Extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (German: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (Todeslager), or killing centers (Tötungszentren), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.
| Nazi extermination camps | |
|---|---|
View of Sobibor extermination camp, 1943
The Holocaust map: The six Nazi extermination camps set up by the SS in occupied Poland, are marked with white skulls in black squares. | |
| Location | German-occupied Europe (chiefly occupied Poland) |
| Date | World War II |
| Incident type | Extermination |
| Perpetrators | The SS |
| Organizations | SS-Totenkopfverbände |
| Camp | Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek |
The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities, to which the victims were taken by train, was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities. The technology was adapted, expanded, and applied in wartime to unsuspecting victims of many ethnic and national groups; the Jews were the primary target, accounting for over 90 percent of extermination camp victims. The genocide of the Jews of Europe was Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish question".