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A concentration camp is a place where people are detained or confined without trial. Prisoners
were kept in extremely harsh conditions and without any rights. In Nazi Germany after 1933, and
across Nazi controlled Europe between 1938 and 1945, concentration camps became a major
way in which the Nazis imposed their control.The first concentration camps in Germany were set
up as detention centres to stop any opposition to the Nazis by so called enemies of the state.
These people included communists, socialists and social democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses,
homosexuals, Roma, and so called asocials.However, after March 1938, when the Germans
annexed Austria into German territory, many thousands of German Jews were arrested and
detained in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.After Kristallnacht
(the Night of broken glass) in November 1938, the Nazis and their supporters arrested many
thousands of male Jews above the age of 14 years. They imprisoned them in camps for days or
sometimes weeks. They were kept in poor conditions, given little food or water and subjected to
brutal treatment and torture. When the German army invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the
SS set up many concentration camps to house Polish political prisoners and many thousands of
Polish Jews. Many of the inmates of these camps were subjected to increasingly poor conditions.
In addition they were subjected to forced labour, the result of which was often death.The Nazis
set up transit camps in occupied lands. Examples of transit camps include Drancy in
France, Mechelenin Belgium and Westerbork in the Netherlands. Jews were imprisoned in
transit camps before being sent on to a concentration camp or deported to one of the six Nazi
extermination camps in Poland.Westerbork was one such transit camp located in the north east of
the Netherlands. The camp had originally been set up in October 1939 by the Dutch government.
It was a place to hold German Jews who had entered the Netherlands illegally. These people
were fleeing Germany because of Nazi persecution.The German army had invaded the
Netherlands in May 1940, and very quickly had imposed their antisemitic policies. In late 1941
they decided that Westerbork was an ideal place in which to assemble the Jews of Holland before
their deportation. The first Jews arrived at the camp on 14 July, and the first deportation to
Auschwitz left the following day.Selections for transit were a regular feature at Westerbork. Each
Monday evening a train of about 20 cattle wagons would arrive at the camp. A list of one
thousand people would be compiled by the Jewish council, which was made up of leaders of the
community appointed by the Nazis and forced to carry out the Nazis orders. Early on the
Tuesday morning those selected would assemble for deportation. After a roll call, they would
enter the trains, at least 50 to each wagon, a bucket of water at one end and an empty one for use
as a toilet at the other. The doors would close before the train departed for the long journey to the
intended destination.Between July 1942 and September 1944 almost 100,000 Jews would pass
through Westerbork camp. They would leave on one of the 103 trains going to the Nazi
concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, the Theresienstadt ghetto or the extermination camps
of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor. Fewer than 5,000 of them survived.Like many of the
camps, Westerbork also had a permanent population of workers. They would be doing metalwork
or manual labour, or set to work serving the various areas of the camp.It was not only
concentration camp prisoners who were used for forced labour. By 1945 more than 14 million
people were exploited in the network of hundreds of forced labour camps that stretched across
the whole of Nazi-occupied Europe.Many of the forced labour camps were satellite camps or

sections of concentration camps. Auschwitz, in Poland, had over 40 such satellite camps.Inmates
of the labour camps were kept in terrible conditions, with the intention by the Nazis that death
would be the result. Extermination by labour was a policy under which the Nazis could supply
the German war effort, while also continuing to carry out the final solutionThe Nazis established
six extermination camps on Polish soil. These were Chelmno (December 1941-January
1945), Belzec (March-December 1942), Sobibor (May-July 1942 and October 1942-October
1943), Treblinka (July 1942-August 1943), Majdanek (September 1941-July 1944)
and Auschwitz-Birkenau (March 1942-January 1945).The first of these camps, Chelmno, was
established to exterminate the Jews of the Lodz ghetto and the surrounding area, and
5,000 Roma. The facility contained three gas vans in which victims were murdered. Only two
Jews survived the camp.After the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Germans established death
camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Their sole purpose was murder. They were set up near
railway lines to make transportation of the victims easy. As they were purely killing centres,
there were no selections. The victims were sent directly to the gas chambers.A concentration
camp to house Soviet prisoners of war and Poles had been established at Majdanek, close to the
Polish city of Lublin, during 1941. In the spring of 1942 gas chambers and crematoria were
added, turning Majdanek into an extermination camp that would murder 78,000
people.Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps, was a massive
concentration, forced labour and extermination camp at the centre of a network of more than
40 satellite camps. Upwards of 80 per cent of those Jews transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau
were selected for immediate death.Those who were selected for work were set on a whole range
of tasks. These included sorting and processing the possessions of everyone who arrived at the
camp and heavy manual work.Some Jewish prisoners were put into units
called Sonderkommandos, whose role was to work in the gas chambers and crematorium. They
were kept apart from the rest of the camp prisoners, but were also sent to their deaths in the gas
chambers after a few weeks or months of work.The majority of those selected for any kind of
work would die within weeks or months of their arrival from lack of food, disease or overwork.
An SS Deaths Head Unit, using the model established in Dachau, administered each camp. The
SS unit was split into two groups.The first of these was responsible for life, security and
conditions inside the camp, whilst the second group was responsible for guarding the perimeter
of the camp, in addition to an exclusion zone around it.The organisation inside the camp would
include:The camp commandant (Lagerkommandant) and his personal staff, made up of junior
officers;The security police;The commander of the detention facilities together with his staff,
once again junior officers; Male and female guards and wardens, who were usually German
or Ukrainian. Sometimes they were criminals released from German prisons;Administration and
accounting staff;A camp hospital, run by an SS doctor with several medical assistants. Doctors
were in charge of the selection of prisoners. They would conduct medical experiments using
prisoners as guinea pigs to aid research.Often the SS officers and orderlies would be extremely
brutal to prisoners. Punishments were carried out at the whim of the guards.On arrival at
concentration camps prisoners had their clothing taken away, often to be replaced by a striped
uniform (now known as striped pyjamas). Men would wear a vest, trousers, hat and coat. Women
would be supplied a smock type dress.On their feet prisoners wore wooden or leather clogs. As
socks were not supplied, clogs would rub on feet and ankles, causing foot sores. This could be
very dangerous, as the conditions in barracks and around the camp were extremely poor.
Prisoners could very easily get an infection, which could then lead to death.Clothes would be
changed approximately every six weeks. As prisoners would have to work and sleep in the same

clothes, they would be very dirty.Prisoners were identified by a number printed on their clothing
and also an inverted triangle with lettering to signify the reason for imprisonment. Criminals
were marked with a green triangle, political prisoners with red, homosexuals with pink,
whilst Jehovahs Witnesses wore a purple triangle and asocials (including Roma) wore a black
triangle.In some camps, Jews were usually marked by a yellow triangle over a red triangle to
form the Star of David. However, in others a yellow star identified them as being Jewish. Over
the 12 years from 1933 until 1945 the Nazis developed over 20,000 camps across Europe, These
camps varied in their use and design. However, the systems of administration and control used
across and within these camps were very similar.This section of The Holocaust
Explained describes and explains the various aspects of camp life, from transportation through to
arrival, daily routines, meals and work.Learn about the experiences of camp inmates by reading
the various stories, interpreting the images and diagrams and listening to the testimonies of
Holocaust survivors.For prisoners, meal times were the most important event of each day. After
morning roll call the prisoners would be given their morning meal imitation coffee or herbal
tea. For lunch prisoners may have been given watery soup. If they were lucky, they might find
a piece of turnip or potato peel.In the evening prisoners may have been given a small piece of
black bread; they may also have received a tiny piece of sausage, or some marmalade or cheese.
The bread was supposed to last the prisoners for the morning also, so prisoners would try to hide
it on their person whilst they slept.Hunger was one of the greatest problems. The meagre rations
were merely intended to keep the prisoners alive. The Nazis did not provide prisoners with
sufficient nutrition to carry out heavy manual work. Many thousands died from starvation or
illnesses brought on by lack of nutrition.