concentration camp

A concentration camp is a location in which a regime detains or confines civilians who are perceived to threaten that regime without judicial review. Though the practice of 'concentration' of populations with a specific profile has been used by various countries since the19th century, it is most widely associated with Nazi policies during World War II. The Nazis operated an expansive system of concentration camps between 1933-1945, in which millions of prisoners were detained, murdered, and exploited as slave laborers.

The first Nazi concentration camp was established at Dachau near Munich in March 1933, just weeks after Hitler was named Chancellor, and other camps followed soon thereafter. The first prisoners detained were political opponents of the Nazi regime. Administration of the camps was quickly centralized under the authority of the SS, creating a detention system outside of the normal judicial institutions of the country.

Nazi concentration camps initially served three main purposes:
1) To detain individuals perceived to be a threat to the Nazi regime,
2) To eliminate individuals and groups from society by murder and without judicial review,
3) To exploit the prisoner population through forced labor.

Prisoners were held indefinitely without charges or conviction in so-called 'protective custody,' (Schutzhaft) which was intended to intimidate and prevent perceived opponents of Nazism from engaging in subversive activity. In addition to political, cultural and social opposition leaders, these included Jews, Sinti and Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, convicted criminals, and gay men, among others. Jewish men were arrested and detained in concentration camps in large numbers in wake of the pogroms of November 9, 1938 (also known as Kristallnacht). Without legal recourse, violence against concentration camp prisoners was constant and many prisoners were killed or died as a result of beatings or abuse.

Even before World War II began, concentration camp inmates were deployed as a labor force for construction projects under SS administration. Sometimes prisoners were leased to private companies engaged in war-related industries. Forced labor details not only supplied an inexpensive workforce but were also a means of culling prisoner populations by working them to death. Prisoners performed hard physical labor under the harshest conditions without appropriate clothing, shoes, food, or rest.

With the outbreak of the war in September 1939, the concentration camp system expanded exponentially, eventually encompassing over 40,000 camps throughout Europe. As the war progressed, the prisoner population grew significantly, and the nature of concentration camps evolved and diversified to include forced labor camps, transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and killing centers.