Essays on Nazi Concentration Camps

A concentration camp is a place where people are concentrated and imprisoned without trial. During Nazi regime in Germany and across Nazi controlled Europe between 1938 and 1945, were established 27 main camps and more than 1,100 satellite camps. Around 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in the camps. Inmates were exploited for hard labour and kept under harsh conditions.

After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in March 1933, the first camps were established as detention centres for so-called ‘enemies of the state’. Dachau, near Munich was one of the first Nazi concentration camps. In concentration camps were imprisoned and killed homosexuals, political dissidents (German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats) and the disabled. In November 1938, Nazi officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews, they were arrested generally precisely because they were Jews.

Extermination camps were used by the Nazis from 1941 to 1945 to murder Jews and, on a smaller scale, Roma. On January 20, 1942, the policy of extermination of Europe's Jews began with a plan known by the Nazis as "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem". The death camps were to be the essential instrument of the “final solution.” From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered.