[Jack the collector]

I like to ask this question whenever I discuss WW2 with anyone.So here is a little quiz.Yes it requires some detective work.

How many Death camps were there in Germany and the occupied territories?

[Jim O]

Define death camp please. Do you mean ones specifically designed for implementing "The Final Solution" like Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau) or do you include more "generic" concentration camps like Mathausen, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

If you mean the strict "extermination camp" I would list the following eight:

• Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau)
  
• Chelmno
  
• Treblinka
  
• Belzec
  
• Majdanek
  
• Sobibór
  
• Jasenovac
  
• Maly Trostenets

[Jack the collector]

Jim, Death camps,Extermination camps,and any other name we may associate with them is exactly what I meant.We do tend to lose context here in cyber space.Literal wording is what I try to put on these boards.Concentration camps are not in the same definition.Let a few more answers come in the lets see what discussion can come of it.

[Klaus]

Have a look at this:

http://motlc.wiesent...cMVIuG&b=394731

Thats what we are looking for?

[Klaus]

Come on! Anybody? I want an answer!

[Jack the collector]

Well guys and gals,the nature of my job has me away for days and weeks on end.I am able to look at the site but unable to post sometimes......it depends on where I am.

This is a subject that boils down to semantics and opinion.Jim has in my humble opinion one too many.There were 7,Maly Trostenets being the least known and recognised.Jasenovac,was a KZ camp and really fell into that limbo between the 2 actually,just as Dachau does.My list is:

Auschwitz II
Maly Trostenets
Sobibor
Madjanek
Treblinka
Belzek
Chelmno

[Klaus]

Damn it! That stupid Link doesn't work correctly anymore! So these are the death camps. Only 7? I thought there were more. But I propably mixed in some labour-camps.

[Jack the collector]

Klaus,

Link is working for me.It only list a few of the hundreds of camps.The thing one has to remember is that there were basically four types of detention camps in the 3rd Reich and occupied territories.

1- Concentration Camps
2- Ghettos
3- Death Camps
4- Labour Camps(Dora falls into this category)

Indeed one was as bad as the other,the purpose's were different.

If your really interested in this subject Klaus,a good book to get is Historical Atlas of the Holocaust by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

[Klaus]

As you may have noticed I am not an expert on that subject. But I wouldn't call a Ghetto a camp. The deathrate surley is much smaller in a Ghetto than in one of the camps?

[Jim O]

Klaus said:

As you may have noticed I am not an expert on that subject. But I wouldn't call a Ghetto a camp. The deathrate surley is much smaller in a Ghetto than in one of the camps?

Until the SS decided to "liquidate" it.

[Klaus]

Ok, that's sort of a downer. I don't wanna say they enjoyed their stay in the Ghetto, but I still rahter live in a ghetto than a concentration/labour/death camp. Ahh! damn! My english is too poor to make my point.

In a Ghetto they were put away and could "live". In the broadest sense of the word of course.*

A camp was specially errected for one purpose only. Killing the prisoners the one way or the other.

I hope I could make my point visible for you. This thread is pretty tough if you are not a native speaker.

* I have no intention to downpaly the sufferings of people who were forced to live in Ghettos.

[Jim O]

No worries. I understood your point and I still do Klaus. And you're no doubt right to some extent. The truth however, was that the ghettoes in the east were often used as staging areas for Jews from further west until the "Final Solution" could be implemented. Certainly conditions in Auschwitz were worse than in the ghettoes.

[Klaus]

Jim O said:

The truth however, was that the ghettoes in the east were often used as staging areas for Jews from further west until the "Final Solution" could be implemented.

I am well aware of that fact. It seems I made myself understood.

[Jack the collector]

I think we will have to agree to disagree here.The ghettos were every bit as bad as the camps.Before the camps were built on a large scale,the ghettos were used to isolate mainly the Jews and contain them.I personally believe that the ghetto plan all along was to use it as a holding area until they could transort them to the extermination camps(operation Reinhard proves this).No medical supplies,etc were provided,and they were recieving the same starvation diet that the camps had(roughly 250 calories per day).Death and disease ran rampant inside the ghetto,most crimes were met with a death sentence.Theresienstadt was converted from a ghetto to a KZ and labour camp.I could go on and on about this subject,I am not trying to change anyones mind ..... I am just putting up a little information to keep this going.

[Lancer44]

No one can create uniform picture of life in ghettos and in camps. Starvation, diseases, lack of decent clothing were not for all either in camps or ghettos. It is hard to believe and paradoxical that always some elite existed which ate better even then SS guarding the camp or running ghetto.

[namvet]

sorry for the extra LARGE size. but if resize its harder to see. I don't if we'll ever know. they opened and closed them and moved them around

also where did they get the 6 million murdered figure from??? I asked an officer who I served with in Nam who lost most all of his family here. he's claims that's the number of jew on the continient at the start of the war

[TSPhillips]

I just returned from DC and visited the Holocaust museum there. As for all camps, regardless of description, it listed over 4000 of them total. As far as the 'death' camps, it listed seven. I didn't recognize the last one Jim listed, and after some memory searching remembered Chelmno. I know there was one camp in particular the Germans razed to the ground after an uprising from Russians held there managed to get several inmates free. I had known of the 'death camps' from history books, but had no idea that around 4000 camps existed! The sheer number boggles the mind to an already almost unbelievable scale of genocide. If anyone ever gets to visit DC, I would highly recommend this museum. It doesn't pull any punches and there is no political correctness anywhere in it. I would suggest you see it early in the morning, as it does tend to be a 'downer' and you have to get a timed pass.

[Jim O]

TSPhillips said:

I just returned from DC and visited the Holocaust museum there. As for all camps, regardless of description, it listed over 4000 of them total. As far as the 'death' camps, it listed seven. I didn't recognize the last one Jim listed, and after some memory searching remembered Chelmno. I know there was one camp in particular the Germans razed to the ground after an uprising from Russians held there managed to get several inmates free. I had known of the 'death camps' from history books, but had no idea that around 4000 camps existed! The sheer number boggles the mind to an already almost unbelievable scale of genocide. If anyone ever gets to visit DC, I would highly recommend this museum. It doesn't pull any punches and there is no political correctness anywhere in it. I would suggest you see it early in the morning, as it does tend to be a 'downer' and you have to get a timed pass.

Maly Trostenets

Remember, most "camps" were not strictly "extermination camps". Most housed slave laborers, many of whom died of starvation and disease. But the main factories of death were the ones listed above.


The DC museum is well worth visiting, but like you said, you won't leave there feeling cheery.

[namvet]

and a lot of them were worked to death in German factories as well.

[TSPhillips]

When I was a youngster back in the 70's, my Dad was a friend with an air traffic controller who happened to be in the Rainbow division during the war, and had been present when they'd liberated Dachau. Some of the things he told me that they'd found inside the camp made my hair stand on end. I remember him telling me that the camp guards had been put in a stockade, and there was a wire about a foot off the ground several feet in from the main wire, and that if the Germans stepped over it, they were allowed to be shot. He said he saw GI's trying to get the Germans to step over the wire by offering them cigarettes and chocolate bars, with cocked pistols held behind their backs, hoping. Even though Dachau was a work camp, he told me of things they'd found that pointed to systematic executions and barbarity. And after all of that, he was still one of the nicest men I've ever met.