Extermination camp

s: the routes to the death camps]]
**Extermination camps** (also known as **death camps**) were built by Nazi Germany during World War II.  The goal of the death camps was to kill millions of people as quickly as possible.  At the death camps, people were murdered mostly by being given poison gas in gas chambers.  However, the Nazis also killed many people in other ways at the death camps.  They killed some in mass executions (for example, by shooting many people at once).  They killed others through "extermination through labor." This was by making prisoners do very hard forced labor without giving them the food, medical care, or other basic things they needed to .  Many other people died at the death camps from starvation, illness, and freezing to death.

The Nazis sent many different kinds of people to the death camps.  However, about 90% of the people killed in the death camps were Jewish.  Nazi Germany wanted to 'exterminate' the Jewish people (they wanted to kill all of the Jews, so they would not exist any more).  This plan was called the Final Solution. It is now called the Holocaust.

The fascist Ustaše government in the Independent State of Croatia also set up death camps during World War II.  At death camps like Jasenovac, they murdered many Serbs, Jews, and other people.  As many as 750,000 Serbs may have been killed at these death camps.

In 1939, the Nazi *Schutzstaffel* (SS) started a program to kill everyone who was "unworthy of life."  They called this secret program the Action T4 euthanasia program.  As part of this program, they killed 70,000 people with disabilities, using carbon monoxide gas.  Before the Nazis were ready to kill large numbers of people in gas chambers, the SS *Einsatzgruppen* started killing many people at a time by shooting them.

At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Nazis made it clear that they planned to kill all the Jews in Europe.  Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of this program.  After this, the Nazis built more death camps, with the goal of killing millions of Jewish people with poison gas.

## Definition 
'' burn corpses at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.]]

The Nazis used death camps and concentration camps for different things.  The goal of the death camps was genocide.  Their purpose was to kill people who were sent to the camps on trains, thousands at a time.  At death camps like Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, people were usually killed within a few hours after they got to the camps.

Concentration camps were different from death camps. Some of the more  concentration camps were Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Ravensbrück.  These were prison camps which the Nazis set up before World War II started.  The Nazis sent people who they did not want in their society to these concentration camps.  The Nazis forced millions of people to do forced labor in the concentration camps.  Prisoners in concentration camps made up about 25% of the workers in Nazi Germany.  Even though the concentration camps were not designed for mass murder, over 75% of the people sent to these camps died because of starvation, illness, ion, executions, and physical abuse.  Also, since these death camps were not in Germany, the Nazis could hide what they were doing from the German people.

The Nazis created two types of death camps.  Some were "pure extermination camps."  Their only purpose was to kill people.  Others were a combination of concentration camps and death camps.  At these camps, the Nazis would kill some people right away.  They would force others to work as slaves until they died.

### Pure extermination camps
]]

The first death camps were Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór.  They were built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941&nbsp;– November 1943), whose  was to kill all of Poland's Jews.  Trains full of people were sent to these camps, and were murdered as soon as they got there.

On December 8, 1941, the Nazis opened another death camp called Chełmno.  At first, they killed prisoners at Chelmno inside vans, using carbon monoxide exhaust fumes.  Later, like at the other death camps, the Nazis built gas chambers so they could kill more people at a time.  Almost all of the prisoners sent to Chelmno were killed right away.  However, the Nazis forced a few strong men into work units called *Sonderkommando*.  These prisoners were forced to help take dead bodies out of the gas chambers and burn them.

The death camps were small (only several hundred meters long and wide).  They also had very little housing or other buildings.  Because of this, the Nazis were able to trick the prisoners when they arrived.  The Nazis told them they would only be staying at the camp for a short time, before continuing to a work camp farther east.  This kept the prisoners from panicking or fighting back. and Majdanek.  The Ustaše treated the Serbian people so  that even the Germans were shocked.

The first Ustaše camp was Jadovno concentration camp.  It held thousands of Serbs and Jews from May to August 1941.  Prisoners were usually killed by being pushed into deep ravines near the camp.

The Jasenovac concentration camp replaced Jadovno.  Jasenovac was a very large group of many camps.  Many prisoners who arrived at Jasenovac were immediately scheduled to be killed.  Strong men who could work, and were sentenced to less than three years in the camp, were allowed to live.  However, all prisoners sentenced to three years or more were immediately scheduled for execution.

Some prisoners at Jasenovac were killed with poison gas or in mass shootings.  However, the Ustaše guards killed many prisoners using their hands, or tools like knives and hammers.

## How prisoners were killed 
In 1941, top Nazi official Heinrich Himmler went to see a group of *Einsatzgruppen* perform a mass shooting.  The group's commanding officer told him that shooting so many people was psychologically harming the soldiers doing the shootings.  Himmler decided the Nazis needed to find another way of killing people.  After the war, the diary of Auschwitz's Commandant, Rudolf Höss, showed that many *Einsatzkommandos*&nbsp;– the killers&nbsp;– either went mad or killed themselves.  He wrote that they did this because they were psychologically "unable to endure  through blood any longer."

The Nazis had learned from their T-4 program that they could kill people using carbon monoxide.  However, they thought sending carbon monoxide to the death camps would be too expensive.

### Gassings 
During the war, Nazi official Kurt Gerstein told a Swedish diplomat about life in a death camp.  On 19 August 1942, Gerstein arrived at Bełżec extermination camp, which had carbon monoxide gas chamber. At the time 45 railroad cars, filled with 6,700 Jews, were being unloaded.  Many of the Jews had died on the trip. The rest were marched naked to the gas chambers.  There Gerstein said:''[The Nazi guards were] making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. ... My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and the diesel engine did not start. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue," says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth whips the Ukrainian [prisoner being forced to help] twelve, thirteen times, in the face.* 

*After 2 hours and 49 minutes&nbsp;– the stopwatch recorded it all&nbsp;– the diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons, in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window, because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists [then] hammered out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns. In the midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and, showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See, for yourself, the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday, and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day&nbsp;– dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!" — Kurt Gerstein *]]

To keep people from panicking and fighting back, the Nazis told the prisoners they were going to shower and get deloused (get lice removed).  Prisoner *Sonderkommando* were forced to help in and around the gas chambers.  They encouraged the Jews to  without a  of what was about to happen.  (If the *Sonderkommando* warned the prisoners, they too would be killed.)  The gas chambers were designed to look like shower rooms (with fake water nozzles, and tile walls).  The *Sonderkommando* talked to the victims about life in the camp to keep people from getting .  They also helped the elderly and the very young to undress.  The *Sonderkommando'' also comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion".

Once the gas chamber was full of people and the door was sealed, Nazi guards dropped Zyklon B through special holes in the roof.

As part of their training, some high-ed Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau to watch the gassings.  Höss reported that "all were deeply impressed by what they saw ... [but some] ... who had previously spoken most loudly, about the [need] for this extermination, fell silent once they had actually seen the 'final solution of the Jewish problem'."

### Destroying corpses
After the gassings, the *Sonderkommando* removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then took gold teeth out of the bodies.  At first, the victims were buried in mass graves.  Later, victims' bodies were cremated.  The ashes were either buried, scattered, or ed in a nearby river.

In his memoir, Auschwitz Commandant Höss wrote that the *Sonderkommando* had to:

Hess wrote that he was impressed by how hard the *Sonderkommando* worked, even though they knew they would also be killed eventually.

At Sobibór, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Chełmno, the corpses were burned on pyres.

## Death toll 
Historians estimate that the Nazis murdered over three million people in these camps:

## Camps are destroyed
When they realized they were going to lose World War II, the Nazis tried to destroy the death camps in order to hide the evidence of what they had done.  They wanted to hide evidence that so many people had been killed.  This meant they needed to destroy the camps, and also hide the corpses of their many victims.  The Nazis forced prisoners to destroy the camps and their records, and to dig up mass graves.

Some extermination camps were d (taken over and freed) by Soviet soldiers before the Nazis could destroy evidence of their war crimes.  For example, Majdanek was d nearly  before the Nazis were able to destroy very much.  This happened because the Soviet Red Army got to the camp very quickly, which prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp.

## Related pages
* The Holocaust
* The Final Solution
* Nazi concentration camps
* World War II
* War crimes

## References