How Did The Nazis Use Concentration Camps?

Originally Concentration Camps were called “re-education camps” but soon the SS started calling them Concentration Camps. These camps are called Concentration Camps because they are “concentrating” the enemy into a restricted area. The concentration Camps started soon after Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Weeks after the Nazis came to power the SA, SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organized detention camps. The SS established larger camps. All SS units wore the Death-Head symbol on their hats. In Berlin the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under investigation by the Gestapo until 1936. The Gestapo was the German secret state police. In 1933 the Nazis built a series of concentration camps to imprison and eliminate “enemies of the state”. The prisoners were German Communists, Jews, Socialists,

So the Nazis established killing centers in Poland. They did this in Poland because Poland has the largest population of Jews. These killing centers were designed so that mass murder could be efficient. The first killing center opened in December 1942 called Chelmno. Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans there. The Nazis set up gas chambers there Jews went into a room and it was filled with poison. So the Jews would die and it would efficiently increase killing. One killing center called Birkenau, had four gas chambers. There, up to 6000 Jews were gassed there each day. Some popular concentration camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Chelmno, Dachau, Ebensee, Flossenburg, Ravensburk, and many more concentration camps. At these concentration camps if you were lucky and didn 't get gassed were to wake up around three to five in the morning. You would be put to work. The whole day you would be doing forced labor in harsh conditions. With little water or food many people died of