During World War II, the horrors that occurred at extermination camps such as Auschwitz
shocked the world, and continue to be a tragic historical lesson in man’s inhumanity to man.
However, Auschwitz was part of a much more complex and widespread system of concentration camps that,
if anything, even more thoroughly demonstrated the Nazis’ appalling lack of humanity,
based on their deep disdain for other races, religions, and classes of people.
Today, we will take a thorough look at SS concentration camps - because history
must be examined thoroughly to never again be repeated. We know it’s a hard video, so pull up
your favorite puppy photos if you need a short break, and let’s dive into this somber topic.
One of the first camps the Nazis built way back in 1933 was Dachau. It became a blueprint for the
concentration camp system in general, which grew rapidly after the SS - the Schutzstaffel - under
Heinrich Himmler, consolidated control over the whole system in 1934.
The Reich approved funding for the camps from their official budget in 1935,
which secured the future and development of the camps until the end of World War II in 1945.
Known as concentration camps, these buildings were not at first explicitly constructed to
kill prisoners, but rather to incarcerate them all in a designated area. However,
the brutal, degrading realities of these camps meant that a shocking
amount of prisoners - millions - died while being held there.
In fact, many prisoners died before even arriving. Most were transported on trains over a period
of days or weeks, and packed in so tightly that there was rarely room to even sit down.
Food and water were scarce, bathrooms were non-existent, and the trains arrived at
concentration camps with plenty of dead bodies alongside those who had survived.
What was the process of entering a concentration camp like? And what was daily life like?
Prisoners would be separated into men, then women and children, and given a prisoner number.
Most people are familiar with the infamous numbered tattoos given to Auschwitz inmates,
but in most camps this number was sewn into prisoners’ clothes,
a striped uniform they were forced to wear after all their belongings had been taken.
Before being assigned their barracks and work details, prisoners were undressed in full view
of everyone to humiliate them. Their heads were shaved, and they were forced to shower in front
of all the other prisoners and the SS guards, who would hurl verbal and physical abuse at them.
This whole process was designed to strip the prisoners of any sense of identity
or human dignity…to de-personalize them completely and break their spirit,
as the Nazis already viewed them as less than human.
Though daily routines obviously varied from camp to camp,
the general schedule seems to have run as follows:
Prisoners would be forced to wake up between 4 AM and 4:30 AM, and had approximately 30 minutes to
use the bathroom, get dressed, eat, clean their space, and make their beds. Guards would punish
anyone who was too slow to finish this grueling morning routine. Considering the bathrooms at
concentration camps would usually be shared by up to 2,000 prisoners, it was pretty much a no-win
situation for those incarcerated, and an excuse for the guards to abuse their fellow human beings.
After the morning tasks were completed, the guards would shuttle the prisoners outside
to perform a roll call, often in incredibly harsh weather conditions - we are talking about
the northern parts of Central Europe after all. A roll call would also be performed in the evening,
Almost always, some prisoners would miss roll call because they died in their sleep or from overwork,
dehydration, starvation, or a general failure of sanitation throughout the day. The bodies of these
prisoners were simply brought out to count them alongside their still-breathing fellow inmates.
The prisoners faced beatings and various tortures by the guards any time they collapsed,
failed to respond, or honestly any time the guards felt like it.
After the morning call, prisoners set off on foot to their work details. Even on this march,
the SS officers would find ways to additionally degrade the prisoners,
often forcing them to sing songs insulting themselves or fellow inmates. And once again,
anyone who failed to keep up with the march to work was brutally beaten and tortured.
If you’re beginning to get the idea that SS officers were often monsters who just
liked having excuses to beat and torture people, you’re correct. Perhaps now would be a good time
to close your eyes and picture a koala bear, or a kitten, and lower your blood pressure.
The day ended at around 5 or 6 PM, and after evening roll call,
which would sometimes purposely be dragged out to exhaust them, the prisoners were sent to
their barracks so they could enjoy their “free time” - an incredibly generous way to describe
passing out from exhaustion or bartering for additional food to avoid starvation. Finally,
at 9 PM, it was lights out to prepare for another grueling, miserable day.
These conditions led to one million people dying in concentration camps alone
while the Nazis were in power.
So who was being put into these concentration camps?
Originally, in 1933, the camps held political prisoners,
mostly communists who the Nazis deemed enemies of their ideology.
From 1934 onwards, the camps also started to hold “asocials”.
This was not a term for people who prefer to read a good book rather than go out on weekends,
but instead a polite term for anyone the Nazi party deemed undesirable
in society. You may not be surprised to learn that this covered a pretty large group of people.
“Asocials” included members of the LGBQT+ community, prostitutes, homeless people, Roma, and
the “work-shy”. This last term didn’t necessarily mean unemployed people, but almost anyone the
Nazis deemed as not conforming to social norms regarding work type and ethic.
Shortly after, in 1935, Jehovah’s witnesses and pacifists were also
given one-way tickets to concentration camps for refusing to fight in the Nazi army.
In 1937, apparently running out of people to arrest for the crime of being themselves,
the Nazis decided to add criminals to their list. Not those currently committing felonies; oh no.
Himmler and his goons loved arresting anyone who had a criminal conviction in their past,
to round them up and send them off to the concentration camps. Just one of the many,
many raids he conducted resulted in 2,000 people arrested in a single day.
In 1938, Jewish people were rounded up en masse after years of intense suppression and persecution
under the Nazi regime. In fact, “intense” is definitely an understatement. Between 1933
and 1938, at least 400 anti-Semitic laws were passed in Germany, whose politicians couldn’t
seem to get enough of them. One of these laws, the Reich Citizenship Law, declared that only
“Aryans”, aka non-Jewish white people for the most part, would be classed as citizens of the Reich.
We could delve into the discredited genetic theories that led to Hitler using the term
“Aryan”, originally referring to prehistoric people of ancient Iran and northern India,
to describe some of the palest people on the planet. But the choice can best be summarized
by saying that Hitler’s ideas about race were not only outright false, but also incredibly
stupid. (Upcoming sarcasm) Thankfully, no one clings onto such ridiculous racist nonsense today.
However, under this Citizenship Law, the Nazis ended up classifying a whole lot of people as
Jewish who had never considered themselves as such. Even if a German citizen was born
and raised Christian, and had one Jewish grandparent,
even one who had converted in their lifetime to Christianity…they would be viewed as Jewish.
This would be like classifying every drunk person
on St. Patrick’s Day drinking green beer as ethnically Irish.
In 1938, two major events intensified the round-up of Jewish people:
Anschluss - the annexation of Austria - and Kristallnacht - a horrifying night in which
Jewish businesses were destroyed, and the SS, with the assistance of some German citizens,
physically attacked and humiliated Jewish men, women, and children in the streets.
Just in the first week after Kristallnacht, over 25,000 men were sent to concentration camps such
as Buchenwald and Dachau. Sensing that things were going from bad to worse to terrifying,
many Jewish people tried to leave Germany, but as few countries increased their refugee quotas,
only around 120,000 Jewish people made it out before the outbreak of World War II.
In the camps, the SS officers established a system of badges,
usually triangles under the prisoner’s assigned number on their uniform,
to identify the prisoners as belonging to separate groups. We assume this was so the officers in the
camp would know exactly what kind of verbal abuse and slurs to throw at each prisoner.
Jewish prisoners were given two yellow triangles that formed the Star of David. Roma were
identified by brown triangles, homosexual people had pink triangles, Jehovah’s Witnesses had purple
triangles, political prisoners had red triangles, and general “asocials” had black triangles.
As the number of prisoners in concentration camps skyrocketed,
Hitler was well aware that he also had to prepare for war. Thus,
the construction of forced labor camps accelerated swiftly from 1937 onwards.
Though concentration camp inmates were also made to perform manual labor,
forced labor camps were specifically started to help the German war effort. As German men
signed up for, or were drafted into the army, Germany faced big labor shortages.
After Germany kicked off World War II with the invasion of Poland, and especially after
the invasion of Russia, the use of forced labor to keep the economy afloat intensified rapidly.
However, the invasions of European countries, especially Poland and Russia, also meant that
the Germans had whole new populations of people to incarcerate and exploit in these camps.
They named the forced labor camp prisoners Ostarbeiter - eastern
workers - and Fremdarbeiter - foreign workers.
Even though the Nazis needed forced labor to keep the war effort going,
they viewed the prisoners as totally replaceable, and therefore completely neglected their health.
Conditions at these camps were as squalid as those in concentration camps.
Because of the strenuous work and long hours involved,
death rates at forced labor camps were tragically high. All in all,
up until the end of the war, over 14 million people had been forced to work in these camps.
After the start of the war in 1939, two new categories of camps were created:
prisoner of war camps and transit camps.
While foreign nationals were sent to forced labor camps,
or concentration camps if they were Jewish, homosexual, Roma or many,
many other things, foreign soldiers and officers were held in POW camps.
Not that they had much better conditions than any other concentration camps.
Though Geneva convention rules had been in effect since 1929, and Germany was a signatory,
the Nazis cared little about upholding standards for humane treatment of prisoners of war.
Most of the inmates were given few supplies for survival, and many were forced to perform
manual labor as well. However, the Nazis were especially harsh on the Soviet and Polish inmates.
In the messed up racial ideology of the Nazis, Polish people were viewed as racially inferior,
and Soviet citizens were enemies due to their communist beliefs - or just the simple fact
that they lived in a communist state. The Nazis captured 5.7 million Soviet soldiers during the
course of the war. By the end of the war around 3 million of these prisoners of war would die.
The other camps that were built during the war were transit camps.
These were established in the European countries the Nazis invaded
to hold prisoners temporarily before they could be transported to concentration camps.
See, when Nazis invaded a country, they would carry their rampant racism and ethnic
cleansing with them. This meant that locals of that country who fell outside the Nazis’
standards were rounded up and subjected to the same policies German minorities had put up with.
Depressingly, some transit camps were run by local authorities
or equally racist local groups collaborating with the SS who were imprisoning their own people.
The last type of concentration camp built during the war is the most infamous and horrific:
extermination camps. The first was Chelmno, in which genocidal operations started in
December of 1941. These camps were built to implement Hitler’s “Final Solution”,
aka the ethnic cleansing of Jewish people, Roma, and other minorities he detested.
The main six extermination camps were Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Madjanek, and Treblinka.
Many of those transported to the camps would be killed almost immediately in gas chambers.
Those who weren’t killed on arrival were forced to work in the camp, either sorting
out other prisoners’ belongings, performing manual labor, or doing administrative work for the camp.
Over 3 million people were murdered in extermination camps. This of course doesn’t
even come close to covering the horrifying scale of genocide and mass murder the Nazis engaged in.
Over 6 million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust, with over 2 million
being killed via shooting operations, raids in Jewish ghettos, and gas wagons.
Between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma were also killed,
around 1.8 million Polish civilians, and 7 million Soviet civilians as well.
The Nazi system of concentration camps was the end result of years of discrimination,
oppression, racism, and systemic violence against the groups of people they hated. The deliberate
dehumanization of prisoners, in order to enable the Nazis’ genocide of fellow human beings,
resulted in one of the most horrific tragedies of the 21st century. However,
we must always learn about and understand the worst that mankind has been capable of in history,
in order to make sure we never head down that path again.
Now that you’ve finished this video,
perhaps click on something more light-hearted like this one, or this other video right here!