Nazi concentration camps

A network of camps operated by Nazi Germany and its allies from 1933 to 1945 to imprison, exploit, persecute, and kill people.

SS-Totenkopfverbände: The SS unit responsible for guarding and administering Nazi concentration camps. Its personnel enforced camp discipline and helped turn detention into a system of terror.
Dachau concentration camp: A Nazi concentration camp opened in 1933 near Munich, initially holding political opponents. Dachau became an early model for camp organization and SS administration.
Rudolf Höss: An SS officer who commanded Auschwitz and later testified about its operation at the Nuremberg trials. His career links camp administration to the organization of mass murder at Auschwitz.
Auschwitz concentration camp: A complex of Nazi camps in occupied Poland that combined imprisonment, forced labor, and mass murder. Auschwitz demonstrates how a camp complex could serve several functions at once.
Liberation of Nazi concentration camps: The Allied discovery and release of prisoners from Nazi camps as forces advanced in 1944 and 1945. Liberation exposed the conditions and crimes that survivors and soldiers documented.
Forced labor in Nazi Germany: The coercive use of millions of people’s labor by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Camp prisoners were exploited for labor under brutal conditions, often until they died.
Nazi seizure of power: The process by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party established dictatorship in Germany in 1933. The new regime used camps to imprison political opponents soon after taking power.
Primo Levi: An Italian Jewish chemist and writer deported to Auschwitz, whose memoirs describe camp life and survival. His testimony offers a precise account of coercion, hunger, and moral pressures inside the camps.
Buchenwald concentration camp: A major Nazi concentration camp established near Weimar in 1937, where prisoners faced forced labor and lethal abuse. Buchenwald illustrates the persecution and exploitation of prisoners in camps inside Germany.
Nuremberg trials: A series of postwar trials that prosecuted leading Nazi officials and other defendants for wartime crimes. Evidence about camp persecution and murder helped establish criminal responsibility for Nazi atrocities.

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