3. The Third Reich’s world of camps

Abstract

‘The Third Reich’s world of camps’ examines the history of the Nazi camp system, comparing labour camps devised to build the ‘racial community’ with concentration camps set up to exclude political opponents and eventually to eradicate unwanted others—‘asocials’ and then Jews. The SS concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen, which were designed to brutalize the inmates and at which death was common, can be distinguished from the death camps at Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Exceptions were Majdanek and Auschwitz, which by 1942 combined the functions of concentration and death camps. The images and testimonies of the liberation of the Nazi camps have shaped our definition of concentration camps.