In Germany, the Nazis established concentration camps during its rise to power on January 30, 1933. The security police had the authority to arrest anyone and to send for one of these camps for an indefinite period. The political police, also known as the Gestapo, imposed a pursuit of a wide range of political opponents: Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Jews. The criminal police, known as Kripo imposed the pursuit of criminals and numerous groups then known as antisocial as gypsies, homosexuals and prostitutes.The SS or protection units, operated in the concentration camps carrying out a brutal military discipline. During the 30 years, six concentration camps were built, Dachau, Saschsennhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and specializes in women, Ravensbrück. In 1939 these camps held about 25,000 prisoners.
During the Second World War concentration camps increased in size and number. These fields that were created are then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen, Stutthof, Lublin-Majdanek, Hinzert, Vught, Dora and Bergen-Belsen. Millions of prisoners entered these camps from almost all over Europe such as Jews and prisoners of war. In early 1942, the Central Department of Economics and Administration of the SS took over operational control of the concentration camps, the prisoners having been exploited as forced laborers in industrial production. In addition, the same department of the SS concentration camps created several secondary and local offices in the occupied territories. The prisoners of concentration camps were also used for medical experiments.
In early 1945, the population in the camps exceeded 700,000.
During the Second World War, the Nazis also established extermination camps (or death). Then the SS gassed millions of Jews and thousands of gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.Two death camps operated under the authority of the Central Department of Economics and Administration of the SS: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin-Majdanek. Five of the extermination camps were run by the existing regional SS and police chiefs: Belzec, Sobidór, Treblinka, and Chelmo Semlin (near Belgrade, Serbia). More than 6 million people, mostly Jews, died.
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