InfoPlaces in Poland
Concentration Camps
Camps in PolandFor the realization of Hitler's plans to destroy all the Jews in the Third Reich, the Germans built concentration camps and extermination camps. Most camps were built in Poland, because about 3 million Jews lived there. For a long time the camps remained hidden for western observers.
The Holocaust
After September 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps became places where millions of ordinary people were enslaved as part of the war effort, often starved, tortured and killed. The main victims were: Jews, Romani, Jehova's witnesses, homosexuals, opponents of the Nazi regime, and criminals. During the war, new Nazi concentration camps for these "undesirables" spread throughout the continent. About 1,200 camps and sub camps were run in countries occupied by Nazi Germany. In 1942, the SS started to kill millions of prisoners systematically by gassing. The British intelligence service had information about the concentration camps, and in 1942 Jan Karski delivered a thorough eyewitness account to the British government.
The liberation
The camps were liberated by the Allied and Soviet forces between July 1944 and May 1945. The first major camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on July 23, 1944. Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on January 27, 1945. Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.
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