Copyright Holder's Notice: Please
avoid an outdated version of this page
which was put online without my
permission at http://www.deathcamps.org.
Concentration Camps*)
Overview of Nazi-Germany's Concentration Camps 1933/34-1945
Last
update 24 January 2007
This site describes the 23 main concentration camps (KZ Camps) in Germany and
German occupied countries together with the 6
(7) extermination camps in Poland and in the USSR: Name, time of existence,
number of sub camps, number of victims, camp motto, type of building, state of
preservation, memorial / museum, address, web site and miscellaneous information.**)
Click on sub pages below to open
Overview of Nazi-Germany's
Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps
Details of KZ Camp Mottos Arbeit macht frei and Jedem
das Seine etc.
Photos of Gates and Mottos of
Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps
Maps and Aerials
of Concentration Camps and Extermination Camps
*) A good general world wide historical overview
and comparison of the phenomenon of concentration
camps including a definition from "The Oxford English Dictionary"
and many internal links can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp.
See also http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/NKHR_new/new_pages/fifth/documents/Pierre%20Rigoulot(2).doc
(slow loading WORD document, but worth waiting for). This is a short summary of the controversial and
contested book by Joël Kotek and Pierre Rigolout: “Le siècle des camps:
detention, concentration, extermination, cent ans de mal” (~”The Century of
Camps: Detention, Concentration, Extermination, A Hundred
Years of Evil”), Paris 2000 (Editions Jean
Claude Lattès). In particular,
this site deals with the North Korean Kwan Li So prison camp system. A list of the Chinese Laogai (Lao Dong
Gai Zao) prison camp system can be found at: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/Camps.html
(slow loading PDF documents). A
list of the Soviet Gulag (Glavnoye
Upravleniye
Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey) prison camp system can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag.
A list of the Japanese WW2 PoW camps can be found at: http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/rg331-box%201321-jap%20pow%20camps.htm.
**) My basic source “Deutschland ein Denkmal”: www.keom.de shows a detailed full list of all types of German camps, 1933-45; not only
the main concentration
camps, but also all of their
different forced labour sub-camps, forced
labour camps for civilians, police camps and police prisons, special forced
labour camps for Gypsies, special forced labour camps and ghettos for Jews, the so-called “euthanasia” facilities for murdering mentally retarded
and insane people, and the special camps for mass murder, especially that of Jews and Gypsies, plus a few further items. An overview
of all the different categories can
be found at: http://www.keom.de/denkmal/datenbank.html. The best way
to easily obtain an overview of the administrative
coherence of this entire system is to
visit: http://www.keom.de/denkmal/organigramm.html. Unfortunately
this excellent German web site has never been
translated into English, nor has it been
updated since 2000?
The term KZ camps is
nowadays used world-wide to define all types of German slave labour and
extermination camps etc., sometimes including even the German instituted and
subsequently eradicated central ghettos for Jews in the cities of Eastern
European countries. The term (~KZ-Lager), actually used in German as early as
by Hr. Adolf Hitler himself in a public speech, should not be confused with the
technical term KL, which was the official German abbreviation of the main
SS-Konzentrationslager (SS-concentration camp). After the 1933-34
so-called “wild” period of Nazi SA-terror, strictly speaking no more than 23
KLs (some say 22) ever existed, but most of these Stammlager (main
camps) had a rapidly expanding under-growth of Auβenlager (sub
camps) and Auβenkommandos (sub commands), some of which were
organized almost as independent, if associated, forced labour camps with
permanent building structures. Others existed for a longer or shorter period as
part of some specific forced work task, with the prisoners, for example, being
temporarily accommodated in a parked railway cattle car or under the open sky
with no accommodation at all. Only a very few of the Stammlager (main camps)
were inscribed with the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” motto. With a very
few exceptions the Stammlager (the main camps) kept the general prisoners´
registry both for themselves and for their Auβenlager (sub camps) and
Auβenkommandos (sub commands). All new prisoners had therefore first to be
admitted to a Stammlager (main camp) for registration before eventually
being transferred to any of its Auβenlager (sub camps) or
Auβenkommandos (sub commands). This procedure was repeated when prisoners
were transferred from the complex of one Stammlager (main camp) and its
Auβenlager (sub camps) and Auβenkommandos (sub commands) to another.
As no overall KZ camps prisoner's registration existed, many prisoners had
therefore to remember more than one prisoner's number - one for each of the
Stammlager (main camps) in which they had been registered during their camp
imprisonment. The infamous tattooed prisoner's number method was used in
only one specific camp complex: KL Auschwitz (I+II+III) 1941-45. It is
important to note the different stages by which the SS-KZ camp system
evolved between 1933-45. Many ways of categorizing these stages have been
used - for example: (0) Early SA-terror 1933-34, (1) Pre-war 1933-39, (2) Early
victorious war 1939-42, and (3) Later defeated war 1943-45. An alarming example
of neglecting the importance of historical chronology is the common modern
misuse of the pre-war / early war symbol, the “Arbeit macht frei” inscription
as an almost iconic symbol of the extermination camps, where this motto
certainly never appeared. In 1941 the SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler
instituted a special scale I-II-III division of the Konzentrationslager (concentration
camps), Scale I being the mildest and scale III the harshest of the already
harsh KZ regimes. The strange so-called “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and
Fog”) regime, where the whereabouts of the prisoners were to be kept totally
secret to create a state of total terror amongst the civilian populations in
the German occupied countries, was classified as a scale III regime.
The German extermination camps for Jews and Gypsies (“Vernichtungslager” in German, literally "annihilation camps") in Poland and in the USSR - with the very important exceptions of KL Auschwitz II (=Auschwitz-Birkenau) and, (if classified as an extermination camp) KL Lublin (=Majdanek) - were not organized as part of the official SS-Konzentrationslager (SS-concentration camps) administrative system. On the contrary (SK) Kulmhof (=Chełmno), (SK) Bełżec, (SK) Sobibór, (SK) Treblinka in Poland and (SK) Maly Trostenez (=Mały Trostinec) in the USSR (now in Belarus) were organized as secret so-called SS-Sonderkommandos (SS-special commands or detachments). The abbreviation SK is not official. None of the extermination camps were inscribed with the “Arbeit macht frei” motto. In general no registration of the murder victims occurred in the extermination camps. The above camps' names link to pages at: http://www.death-camps.org.
I wish to thank all those who have helped me in
compiling these pages.
First of all the members of the ARC group for their
encouragement, their never ending patient assistance and not least for their
offering me the ability to publish my pages on their website.
Furthermore I wish to thank the staffs of museums
and memorial institutions, not to mention several individuals, throughout
Europe, Israel, the USA (and elsewhere), who have never hesitated to assist me
with my project.
A special thank you goes to Dr. Wolfgang Brückner
from Germany for discussing details of the KZ-motto: „Arbeit macht frei”, which
first triggered my interest in this project.
If you have corrections,
additions or questions please contact me at: webmaster@death-camps.org
Copyright ©
2003-2007 John Ulrich Poulsen
Back
to my main page: http://www.death-camps.org/websites/jmain.htm
Back to Aktion Reinhard Camps main page: http://www.death-camps.org