The Nazi concentration camp system and extermination centers

The Nazi concentration camp universe was born in 1933 with the opening of Dachau, intended for political opponents, and expanded into a vast network of concentration camps, forced labor camps, and transit camps. From 1941-1942 onwards, as part of the « Final Solution », extermination centers specifically designed for mass murder were added — Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek — and the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, where a concentration camp, a slave labor factory, and a gassing apparatus coexisted. It is important to distinguish these functions: the concentration camp broke and exploited; the extermination center killed industrially upon arrival. This topic describes the organization, geography, and logic of this system, as well as the life and death of the deportees who were imprisoned there.

Sources & resources

• La Destruction des Juifs d'Europe — Raul Hilberg, 1961
• Auschwitz — Tal Bruttmann, 2015
• Mémoire Juive & Éducation — Dominique Natanson ↗