Nazi Camp System
Created by: Amber K., Samatha B., and Cameron K.
What is the Nazi Camp System?
The Nazi camp system began as a system of repression directed against political opponents of the Nazi state. In the early years of the Third Reich(nation), the Nazis imprisoned primarily Communists and Socialists. In about 1935, the regime also began to imprison those whom it designated as racially or biologically inferior, especially Jews.
After Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis arrested German and Austrian Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, all located in Germany. After the violent Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogroms in November 1938, the Nazis conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews and incarcerated them in camps for brief periods.
Killing Center:
The Nazis constructed gas chambers (rooms that filled with poison gas to kill those inside) to increase killing efficiency and to make the process more impersonal for the perpetrators. At the Auschwitz camp complex, the Birkenau killing center had four gas chambers. During the height of deportations to the camp, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed there each day.
Bibliography
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012. 0. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005144>.