp, but was later extended to other concentration camps.
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German, IKL was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke, it was originally known as the "General Inspection of the Enhanced SS-Totenkopfstandarten", after Eicke's position in the SS. It was later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D".
Karl Chmielewski was a German SS officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty that he was dubbed Teufel von Gusen or the Devil of Gusen.
The SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp refers to those units, commands, and agencies of the German SS which operated and administered the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Due to its large size and key role in the Nazi genocide program, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp encompassed personnel from several different branches of the SS, some of which held overlapping and shared areas of responsibility.
Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück. The largest single national group consisted of 40,000 Polish women. Others included 26,000 Jewish women from various countries: 18,800 Russian, 8,000 French, and 1,000 Dutch. More than 80 percent were political prisoners. Many slave labor prisoners were employed by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, medical experiments to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides were undertaken.
The term subcamp in the context of Nazi Germany refers to those outlying detention centres (Haftstätten) that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS within the Third Reich. It enables a distinction to be made between the main camps and the subcamps subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps.
The Sonderkommando photographs are four blurred photographs taken secretly in August 1944 inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Along with a few photographs in the Auschwitz Album, they are the only ones known to exist of events around the gas chambers.
Adolf Zutter was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer at Mauthausen Concentration Camp, who was tried and executed for war crimes. Zutter, a member of the NSDAP and the SS, was from 27 September 1939 to the beginning of May 1945 a member of the camp staff of KZ Mauthausen. From September 27 1939 to the spring of 1942 he worked as Kommandoführer in Wien Graben and then as commander of the guards to June 1942. From June 1942 to early May 1945, he was adjutant under the Nazi concentration camp commandant Franz Ziereis in Mauthausen concentration camp.
