How Did Nazis Use Concentration Camps

Starting in the mid 1930’s, Hitler came to power and immediately ordered the execution of those he deemed as “non-aryan.” Because of the ever-growing number of undesirables that Nazis were persecuting, the use of concentration camps became necessary to imprison and execute these prisoners in secret. There were three different types of camps that Hitler utilized and the functions of each of these varied depending on several factors such as size, location, and the needs of the Germans. Jewish people were sent to different types of camps such as labor camps where they worked, death camps where the Nazis sent the people to be killed, or concentration camps which were a combination of both.

The labor camps were one of the most common areas for

Concentration camps were a combination of death and labor camps. It is said that, “concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced laborers for SS construction projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps themselves”. In a way, the Jews were used to make the enemy stronger. Prisoners had to help the soldiers by building new things or assembling weapons or else they were killed. While execution camps were the most common form of killing non-aryan prisoners, many were killed in concentration camps as well. There is fact that, “Imprisonment in a concentration camp meant inhuman forced labour, brutal mistreatment, hunger, disease, and random executions”. The killing in concentration camps was not always purposeful but the prisoners would die from their living conditions. There were so many people living in a hut that disease spread very quickly and even a common cold would kill hundreds of people at a time. In these camps Nazi soldiers often forgot to feed the prisoners and would rape or kill them for no reason other than the satisfaction. Auschwitz is the most notorious camp throughout the Holocaust. This was the largest camp and held the most amount of prisoners at a time. In large concentration camps like Auschwitz, there were areas known as ghettos where the prisoners were surrounded by barbed wire and had awful living conditions. “In the ghettos, the nazis used the Jewish councils to communicate their orders”. The Nazi soldiers used this administrative system to create destruction among themselves. This would take some of the pressure off the soldiers and make the Jews torture themselves. Overall, the concentration camps were the most brutal and notorious camps throughout