Before 1933, male homosexual acts were illegal in Germany under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code. The law was not consistently enforced, however, and a thriving gay culture existed in major German cities. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, the first homosexual movement's infrastructure of clubs, organizations, and publications was shut down. After the Röhm purge in 1934, persecuting homosexuals became a priority of the Nazi police state. A 1935 revision of Paragraph 175 made it easier to bring criminal charges for homosexual acts, leading to a large increase in arrests and convictions. Persecution peaked in the years prior to World War II and was extended to areas annexed by Germany, including Austria, the Czech lands, and Alsace–Lorraine.
Colditz Castle is a Renaissance castle in the town of Colditz near Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz in the state of Saxony in Germany. The castle is between the towns of Hartha and Grimma on a hill spur over the river Zwickauer Mulde, a tributary of the River Elbe. It had the first wildlife park in Germany when, during 1523, the castle park was converted into one of the largest menageries in Europe.
Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of Flossenbürg and near the German 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 outside Germany. It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually outgrew the main camp.
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945.
Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with 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.
Elisabeth Volkenrath was a German supervisor at several Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
Herta Bothe was a German concentration camp guard during World War II. She was imprisoned for war crimes after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and was subsequently released early from prison on 22 December 1951.
Špilberk Castle is a castle on the hilltop in Brno, Southern Moravia. Its construction began as early as the first half of the 13th century by the Přemyslid kings and completed by King Ottokar II of Bohemia. From a major royal castle established around the mid-13th century, and the seat of the Moravian margraves in the mid-14th century, it was gradually turned into a huge baroque citadel considered the harshest prison in the Austrian Empire, and then into barracks. This prison had always been part of the Špilberk fortress and is frequently referenced by the main character, Fabrizio, in Stendhal's novel, The Charterhouse of Parma.
Alice Orlowski was a German concentration camp guard at several of the Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Poland (1939-1945) during World War II. After the war, a Polish court convicted of her crimes against humanity, and she served 10 years in prison in Poland. In 1973, Orlowski, now 70 and living as a pensioner in West Germany, muttered that only "half the work" had been finished, referring to the Holocaust. She was promptly arrested, convicted of making antisemitic remarks, and sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Breitenau concentration camp was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazis. It was founded in June 1933 as an addition to the Breitenau Labor and Welfare House, less than six months after the Nazis by a democratic election in Germany became the majority party in the German parliament. It closed in March 1934 and reopened in 1940 where it remained in operation until the end of World War II. In 1984, a memorial was constructed on the site of the former camp.
Lichtenburg was a Nazi concentration camp, housed in a Renaissance castle in Prettin, near Wittenberg in the Province of Saxony. Along with Sachsenburg, it was among the first to be built by the Nazis, and was operated by the SS from 1933 to 1939. It held as many as 2000 male prisoners from 1933 to 1937 and from 1937 to 1939 held female prisoners. It was closed in May 1939, when the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women was opened, which replaced Lichtenburg as the main camp for female prisoners.
Niederhagen was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Büren-Wewelsburg which existed from 1941 to 1943 when it was disbanded.
The Gau March of Brandenburg was formed in March 1933 initially under the name Gau Electoral March in Nazi Germany as a district within the Free State of Prussia. In January 1939, Kurmark was renamed March of Brandenburg. The Gau was dissolved in 1945, following Allied Soviet occupation of the area and Germany's formal surrender. After the war, the territory of the former Gau became part of the state of Brandenburg in East Germany except for areas beyond the Oder-Neisse line, which were given to the Polish People's Republic. Most of its territory is now divided between Germany's State of Brandenburg and Poland's Lubusz Voivodeship.
Ludwig Marum was a German politician, an early victim of the Nazi Party after it came to power in 1933.
Three concentration camps operated in succession in Moringen, Lower Saxony, from April 1933 to April 1945. KZ Moringen, established in the centre of the town on site of former 19th century workhouses, originally housed mostly male political inmates. In November 1933 - March 1938 Moringen housed a women's concentration camp; in June 1940 - April 1945 a juvenile prison. A total of 4,300 people were prisoners of Moringen; an estimated ten percent of them died in the camp.
Fort VII, officially Konzentrationslager Posen, was a Nazi German death camp set up in Poznań in German-occupied Poland during World War II, located in one of the 19th-century forts circling the city. According to different estimates, between 4,500 and 20,000 people, mostly Poles from Poznań and the surrounding region, died while imprisoned at the camp.
The Gau Pomerania formed on 22 March 1925, was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 comprising the Prussian province of Pomerania. Before that, from 1925 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area. Most of the Gau became part of Poland after the Second World War while the remainder became part of what would become East Germany.
The early camps were extrajudicial sites of detention established in Nazi Germany in 1933. Although the system was mostly dismantled by the end of the year, these camps were the precursor of the Nazi concentration camps.
The Osthofen concentration camp was an early Nazi concentration camp in Osthofen, close to Worms, Germany. It was established in March 1933 in a former paper factory. The camp was administered by the People's State of Hesse's Political Police, with guards first drawn from SA and SS, later only SS men. The first prisoners were mostly Communists or Social Democrats, but later Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and non-political Jews were also sent to the camp.
