United States History Student Edition

Major Nazi Death Camps During World War II, Germany built prison camps and death camps around Europe.

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GEOGRAPHY CONNECTION Spatial Thinking Where did Germany build the death camps?

Beginning in 1942, Jews from countries occupied by Germany or sympathetic to Germany were rounded up, packed like cattle into freight trains, and shipped to Poland. Six killing centers were built in Poland for this purpose. The largest was Auschwitz (OWSH•vihts) which functioned as both a death camp and a concentration camp. Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel described the experience: The cherished objects we had brought with us thus far were left behind in the train, and with them, at last, our illusions. Every two yards or so an SS man held his tommy gun trained on us. Hand in hand we followed the crowd. An SS noncommissioned officer came to meet us, a truncheon in his hand.

He gave the order: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother. —Elie Wiesel, Night , 1972 About 30 percent of the new arrivals at Auschwitz were sent to the labor camp, where the majority were starved, worked to death, or selected to be murdered later. The remainder of the people arriving at the camp went directly to be murdered in the gas chambers, which were disguised as shower rooms to encourage victim cooperation. Some inmates were subjected to cruel and painful “medical” experiments.

truncheon a club or nightstick Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Stella Rodway. London: Fontana, 1972.

Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust A11