What people groups were put in the Nazi concentration camps?

Answer 1

Within weeks of Hitler’s 1933 rise to power, the iron gates slammed shut on inmates of the first Nazi concentration camps. It was the start of an unparalleled experiment in persecution and genocide that expanded over the next 12 years into a pyramid of ghettos, Gestapo prisons, slave labor camps and, ultimately, extermination factories.

Holocaust historians are only now piecing together the scattered research in many languages to understand the vast scope of the camps, prisons and punishment centers that scarred German-ruled Europe, like a pox on the landscape stretching from Greece to Norway and eastward into Russia.

Collecting and analyzing fragmented reports, researchers at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum say they have pinpointed some 20,000 places of detention and persecution - three times more than they estimated just six years ago.

And soon they will know much more.

They are about to have their first access to millions of documents locked away for a half century in the sprawling archive of the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the central German resort town of Bad Arolsen.

The 11 countries governing the ITS have agreed to lift the ban on research that had been imposed to safeguard victims’ privacy, though it still will take months until each country ratifies the decision and the doors open.

Recently, The Associated Press was allowed to view ITS documents on condition it did not publish the identities of individuals. Among the yellowed pages and pasted telegrams seen by AP were internal communications, secret orders, and “conduct reports” that determined whether inmates would be freed.

The “pyramid” ranged from death camps such as Auschwitz at the top, to secondary and tertiary detention centers. There were 500 brothels, where foreign women were put at the disposal of German officers, and more than 100 “child care facilities” where women in labor camps were forced to undergo abortions or had their newborns taken away and killed - usually by starvation - so the mothers could quickly return to work.

The earliest prisoners were communists, Social Democrats, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other political opponents, as well as homosexuals and common criminals. The Final Solution, which ultimately would claim 6 million Jewish lives, had not yet begun.

Survivors have described the camps in agonizing detail, recounting unbearable suffering and calculated brutality. But historians have long sought to know more about the inner workings of the camps, hoping to draw on the Germans’ own firsthand accounts and paperwork.

One directive seen by the AP, from November 1943 and marked Private and Confidential, instructed all camp commanders to keep visitors away from sensitive sites.

“During visits to the concentration camps, the bordellos and the crematoria are not to be shown. Visitors also are not to be told anything about these facilities,” said the order, signed by the divisional commander of the SS, the elite unit that guarded the camps.

Couched in patronizing and dehumanizing language, documents from the earliest camps foreshadow a system that would define the word “genocide.” They show that years before the mass-scale killings began at death camps such as Auschwitz, the intellectual groundwork of viewing categories of humanity as subhuman was already in place.

The records include two camps previously known to the Washington researchers, but about which few SS documents were available. Sachsenburg and Lichtenburg in eastern Germany were among the first sites opened in early 1933, but were closed in 1937 when the system was restructured into larger camps that housed tens of thousands of prisoners. Afterward, both served briefly as women’s camps. !!:-(

Answer 2

~Do you mean the concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, or the extermination camps, such as Auschwitz II and Chelmo. There is a huge difference.

Most European nations as well as Australia, New Zealand, China, Chile, Argentina and Japan (to name a few) have operated concentration camps at one time or another. The name "concentration camp" originated with the British during the Boer Wars, but the concept and practice of confining a selected group of people in a single location was already old by then. The US opened the first camps under Martin Van Buren in1838 at Ross's Landing (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Fort Payne, Alabama, and Fort Cass (Charleston, Tennessee) for the internment of the Cherokee.

Communists, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehova's Witnesses, anti-socials, intellectuals, some clergymen, some POW's, criminals, mentally and physically handicapped, journalists, political prisoners, Nazi opponents and like 'undesirables' were among the early Nazi concentration camp guests. After the war began, Poles, Soviets, and particularly Russians, Slavs and Ukranes, would swell the numbers.

The extermination camps, or death camps, were another matter entirely. They were set up as killing factories and were created for the "Final Solution" of the Jews. However, due to the need for a (slave) labor force many others in addition to the Jews were sent to the death camps as well and, when they were no longer fit for work, they, too, went to the showers and ovens.

The Jews constitute a minority of the people who died in the concentration camps, although they constitute the largest single group (a Russian Jew and a Polish Jew and a Jewish criminal each count against the Jewish total, but only tally once (if at all) in each of the sub-categories. Many of the same Jews would have gone to a concentration camp had they not been Jewish, but they would not have been sent to an extermination camp. The Russians and Poles are not far behind in total numbers and many of them were likewise summarily executed. Of the 6 million or so Jews who died in the camps, approximately half were killed in the extermination camps. About 80% of the death camp body count was Jewish. Total death camp casualty estimates number between 2.8 and 4.6 million, while total concentration camp death estimates vary between 12 and 18 million.

Jasenovac is the exception. It was a death camp established to eradicate the Serbs. Like with all camps, death or concentration, others were welcome at Jasenovac as well and it was not reserved exclusively for Serbs. All the same, the vast majority of exterminations there were of Serbs. You never hear much about Jasenovac, but a busy place it was. The body count there was behind only Auschwitz II and Treblinka. In fact, in late 1941, the Nazi's told Mile Budak to slow down, even before they cut back on the genocide at the other camps.

Himmler ordered the end of Operation 14f13 in the spring of 1943 and the exterminations were drastically reduced, although the body count in the concentration camps continued to mount due to the conditions in the camps. The crematoria were busy cooking through the end of the war. And yes, the Allies were aware of what was going on not later than 1942. In '42, Jan Karski of the Polish underground infiltrated Belzec (the original death camp) disguised as guard. He witnessed mass executions taking place and on his return to England, he made a full report to the British and US governments.

Basically, if someone in the party didn't like you, you had a real good chance of going to one concentration camp or another. If you were Jewish, you had a 50/50 shot of going to a death camp. This isn't really a topic you should be asking about on Yahoo Answers. You should do some reading. Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Does the Patriot Act come to mind?

Answer 3

The Nazis had a hatred of Jews and they were automatically sent to the camps where they were either gasses on arrival or worked to death. A few were used for the infamous 'medical experiments.' Many eastern Europeans were put into camps, they along with Russians were deemed 'sub-human'. Other groups included gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's' Witnesses, political prisoners and anyone who they deemed to be against Hitler and the Nazi ideology, which did include Germans. While this list is not exhaustive, it does contain the largest groups of prisoners.

Answer 4

Primarily those who occupied the Nazi concentration camps were Jewish, however, most people don't know that Christians (and anyone else) who opposed Hitler were also sent to concentration camps and ultimately joined the Jewish people they had supported in the gas chambers. Mentally and Physically challenged people were also sent to concentration camps. Some were even experimented on in the most cruel ways before being sent to the gas chambers.
Essentially, anyone who did not fit in with Hitler's plan and ideal of the perfect specimen was rounded up and put in concentration camps.

Answer 5

Jews

Answer 6

Jews, Gypsies, Cathloics, Christians, mentally hanidcapped, homosexuals,Slavs, Poles, Serbs, Jehovah's Witness, Romanian, Communists, and other "undesireables".

Answer 7

The leader of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), Ernst Thalmann, was put in solitary confinement in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944 (after 11 years in prison) and then shot, and his body burned. The Communists from Germany were put in concentration camps too.

Answer 8

Jews,gypsies,gays,any counter nazi groups.Possibly 6-7 million people.

Answer 9

The Jews

Answer 10

Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Disabled, a few prisoners of war