Editing Extermination camp (section)

== Definition ==
[[File:Auschwitz Resistance 280 cropped.jpg|thumb|Members of the {{lang|de|[[Sonderkommando]]}} burned the bodies of victims in the fire pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, when the crematoria were overloaded. (August 1944)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/ |title=Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim, Poland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081210022111/http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/ |archive-date=10 December 2008 }}</ref>]]

The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms ''extermination camp'' ({{lang|de|Vernichtungslager}}) and ''death camp'' ({{lang|de|Todeslager}}) were interchangeable in the Nazi system, each referring to camps whose primary function was [[genocide]]. Six camps meet this definition, though extermination of people happened at every sort of concentration camp or transit camp; the use of the term extermination camp with its exclusive purpose is carried over from Nazi terminology. The six camps were [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]], [[Belzec extermination camp|Belzec]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibor]], [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]], [[Majdanek extermination camp|Majdanek]] and [[Auschwitz extermination camp|Auschwitz]] (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau).<ref name=YadVashem>{{cite web |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution/death-camps.html#narrative_info |title=The Death Camps |work=Yad Vashem, World Holocaust Remembrance Center |access-date=19 April 2020 }}</ref><ref name=KillingCenters>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/killing-centers-an-overview |title=Killing Centers: An Overview |encyclopedia=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |access-date=19 April 2020 }}</ref>

Death camps were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the [[Holocaust trains]]. Deportees were normally murdered within a few hours of arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka.<ref name="Minerbi">{{cite book |title=A New Illustrated History of the Nazis |work=Rare Photographs of the Third Reich |last=Minerbi |first=Alessandra |year=2005 |orig-year=2002 |publisher=David & Charles |location=UK |pages=168– |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TFbfiRCVLTUC&pg=PA168 |isbn=0-7153-2101-3 }}{{Dead link|date=March 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The Reinhard extermination camps were under Globocnik's direct command; each of them was run by 20 to 35 men from the {{lang|de|[[SS-Totenkopfverbände]]}} branch of the {{lang|de|[[Schutzstaffel]]}}, augmented by about one hundred [[Trawnikis]]{{snd}}[[Hiwi (volunteer)|auxiliaries]] mostly from Soviet Ukraine, and up to one thousand {{lang|de|[[Sonderkommando]]}} slave labourers each.<ref name="Black">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M7KbsHLnbwgC&pg=PA331 |title=Police Auxiliaries for Operation Reinhard |last=Black |first=Peter R |editor-last=Bankir |editor-first=David |publisher=Enigma Books |work=Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust |year=2006 |pages=331–348 |isbn=1-929631-60-X |via=Google Books}}</ref> The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from [[Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe|the ghettos]] for "special treatment" in an atmosphere of terror by [[Ordnungspolizei#Police battalions|uniformed police battalions]] from both Orpo and [[Schutzpolizei (Nazi Germany)|Schupo]].<ref name=Williamson>{{cite book |title=The SS: Hitler's Instrument of Terror |first=Gordon |last=Williamson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7gv7yPIdQdsC&pg=PA101 |page=101 |publisher=Zenith Imprint |year=2004 |isbn=0-7603-1933-2 }}{{Dead link|date=March 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp|Bergen-Belsen]], [[Oranienburg]], [[Ravensbrück concentration camp|Ravensbrück]], and [[Sachsenhausen (detention camp)|Sachsenhausen]], which were prison camps set up prior to World War II for people defined as 'undesirable'. From March 1936, all [[Nazi concentration camps]] were managed by the {{lang|de|[[SS-Totenkopfverbände]]}} (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well.<ref name="Stein">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-KEtPlNQJNgC&pg=PA9 |title=The Waffen SS |work=SS-Totenkopfverbände |first=George H. |last=Stein |access-date=7 October 2015 |pages=9, 20–33 |isbn=0-8014-9275-0|year=1984 |publisher=Cornell University Press }}</ref> An [[Schutzstaffel|SS anatomist]], [[Johann Kremer]], after witnessing the gassing of victims at [[Birkenau]], wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: "[[Inferno (Dante)|Dante's Inferno]] seems to me almost a comedy compared to this. They don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!"<ref name="Kremer">{{cite web|url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/19420901-kremer/ |title=Diary of Johann Paul Kremer (September 5, 1942) |publisher=Holocaust-history.org |date=2 March 1999 |access-date=27 August 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514183659/http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/19420901-kremer/ |archive-date=14 May 2008 }}</ref> The distinction was evident during the [[Nuremberg trials]], when [[Dieter Wisliceny]] (a deputy to [[Adolf Eichmann]]) was asked to name the {{lang|de|extermination}} camps, and he identified [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] and [[Majdanek concentration camp|Majdanek]] as such. Then, when asked, "How do you classify the camps [[Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp|Mauthausen]], [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]], and [[Buchenwald concentration camp|Buchenwald]]?", he replied, "They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann."<ref>{{cite book |last=Overy |first=Richard |title=Interrogations |pages=356–357 |publisher=Penguin |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-14-028454-6}}</ref>

Murders were not limited to these camps. Sites for the "Holocaust by Bullets" are marked on the map of The Holocaust in Occupied Poland by white skulls (without the black background), where people were lined up next to a ravine and shot by soldiers with rifles. Sites included [[Bronna Góra]], [[Ponary massacre|Ponary]], [[Rumbula massacre|Rumbula]] and others.

[[File:WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png|thumb|upright=1.2|Mass deportations: the pan-European routes to the extermination camps]]

Irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|for slave labour]] in [[Nazi concentration camps#Types of camps|other types of camps]],<ref name="Beyer">{{cite book |url=http://www.nathaninc.com/sites/default/files/Pub%20PDFs/Forced%20Labor%20Under%20the%20Third%20Reich%2C%20Part%20One.pdf |title=Forced Labour under Third Reich – Part 1 |publisher=Nathan Associates |chapter=Introduction |year=2006 |access-date=7 October 2015 |first1=John C |last1=Beyer |first2=Stephen A |last2=Schneider |pages=3–17 | quote=Number of foreign laborers employed as of January 1944 (excluding those already dead): total of 3,795,000. From Poland: 1,400,000 (survival rate 25.2); from the Soviet Union: 2,165,000 (survival rate 27.7)&nbsp;<sup>Table 5.</sup> |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150824092603/http://www.nathaninc.com/sites/default/files/Pub%20PDFs/Forced%20Labor%20Under%20the%20Third%20Reich,%20Part%20One.pdf |archive-date=24 August 2015 |df= dmy-all }}</ref> which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme.<ref name="Herbert">{{cite web| url=http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/slave_labour13.htm| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110604024311/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/slave_labour13.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=4 June 2011 | work=Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich |publisher=Cambridge University Press |title=The Army of Millions of the Modern Slave State (extract) |year=1997 |first=Ulrich |last=Herbert |via= University of the West of England, Faculty of Humanities |others=Compiled by S. D. Stein}}</ref> Prisoners represented about a quarter of the total workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions, and physical brutality.<ref name= "Beyer"/>