List of Nazi extermination camps and euthanasia centers

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The Nazis murdered their victims at a wide variety of sites, including vehicles, houses, hospitals, fields, concentration camps and purpose-built extermination camps. The six major extermination camps and eight major euthanasia extermination centers are listed here. [1]

Contents

Extermination camps

During the Final Solution of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany created six extermination camps to carry out the systematic genocide of the Jews in German-occupied Europe. All the camps were located in the General Government area of German-occupied Poland, with the exception of Chelmno, which was located in the Reichsgau Wartheland of German-occupied Poland.

Euthanasia extermination centers

In the period leading to the Final Solution, Nazi Germany created eight major euthanasia extermination centers to carry out the systematic genocide of the disabled. [8] Scholars have established a fundamental connection between the motivation, the practical experience and psychological preparation, and the technology used in the Nazi euthanasia centers as part of Aktion T4 and Action 14f13 and the extermination camps used in the Holocaust. [9] [10] [11] [12] The dates of operation are for the period the facility operated as a euthanasia killing center.

Germany [13]

Austria [13]

Further reading

See also

Notes

  1. Belzec was also the name of a system of forced labor camps along the Bug river in 1940. The extermination camp was built on top of the ruins of the destroyed main labor camp.
  2. Treblinka was also the site of a forced labor camp. The designation Treblinka I is used to denote the forced labor camp and Treblinka II is used to denote the extermination camp.
  3. Majdanek is sometimes referred to as Lublin.
  4. Majdanek operated as a concentration camp and transit camp from October 1941 July 1944.
  5. Auschwitz consisted of three main camps, commonly referred to as Auschwitz I (concentration camp), Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau (extermination camp), and Auschwitz III or Auschwitz-Monowitz (IG Farben forced labor camp).
  6. Bernberg was designed to replace Brandenburg. [13]
  7. Hadamar was designed to replace Grafeneck. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Final Solution</span> Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews

The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extermination camp</span> Nazi death camps established to systematically murder

Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treblinka extermination camp</span> German extermination camp near Treblinka, Poland in World War II

Treblinka was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, 4 km (2.5 mi) south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belzec extermination camp</span> Nazi German death camp in occupied Poland

Belzec was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution", the overall Nazi effort to complete the genocide of all European Jews. Before Germany's defeat put an end to this project more than six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. It was situated about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Reinhard</span> Code name for the creation of German extermination camps in Poland in World War II

Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. The operation proceeded from March 1942 to November 1943; about 1.47 million or more Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate which is approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the kill rate in the Rwandan genocide. In the time frame of July to October 1942, the overall death toll, including all killings of Jews and not just Operation Reinhard, amounted to two million killed in those four months alone. It was the single fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Majdanek concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp

Majdanek was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Wirth</span> Nazi German police chief, extermination camp commandant, Holocaust perpetrator

Christian Wirth was a German SS officer and leading Holocaust perpetrator who was one of the primary architects of the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard. His nicknames included Christian the Cruel, Stuka, and The Wild Christian due to the extremity of his behaviour among the SS and Trawniki guards and to the camp inmates and victims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Höfle Telegram</span> Communique detailing Holocaust deaths during 1942

The Höfle Telegram is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the declassified World War II archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England. The document consists of several radio telegrams in translation, among them a top-secret message sent by SS Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on 11 January 1943; one, to SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, and one to SS Obersturmbannführer Franz Heim in German-occupied Kraków (Cracow).

<i>Sonderaktion 1005</i> 1942–44 Nazi project to destroy evidence of war crimes in Poland

Sonderaktion1005, also called Aktion1005 or Enterdungsaktion, was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder that had taken place under Operation Reinhard, the attempted extermination of all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos, were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holocaust trains</span> Railway transports used in Nazi Germany

Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Thomalla</span> WWII Nazi Germany official

Richard Thomalla was a German war criminal and SS commander of Nazi Germany. A civil engineer by profession, he was head of the SS Central Building Administration at Lublin reservation in occupied Poland. Thomalla was in charge of construction for the Operation Reinhard death camps Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka during the Holocaust in Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treblinka trials</span> Trials related to the personnel of the Treblinka extermination camp that began in 1964

The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. Held at Düsseldorf in West Germany, they were the two judicial trials in a series of similar war crime trials held during the early 1960s, such as the Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963–65), as a result of which the general public came to realize the extent of the crimes that some two decades earlier had been perpetrated in occupied Poland by German bureaucrats and their willing executioners. In the subsequent years, separate trials dealt with personnel of the Bełżec (1963–65), Sobibor (1966), and Majdanek (1975–81) extermination camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gottlieb Hering</span> SS officer

Gottlieb Hering was an SS commander of Nazi Germany. He served in Action T4 and later as the second and last commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews and other peoples during The Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sobibor trial</span> War crimes trial against SS officials

The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-1960s, such as the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann by Israel in Jerusalem, and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963–65, also held in West Germany. These trials heightened general public and international understanding of the extent of the crimes that had been perpetrated in occupied Poland some twenty years earlier by Nazi bureaucrats and persons acting as their executioners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belzec trial</span>

The Belzec trial in the mid-1960s was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members of Bełżec extermination camp. The trial was held at the 1st Munich District Court and should be seen in the context of the Sobibor trial, which followed the Belzec trial, because five of the defendants were accused in both trials. In addition, the Belzec and Sobibor trials, along with the Treblinka trials, form a body of evidence of the crimes of mass extermination as part of the so-called Action Reinhardt programme - the killing of over two million Jews and 50,000 Roma and Sinti. These trials are directly related to the mass murder of 100,000 people in the official Nazi Euthanasia programme known after the war as Action T4, as many of the security guards worked in the euthanasia centres before transferring to the extermination camps. The first Euthanasia trials were carried out shortly after the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Majdanek trials</span> War crime trials after World War II

The Majdanek trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials held in Poland and in Germany during and after World War II, constituting the overall longest Nazi war crimes trial in history spanning over 30 years. The first judicial trial of Majdanek extermination camp officials took place from November 27, 1944, to December 2, 1944, in Lublin, Poland. The last one, held at the District Court of Düsseldorf began on November 26, 1975, and concluded on June 30, 1981. It was West Germany's longest and most expensive trial, lasting 474 sessions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anton Thernes</span> Nazi German war criminal

Anton Thernes was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek Trials and executed on 3 December 1944, along with five other war criminals, near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in the Lublin District</span>

During the Holocaust, 99% of the Jews from Lublin District in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland were murdered, along with thousands of Jews who had been deported to Lublin from elsewhere. There were three extermination camps in Lublin District, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Selection (Holocaust)</span> Sorting for enslavement or extermination

Selection was the process of designating inmates either for murder or forced labor at a Nazi concentration camp.

References

  1. "The Nazi Extermination Camps". Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Yad Vashem. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  2. "Chelmno". Holocaust Encyclopedia . United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  3. "Belzec". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  4. "Sobibor". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  5. "Treblinka". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  6. "Lublin/Majdanek". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  7. "Auschwitz". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  8. "Euthanasia Program". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  9. Browning, Christopher R (2007). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN   978-0434012275.
  10. Friedlander, Henry (1995). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN   978-0807822081.
  11. Sereny, Gitta (2011). Into That Darkness. Westminster: Knopf Doubleday. ISBN   978-0394710358.
  12. Evans, Richard J. (2009). The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin Press. pp. 78–102, 253–291, 523–552. ISBN   978-1594202063.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Friedlander, Henry (1995). "Chapter 5: The Killing Centers". The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.