Extermination camps

Extermination camps were used primarily by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany during World War II to systematically kill millions of Jews and anyone else the Nazis considered sub-human. These camps, also called death camps or killing centers, were used by German allies in the Utasha regime of the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. Unlike the Nazi concentration camps used during World War II, which were essentially detention and labor centers, extermination camps were utilized primarily for mass execution. The camps were built for efficient mass murder. They were equipped with gas chambers in which victims were asphyxiated by poison gas and crematories to burn the bodies. It is estimated that nearly 2.7 million people, the majority of which were Jewish, were killed in these camps by German military officers and police mainly through asphyxiation in the gas chambers, though some were shot. In total, more than 6 million people, primarily Jews, were killed by Nazis during World War II in what became known as the Holocaust.

Background

Prior to his rise to power, Hitler served in the German army during World War I. Like many anti-Semites—those who espouse hatred toward Jews—Hitler blamed the Jews for the country's defeat in 1918. After the war, Hitler joined the National German Workers' Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party. Hitler believed in the superiority of the pure German race, which he called Aryan, and the need for space for that race to grow and thrive. In 1923, Hitler wrote the book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he predicted a European war that would result in the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany. Hitler continued his rise to power, and on January 20, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. When German president Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler anointed himself as führer, becoming Germany's supreme ruler. The goals of racial purity and more space formed the core of Hitler's foreign and domestic policies. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau in March 1933. By July of that year, the camps held some twenty-seven thousand people.

In September 1939, the German army occupied western Poland. Around that same time, Nazi officials selected about seventy thousand Germans institutionalized for mental illness or other disabilities to be killed in the euthanasia program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler ended the program in August 1941, though some killings of the disabled continued in secrecy. Throughout early 1940, the German army expanded Hitler's control in Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.

The first extermination camp, Chelmno, began operations in December 1941. At the camp, located in the Reich province Wartheland, which encompassed a part of Poland annexed to Germany, military and police personnel guarded the facility and killed at least 152,000 people in trucks. The exhaust pipes of the trucks had been reconfigured to pump carbon monoxide gas into sealed paneled spaces behind the cabs of the vehicles. Once killed, the bodies were driven into a nearby forest and deposited into mass graves that had been dug.

Operation Reinhard became the code name for Nazi Germany's plan to kill approximately two million Jews living in German-occupied Poland. To support the plan, German officers constructed three additional extermination camps that began operations in 1942: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. Prisoners at these camps were locked in stationary gas chambers into which truck engines pumped carbon monoxide. A small number of prisoners at each camp were chosen to work and support the killing function, primarily removing and disposing of bodies from the chambers.

The largest and most notorious German extermination camp was at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was established in the spring of 1942. Unlike Chelmno and the three Operation Reinhard camps, the Auschwitz complex was not controlled by regional SS military leaders but was part of a camp system under the SS Economic-Administration Main Office. It was originally designated as a forced-labor camp but developed into a killing center in its first weeks of existence. Upon arrival, prisoners who were unable to work were sent directly to two makeshift gas chambers. Four larger gas chambers were later built at Auschwitz and completed in 1943. These used Zyklon B gas that was pumped into the chambers. During its peak, SS officers at the extermination camp killed as many as six thousand people each day.

Overview

The genocide, which is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, known as the Holocaust resulted in the deaths of around 6 million people, with an estimated 2.7 million of them killed at extermination camps. Decades later, the victims of the Holocaust are remembered in museums, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and through the stories shared by a dwindling number of survivors. They are also remembered on Holocaust Remembrance Day every January 27, which is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Much continues to be learned about the Holocaust and, in particular, the extermination camps. In the early and mid 2010s, teams of archeologists began to carefully dig at the camps, hoping to unearth new physical evidence of the Nazis' crimes. These explorations were not without controversy, however. The teams from the United Kingdom, Israel, and Poland working at the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps were met with resistance. A diverse set of detractors tried to halt the efforts, including Holocaust deniers, Jewish religious authorities, memorial planning committees, and scholars concerned about the camps' integrity and the importance of respecting the human remains there.

Despite the resistance, archeologists at the Sobibor extermination camp were able to compile hard evidence of the atrocities committed decades ago. Using a combination of newer technologies, members of the team were able to detect landscape features and the borders of mass graves. Their first major find was a pair of parallel rows of fence posts that took a ninety-degree turn near the end. Through research and survivor testimony, they knew this was part of a path that led victims to the gas chambers. The site where they believed the chambers were located was paved over in the 1960s, and the asphalt was near possible gravesites. The archeologists received permission from Poland's chief rabbi to dig there, and they were able to uncover demolished brick walls several feet underground that formed the foundation of Sobibor's gas chamber. They also uncovered an escape tunnel that the prisoners started to dig but were never able to use.

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