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The
first camp specifically established as an extermination camp was at
Chelmno (Kulmhof), Poland. It began to function on December 8, 1941,
when Jews from the surrounding area were brought there. At first,
gas vans were used for the murder. Eventually, approximately 320,000
people, mostly Jews, were murdered there.
Early
in 1942 the Nazis began to build three extermination camps in the
framework of Operation (Aktion) Reinhard: Belzec, Sobibor, and
Treblinka. Most of the Jews from Poland were murdered in these camps
in 1942 and 1943. All told, about 1.7 million Jews were murdered in
the Reinhard camps. Majdanek, which was a concentration-labor camp,
also had a killing center and is often cited as an extermination
camp. Unlike in the Operation Reinhard camps, many of the victims of
Majdanek were not Jews.
The
most infamous of the extermination camps was established at
Auschwitz. It began to function as an extermination camp in the
spring of 1942, after larger gas chambers were built in nearby
Birkenau (Auschwitz II). Eventually, more than a million Jews and
several hundred thousand Poles, Sinti and Roma, and people of
various nationalities were murdered there. |
