https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
Germany maintained concentration camps (German: Konzentrationslager [kntsntatsii ons
la], KZ or KL) throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps
were erected in Germany in March 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor and his
Nazi Party was given control over the police through Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and
Prussian Acting Interior Minister Hermann Gring.[2] Used to hold and torture political
opponents and union organizers, the camps initially held around 45,000 prisoners.[3]Heinrich
Himmler's SS took full control of the police and concentration camps throughout Germany in
193435.[4] Himmler expanded the role of the camps to holding so-called "racially undesirable
elements" of German society, such as Jews, criminals, homosexuals, and Romani.[5] The number
of people in camps, which had fallen to 7,500, grew again to 21,000 by the start of World War
II[6] and peaked at 715,000 in January 1945.[7]The concentration camps were administered
since 1934 by Concentration Camps Inspectorate which in 1940 was merged into SSWirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and were guarded by SS-Totenkopfverbnde (SSTV).Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps (described in this
article) and extermination camps, which were established by Nazi Germany for the industrialscale mass murder of Jews in the ghettos and concentration camp populations. Use of the word
"concentration" came from the idea of using documents confining to one place a group of people
who are in some way undesirable. The term itself originated in the "reconcentration camps" set
up in Cuba by GeneralValeriano Weyler in 1897. Concentration camps had in the past been used
by the U.S. against Native Americans and by the British in the Second Boer War. Between 1904
and 1908, theSchutztruppe of the Imperial German Army operated concentration camps
in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) as part of their genocide of the Herero and
Namaqua peoples. The Shark Island Concentration Camp in Lderitz was the biggest and the one
with the harshest conditions.When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they quickly moved to
suppress all real or potential opposition. The general public was intimidated through arbitrary
psychological terror of the special courts (Sondergerichte).[8] Especially during the first years of
their existence these courts "had a strong deterrent effect" against any form of political protest.
[9]
The first camp in Germany, Dachau, was founded in March 1933.[10] The press announcement
said that "the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for
5,000 persons. All Communists and where necessary Reichsbanner and Social
Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated there, as in the long
run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening
these prisons."[10] Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the German
coalition government of National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi Party) and the Nationalist
People's Party (dissolved on 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police of Munich,

officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."[10]Dachau
served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps. Almost every
community in Germany had members taken there. The newspapers continuously reported of "the
removal of the enemies of the Reich to concentration camps" making the general population
more aware of their presence. There were jingles warning as early as 1935: "Dear God, make
me dumb, that I may not come to Dachau."[11]Between 1933 and the fall of Nazi Germany in
1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were forced to spend time in concentration camps and
prisons for political reasons,[12][13][14] and approximately 77,000 Germans were executed for one or
another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, and the civil justice system. Many
of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which enabled
them to engage in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis.[8]As a result of the Holocaust, the
term "concentration camp" carries many of the connotations of "extermination camp" and is
sometimes used synonymously. Because of these ominous connotations, the term "concentration
camp", originally itself aeuphemism, has been replaced by newer terms such as internment camp,
resettlement camp, detention facility, etc., regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp,
which can vary a great deal. The two largest groups containing prisoners in the camps, both
numbering in the millions, were the Polish Jews and the Sovietprisoners of war (POWs) held without
trial or judicial process. There were also large numbers of Romani people,
ethnic Poles,Serbs, political prisoners, homosexuals, people with disabilities,Jehovah's
Witnesses, Catholic clergy, Eastern European intellectuals and others (including common criminals,
as declared by the Nazis). In addition, a small number of Western Alliedaviators were sent to
concentration camps as spies.[20] Western Allied POWs who were Jews, or whom the Nazis believed
to be Jewish, were usually sent to ordinary POW camps; however, a small number were sent to
concentration camps under antisemiticpolicies. Sometimes the concentration camps were used to
hold important prisoners, such as the generals involved in theattempted assassination ofHitler; Uboat Captain-turned-Lutheran pastorMartin Niemller; andAdmiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was
interned at Flossenbrg on February 7, 1945, until he was hanged on April 9, shortly before the
wars end.In most camps, prisoners were forced to wear identifying overalls with colored
badges according to their categorization: red triangles for Communists and other political prisoners,
green triangles for common criminals, pink for homosexual men, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses,
black for asocials and the "work shy", yellow for Jews, and later brown for Romani.[22]