Download Concentration Camps

Concentration Camps
Concentration camps were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The
term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions
and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
AUTHORITY TO IMPRISON PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
After 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp rested exclusively with the German Security
Police (made up of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police). The “legal” instrument of incarceration was either the
“protective detention” order or the “preventative detention” order. The Gestapo could issue a “protective
detention” order for persons considered a political danger after 1933. The Criminal Police could issue a
“preventative detention” order after December 1937 for persons considered to be habitual and professional
criminals, or to be engaging in what the regime defined as “asocial” behavior. No other agency had to review
decisions made by the German Security Police.
FORCED LABOR
From as early as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced laborers for construction
projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps themselves. By 1938, Nazi leaders envisioned using the
supply of forced laborers incarcerated in the camps for a variety of construction projects.
Beginning a pattern that became typical after the war began, economic considerations had an increasing impact on
the selection of sites for concentration camps after 1937. For instance, two concentration camps were strategically
located near large stone quarries. Likewise, concentration camp authorities increasingly diverted prisoners from
meaningless, backbreaking labor to still backbreaking and dangerous labor in extractive industries, such as stone
quarries and coal mines, and construction labor.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II
After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of
potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. The war did not change
the original function of the concentration camps as detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The
climate of national emergency that the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted them to expand the
functions of the camps.
The concentration camps increasingly became sites where the Nazi authorities could kill targeted groups of real or
perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding centers for a rapidly growing pool of
forced laborers used for construction projects, extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, the production of armaments,
weapons, and related goods for the German war effort.
Despite the need for forced labor, the Nazi authorities continued to deliberately undernourish and mistreat
prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps. Prisoners were used ruthlessly and without regard to safety at
forced labor, resulting in high mortality rates.
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