A death camp is a place organized for the mass execution of people. This term generally indicates the death camps of the mode Nazi during the Second world war. They are distinguished from the concentration camps by their single activié: the assassination of mass and take the changing of the actitivities of the Einsatzgruppen

The death camps Nazis carry out the practical application industrial methods for the organized massacre of the Juif S, and of the gypsy S. Danslecasde the Jews, this policy of extermination was called “the Final solution of the Jewish question” by the civils servant Nazis, finalized at the time of the Conférence of Wannsee the January 20th 1942).

Handicapped

An attempt at total extermination of the physical and mental handicapped people (program T4) had already been tried on the territory of Reich before the implementation of the Final solution of the Jewish question. It is within this framework that the first execution with gas were carried out. The Nazis were constrained to put an end to it following the emotion and the protest of part of the German population, strongly relayed by the Protestant and catholic churches (see the intervention of the bishop of Munich Mgr von Galen).

Ghetto S and killers

The process of extermination of the Jews starts before the realization of the death camps. The ghettos in which are gathered of force the Jews of the occupied territories in the East by the Germans already aim at destroying them by the hunger, the diseases and the ill treatments.

The systematic extermination of the Jews starts with the invasion of the Soviet Union in spring 1941. It is led there to the back of the face by specialized troops, mobile groups of slaughter (the Einsatzgruppen ) which will make approximately a million victims, to which it is necessary to add hundreds of thousands killed by other mobile units, which did not bear the name of Einsatzgruppen but all the characteristics had some, and the mission.

The death camps start to function starting from the beginning of the year 1942. They six, all are located on the territory of occupied Poland:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau,
• Majdanek,
• Treblinka,
• Sobibor,
• Belzec,
• Chelmno.

Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek are mixed camps, at the same time center of setting to immediate death and camps of forced labor. Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmo are only centers of setting to immediate death. They are not strictly speaking camps in measurement or nothing is designed to place the deportees who are carried out immediately after their arrival. Some deportees, far from many, are however assigned to the operation of the camp

The deportees were brought by special trains directly inside or near the camp With their exit from the train, the men were separated from the women and of the children, the personal effects were to be on the spot abandoned. In the mixed camps part of the deportees is selected to work in the camp the others were directed towards gas chambers, vast closed parts into which was introduced carbon monoxide or, as with Auschwitz, a mortal gas, the Zyklon B. To ensure itself until the last moment of their docility, one made accept the victims which they were going to take a shower by measurement of hygiene. Key of the system, the hope was thus subtly distilled in the spirit of the victims by all kinds of means, and this until the end. This hope, combined with the most extreme violences, and an organization without fault, was enough most of the time to destroy any reserve or attempt at resistance and partly explains the facility with which the executants of the Final solution could lead to dead such multitudes in if little time. The bodies were then, according to the cases, incinerated or buried in immense common graves, while all their personal effects were recovered, sorted and reforwarded in Germany on train same.

The meticulous organization and the Rendement of these factories made the pride of their creators. Consequently occasion they recovered all that could be used for Reich: clothing, hair, gold, money, jewels, glasses, etc

Mixed camps and camps of forced labor

In the mixed camps, those which were not exterminated as of their arrival, ready to work, then made knowledge with the living conditions of these camps. Exhausting work, the blows, the deprivations, the diseases, the death which watched for least their false step, volunteer or not, and scientific experiments for which they were used sometimes as guinea-pig, were right quickly of the majority of them. The life expectancy generally amounted in days. They became thus the slaves of this system whose scientist process led them to become the instruments even of the destruction as of theirs.

The camps of forced labor of Poland, which they are death camps or considered, the following the example of Stutthof near Gdansk, like concentration camps, must be distinguished from the concentration camps installed before the war on the territory of Reich. Indeed, they have all as an ultimate function, not the internment but the Extermination, more or less rapid, of the populations which they contain.

References

Cinema

• Night and fog , 1955, documentary of Alain Resnais.

• Shoah , 1985, documentary of Claude Lanzmann.
• the life is beautiful , 1998, film of fiction of Roberto Benigni.
• the pianist , 2002, film on the life of the pianist Władysław Szpilman during the Second world war by Roman Polanski.

Literature

• cf the bibliography of the article Auschwitz-Birkenau

Music

• Night and fog , a song of Jean Ferrat of 1963

See too

Internal bonds

• Aktion Reinhardt

• List of the concentration camps Nazis
• Négationnisme
• Program Aktion T4
• Shoah

External bonds

• Association Fund Report of Auschwitz

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Informations on the members of Sonderkommandos d' Auschwitz on the site Sonderkommando.info
• Memorial of Caen
• Auschwitz, badly absolute (by H.Arendt)