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Life in the Camps

The first concentration camp was established at Dachau on 23 March 1933. As the Nazis captured more territory, the camp system was greatly expanded and used as a tool in the creation of a single-race state. In total, the Nazis created approximately 20,000 camps – including transit, forced labour, and extermination camps throughout German-occupied countries.

Camp inmates were subject to forced labour, overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, starvation and cruel treatment with many thousands dying.

The Nazis extended the camp system to include 6 extermination camps: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The mobile killing units which were originally used to kill inmates were expanded with the development of gas chambers.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Arrival in the camp started with a selection process – men, women and children were removed from the transports, which arrived daily and had their valuables taken away. Men were separated from women and children. A Nazi physician would quickly assess whether each person was healthy enough to survive forced labour, and based on this visual inspection, individuals were sent to the camps or to the gas chambers. The disabled, elderly, pregnant women, babies, young children or the sick, stood little chance of surviving this selection.

Those who were selected for death were led to the gas chambers, and, in order to prevent panic, some victims were told they were going to the showers to remove the lice from their bodies. They were made to hand over any remaining valuables and remove all of their clothes. After being ushered into the gas chambers, the doors would be shut and bolted. In some extermination centres, carbon monoxide was pumped into the chambers, and in others, a toxic insecticide called Zyklon-B. The poison took up to 20 minutes to kill those in the chambers. Camp prisoners were then forced by the SS guards to remove the corpses from the chambers and to remove hair, gold teeth and fillings. The corpses were then burned in ovens within the crematoria or were buried in mass graves.

Bergen Belsen

Bergen Belsen was set up in 1940 as a Prisoner of War camp until 1943, when it was divided into the prisoners’ camp and the ‘Star Camp’ in which prisoners classed as valuable and whom the Nazis planned to exchange with the Allies for German civilians. Few prisoners were exchanged. Bergen-Belsen also served as a collection camp for sick and injured prisoners transported from other concentration camps. They were housed in a separate section, the so-called hospital camp. Bergen Belsen was also the destination of survivors of death marches from other concentration camps. It is estimated there were over 60,000 prisoners in Belsen by April 1945. Approximately 35,000 prisoners died of typhus, malnutrition and starvation in the first few months of 1945.

Many Nazi concentration camps were built as forced labour camps, supplying cheap manual labour to local industries. Work was hard and treatment was brutal. Not working quickly or hard enough, whilst being starved, was punishable by death.

Theresienstadt concentration camp

Theresienstadt (often referred to as Terezin) was set up as a transit camp. Its main purpose was to serve as a transit camp for European Jews on their way to Auschwitz. Conditions were incredibly harsh. In a space previously inhabited by 7,000 Czechs, now over 50,000 Jews were gathered. Food was scarce, punishment by beatings or death was the norm. Terezin supplied slave labour to local industries.

Terezin was publicised by the Nazis as a place of high culture – many artists, musicians and others from the arts were held there prior to deportation. But the camp served as a much more sinister propaganda exercise. Under pressure from the international community, the Nazis permitted the International Red Cross to visit the ‘transit camp’ in July 1944. An intensive period of deportations took place prior to the visit, and the camp was ‘beautified’ – gardens were planted, concerts were held and a propaganda film was created. The hoax worked and the International Red Cross were satisfied with the treatment of the prisoners. After the visit, deportations resumed.

Badge system

Although the symbols worn by prisoners differed from camp to camp, the Nazis used the wearing of badges to differentiate between the prisoners in camps. The wearing of badges and prisoner numbers signified the absolute removal of human rights of an individual.
The badges sewn onto prisoner uniforms enabled SS guards to identify the alleged grounds for incarceration, although these did differ from camp to camp, it’s generally accepted that:

Yellow star or triangle – Jewish prisoner
Green triangle – Criminals
Red triangle – Political prisoners
Black triangles – Roma & Sinti (Gypsies), ‘asocials’, (nonconformists, vagrants, Lesbians)
Pink triangles – Gay men
Purple triangles – Jehovah’s Witnesses

Prisoners also had the first initial of the place they came from on their badges if they were non-German, and a variety of colours if they fell into a number of categories – (ie a Jewish political prisoner would have a yellow and red star).
We look to survivor stories to tell us more about what life was like in the camps.