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Immediately
after they came to power, the Nazis set up camps in which they
imprisoned those whom they considered opponents to their regime and
treated them with great brutality. As in other dictatorial regimes,
these camps were designed to break that opposition and inspire fear
among the population in order to ensure that new opposition would
not arise. The first concentration camp was established at Dachau on
March 23, 1933, just two months after Hitler became Chancellor of
Germany. Dachau became the training ground for the SS. Its first
commandant was Theodor Eicke, whose many precedents for brutality
were followed throughout the expanding camp system. Among the major
camps established in Greater Germany were Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Neuengamme, Ravensbrueck and Sachsenhausen.
At
the time of the annexation of Austria and more so during the riot
against the Jews of Germany in November 1938 (Kristallnacht), people
were no longer imprisoned primarily because of their perceived
actions, but they began to be imprisoned for reasons of race. From
this point onward, Jews were placed in Nazi camps simply because
they were Jews. As the Nazis conquered more and more territory, they
expanded the camp system greatly and used it as a tool in their plan
for the reordering of European society along racial lines.
Forced
labor was always a component of the camp universe and as time went
on, this component became more and more central to it. In fact, the
Nazis did not call all of their camps “concentration camps”;
some were designated as labor or hard-labor camps, others as transit
camps, and others as exchange camps. Owing to the inhuman labor
conditions, cruelty of the camp staff, and horrible physical
conditions, many prisoners died in the camps, especially during the
war. With the coming of the Final Solution, six extermination camps
were also established in which primarily Jewish prisoners were
systematically murdered. |
