Maxwell Gibson

Mr. Hawkins
Modern World History P, Period 3
April 10, 2016
First Concentration Camps
The very first concentration camp to be opened was established in March of 1933, which is
surprising because Hitler had only been chancellor of Germany for just a few months. In between
the years of 1933 and 1945 the Nazi party dedicated various locations across Central Europe to
the Confinement of anyone that Hitler felt was a threat, or believed were inferior. Although there
were estimated to be about 15,000 camps, the first were constructed only in Germany.
Out of the group the very first camp to be constructed was Dachau. The Dachau concentration
camp was established in March 1933. It was the first regular concentration camp
established by the National Socialist (Nazi) government (Website #1). The camp was
initially designated to the detainment of political prisoners, Initially the internees were
primarily German Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and other political
opponents of the Nazi regime (Website #1). Obviously over time the camp got a diverse
group of prisoners which consisted of mostly what Nazi ideology considered inferior. The
camp was divided into two sectionsthe camp area and the crematoria area (Website #1).
The camp is consisted of the barracks, a kitchen, laundry area, and workshops, as well as a
bunker. The crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp and included the old
crematorium and the new crematorium (Barrack X) with a gas chamber. In Dachau, as in

other Nazi camps, German physicians performed medical experiments on prisoners,

including high-altitude experiments using a decompression chamber, malaria and
tuberculosis experiments, hypothermia experiments, and experiments testing new
medications (website #1). Hundreds of prisoners died and or were permanently disabled due to
these experiments. Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers (Website #1). Before the
war they were used in the operation of the camp, in various construction projects, and in small
handicraft industries established in the camp. During the war, forced labor utilizing concentration
camp prisoners became increasingly important to German armaments production. On April 26,
1945, as American forces approached, there were 67,665 registered prisoners in Dachau
and its sub camps. More than half of this number was in the main camp. Of these, 43,350
were categorized as political prisoners, while 22,100 were Jews, with the remainder falling
into various other categories (Website #1). Amazingly, The number of prisoners
incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 188,000 (Website #1).
The next camp to be opened was called the Sachsenhausen. Located near Oranienburg, north
of Berlin, the Sachsenhausen camp opened on July 12, 1936, when the SS transferred 50
prisoners from the Esterwegen concentration camp to begin construction of the camp
(Website #2). Similar to Dachau, In the early stage of the camp's existence the SS and police
incarcerated mainly political opponents and real or perceived criminal offenders in
Sachsenhausen (Website #2). Also like Dachau throughout the camps existence from 1936 to
1945 the camp held Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, "asocial, and, later, Soviet
civilians. During the nationwide Kristallnact ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom of
November 1938, Reichsfhrer SS (SS chief) and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler
ordered the arrest of up to 30,000 Jews (Website #2). Some 6,000 of these Jewish prisoners

were sent to Sachsenhausen, others were distributed among various other concentration camps.
On May 3, 1940 1,200 Polish prisoners arrived in Sachsenhausen from the Pawiak prison
in Warsaw. The prisoners included many juveniles, Catholic priests, army officers,
professors, teachers, doctors, and minor government officials (Website #2). The Nazi party
did this in attempt to eliminate the educated elite, and remove all chances of a resistance.
Next in line chronologically, is the largest camp Buchenwald constructed in 1937 in a
wooded area on the northern slopes of the Ettersberg, about five miles northwest of
Weimar in east-central Germany (Website #2). SS authorities opened Buchenwald for
male prisoners in July 1937. Women were not part of the Buchenwald camp system until
late 1943 or early 1944 (Website #2). Unlike its neighboring camps that administration would
accept prisoners based on their charges, Bueschenwald was sexually exclusive to male prisioners
onl1y. Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald were political prisoners. However, in 1938,
in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, German SS and police sent almost 10,000 Jews to
Buchenwald (Website #2). As the previous concentration camps have demonstrated, they will
soon be open to all types of prisoners. The SS also interned recidivist criminals, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and German military deserters at Buchenwald
(Website #2). Surprisingly, Buchenwald being one of the only camps that held so-called
work-shy individuals, persons whom the regime incarcerated as asocials because they
could not, or would not, find gainful employment (Website #2). These people that the Nazis
depicted as asocial were people who were either mentally challenged, or was physically
incapable of doing the work. In the camp's later stages, the SS also incarcerated prisonersof-war resistance fighters, prominent former government officials of German-occupied
countries, and foreign forced laborers (Website#2). Like most of the other sites a number

of physicians and scientists carried out a varied program of medical experimentation on

prisoners at Buchenwald (Website #2). Medical experiments aimed at testing the efficacy
of vaccines and treatments against contagious diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera,
and diphtheria resulted in hundreds of deaths (Website #2). Keep in-mind this is a
concentration camp, which are usually just a containment center for prisioners. During World
War II, the Buchenwald camp system became an important source of forced labor
(Website #2). Shortly after the .prisoner population expanded rapidly, reaching 112,000
by February 1945. The camp authorities deployed Buchenwald prisoners in the German
Equipment Works (Website #2). In early April 1945, as US forces approached the camp,
the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the main camp and an
additional several thousand prisoners from the sub camps of Buchenwald (Website#2).
The German officials sent prisoners on a march to another concentration camp as a plan of
evacuation. Most prisoners died of exhaustion or were shot because they could no-longer walk.
On April 11, 1945, in expectation of liberation, starved and emaciated prisoners stormed
the watchtowers, seizing control of the camp. Later that afternoon, US forces entered
Buchenwald (Website #2).
The last of the first camps to be established in Central Germany was Flossenburg bOn March
24, 1938, SS authorities determined a site near the small town of Flossenbrg to be suitable
for the establishment of a concentration camp, due to its potential for extracting granite for
construction purposes (Website #3). As the site was originally intended as a detention for
asocial persons, and repeated criminal offenders. The SS planned to deploy the prisoners as
forced laborers in the nearby stone quarry owned by the SS company German Earth and
Stone Works (Website #3). Although being a perfect site for forced labor in the granite quarry,

SS officials also established a plant in February 1943, in which prisoners produced parts
for ME-109 fighter planes (Website #3). The outcome of the forced labor sky-rocketed the
production of aircraft parts and Flossenburg soon dominated in the aircraft industry. In
addition to the generally high mortality rate, which included 1,367 deaths recorded for
March 1945 alone, the camp authorities conducted numerous individual and mass
shootings characterized as executions. SS guards had shot more than 1,000 Soviet
prisoners of war in Flossenbrg (Website #3). A condition that easily put Flossenburg down
as one of the worst was its having a high mortality rate. Nearly 97,000 prisoners (of whom
just over 16,000 were female) passed through the Flossenbrg system between 1938 and
1945. An estimated 30,000 prisoners died in Flossenbrg and its subcamps or on the
evacuation routes, including 3,515 Jews (Website #3).