96-586: Fort VII , officially Konzentrationslager Posen (renamed later), was a Nazi German death camp set up in Poznań in German-occupied Poland during World War II , located in one of the 19th-century forts circling the city. According to different estimates, between 4,500 and 20,000 people, mostly Poles from Poznań and the surrounding region, died while imprisoned at the camp. The decades-old Fort VII (also known as Fort Colomb from 1902 to 1918)
192-509: A Luxemburger Wort report of November 1939 reads: Sometimes trains drive on for forty kilometres beyond Lublin and halt in the open country, where the Jews alight with their luggage and have to find themselves primitive accommodation in the surrounding villages. — Luxemburger Wort newspaper. Historians estimate that by 30 January 1940, a total of 78,000 Jews had been deported to Lublin from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia . This figure
288-475: A forced labour complex , and at the Majdanek concentration camp . In most other camps prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac were retrofitted with Zyklon B gas chambers and crematoria buildings as the time went on, remaining operational until war's end in 1945. Heinrich Himmler visited
384-635: A 'euthanasia programme' to disguise that mass murder was taking place. Despite the lethal effects of carbon monoxide, this was seen as unsuitable for use in the East due to the cost of transporting the carbon monoxide in cylinders. Each extermination camp operated differently, yet each had designs for quick and efficient industrialized killing. While Höss was away on an official journey in late August 1941 his deputy, Karl Fritzsch , tested out an idea. At Auschwitz clothes infested with lice were treated with crystallised prussic acid . The crystals were made to order by
480-659: A permanent solution to what they regarded as the "Jewish question". Before the Final Solution was announced and organised during the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, some top Nazis had envisioned a territorial solution of the "Jewish question" . However, except for the Nisko Plan, none of the territorial solutions progressed beyond the planning stage. Instead, the Nazi Germans implemented
576-479: A result of the secretive Sonderaktion 1005 , the camps were dismantled by commandos of condemned prisoners, their records were destroyed, and the mass graves were dug up. Some extermination camps that remained uncleared of evidence were liberated by Soviet troops, who followed different standards of documentation and openness than the Western allies did. Nonetheless Majdanek was captured nearly intact due to
672-420: A site out of view to be killed off discreetly. According to Höss, enslaved prisoners, euphemistically called Sonderkommando (Special Detachment), assisted in the process of extermination; they encouraged the Jews to undress and accompanied them into the gas chambers which were outfitted to appear as shower rooms (with nonworking water nozzles, and tile walls); and remained with the victims until just before
768-577: A situation the local Jews were not able to ease, despite their great efforts. From early 1940, some of the Jews deported to the Lublin area were held in the Lipowa 7 camp . These were deportees from the Altreich as well as from Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , Reichsgau Wartheland , and South East Prussia . The Lipowa camp remained in place after the Lublin reservation was abandoned. After January 1941,
864-505: A suspension of further deportations. Historian Christopher Browning noted that Himmler's decision must be seen in correlation with his new position as chief coordinator of the resettlement of ethnic Germans to the former Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany , a position he held since 15 October. He suggested also that Himmler did not consider the deportation of Jews from all the Third Reich to be as urgent as providing space for
960-675: Is firmly established by testimonies of camp survivors and Final Solution perpetrators, material evidence (the remaining camps, etc.), Nazi photographs and films of the killings, and camp administration records. In 2017 a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was. A 2018 survey organized in the United States by the Claims Conference , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , and others found that 66 percent of
1056-506: Is known to have escaped – Marian Szlegel, thanks to his work, was able to identify a time when the camp was less well guarded, and took the opportunity to abscond. Witness accounts speak of 7 to 9 executions by shooting a day, as well as mass hangings, and shootings of larger groups away from the fort itself. There were two typhus epidemics, each of which killed about 80% of the prisoners held at that time. Many prisoners also died after being taken to other concentration camps. From March 1943
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#17327728291321152-535: The SS-Totenkopfverbände (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist , Johann Kremer , after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau , wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: " Dante's Inferno seems to me almost a comedy compared to this. They don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!" The distinction was evident during
1248-714: The SS in order to eliminate " life unworthy of life " ( German : Lebensunwertes Leben ), a Nazi designation for people who they considered to have no right to life . In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and
1344-546: The Aktion T4 , or directly on site. 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;
1440-552: The Generalplan Ost resettlement of ethnic Germans into Nazi Germany's new eastern provinces. This priority shift resulted in focusing on the expulsion of Jews from these provinces to the Lublin reservation, the contemporary resettlement of about 30,000 ethnic Germans from the Lublin district in the opposite direction, and the resettlement of Jews living within the Generalgouvernement to the eastern bank of
1536-483: The IG Farben chemicals company for which the brand name was Zyklon B. Once released from their container, Zyklon B crystals in the air released a lethal cyanide gas. Fritzsch tried out the effect of Zyklon B on Soviet POWs, who were locked up in cells in the basement of the bunker for this experiment. Höss on his return was briefed and impressed with the results and this became the camp strategy for extermination as it
1632-489: The Nuremberg trials , when Dieter Wisliceny (a deputy to Adolf Eichmann ) was asked to name the extermination camps, and he identified Auschwitz and Majdanek as such. Then, when asked, "How do you classify the camps Mauthausen , Dachau , and Buchenwald ?", he replied, "They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann." Murders were not limited to these camps. Sites for
1728-642: The SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik stationed in Lublin received an oral order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but
1824-620: The Soviet Union , Yugoslavia , France , the United Kingdom , as well as some Germans. Fort VII was known among prisoners as a particularly harsh camp, partly because of the high ratio of guards to prisoners (about one to five). Prisoners lived in cramped, dark, damp and cold conditions. Sometimes 200–300 prisoners were held in a cell measuring 20 by 5 metres. The women's cells, located below ground level, sometimes remained flooded up to knee height. Until mid-1942 prisoners slept on
1920-652: The Vistula and San rivers, southeast of Lublin. Adolf Eichmann, then head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , was the first to realize the Nisko Plan by deporting Jews to the Lublin Reservation. While initially the Jews of East Upper Silesia were to be deported there, Eichmann expanded the program to include Jews from Mährisch-Ostrau in
2016-566: The Wielkopolska region. Many were representatives of the region's intelligentsia , often people who had been engaged in social and political life, as well as known Polish patriots and veterans of the Wielkopolska Uprising (1918–1919) and Silesian Uprisings . In the early stages of the camp's existence prisoners were generally executed within a week of arrival. In October 1939 an early experiment in execution by gas chamber
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#17327728291322112-564: 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 , Rumbula and others. Irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps , which provided perfect cover for
2208-764: The American millennials who were surveyed (and 41 percent of all U.S. adults) did not know what Auschwitz was. In 2019, a survey of 1,100 Canadians found that 49 percent of them could not name any of the Nazi camps which were located in German-occupied Europe . Astor, Maggie (12 April 2018). "Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Final solution Parties Lublin Reservation The Nisko Plan
2304-795: The Auschwitz II (Auschwitz–Birkenau) and Majdanek camps were parts of a labor camp complex, the Chełmno and Operation Reinhard death camps (that is, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built exclusively for the rapid extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival. All were constructed near branch lines that linked to the Polish railway system, with staff members transferring between locations. These camps had almost identical design: they were several hundred metres in length and width, and were equipped with only minimal staff housing and support installations not meant for
2400-624: The Auschwitz camp physicians attributed that to the "paralyzing effect on the lungs" of the Zyklon B gas, which killed before the victim began suffering convulsions. The corpses were additionally found half-squatting, their skin discolored pink with red and green spots, with some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from their ears, exacerbated by the crowding in gas chambers. As a matter of political training, some high-ranked Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau to witness
2496-523: The British paper The Times of 16 December 1939 both gave a total of 45,000 Jews deported to the reservation so far. Also in December, the American paper The Spectator reported the camps were enclosed by barbed wire on an area of 80 by 100 kilometres (50 by 60 miles) near Nisko and Lublin 105 km (65 mi) apart from each other, and prepared for an intake of 1,945,000 Jews. An excerpt from
2592-526: The Eastern Front. The camps designed specifically for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics was to be handled by the programme administrator, Adolf Eichmann . On 13 October 1941,
2688-505: 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
2784-572: The Holocaust have concluded that the Nisko Plan was integrally related to Hitler's other programs and his intent to destroy the Jews in Europe. Thus the Nisko Plan was a preface to the Final Solution . Browning has suggested that the Nisko Plan was an example that Hitler did not have previous intentions for the gassing of the Jews. He contends that the Nisko (or Lublin) Plan, Madagascar Plan and Pripet Marsh Plan , all served as territorial solutions to
2880-548: The Holocaust were mostly killed at Auschwitz II Birkenau. The March of the Living is organized in Poland annually since 1988. Marchers come from countries as diverse as Estonia , New Zealand , Panama , and Turkey . Holocaust deniers or negationists are people and organizations who assert that the Holocaust did not occur, or that it did not occur in the historically recognized manner and extent. Holocaust deniers claim that
2976-443: The Holocaust. Unlike at Auschwitz, where cyanide-based Zyklon B was used to exterminate trainloads of prisoners under the guise of "relocation", the camps at Treblinka , Bełżec , and Sobibór , built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 – November 1943), used lethal exhaust fumes produced by large internal combustion engines . The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for
Fort VII - Misplaced Pages Continue
3072-587: 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 ". After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the secret Aktion T4 euthanasia programme – the systematic murder of German, Austrian and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities authorized by Hitler – was initiated by
3168-448: The Jews, many suspected they were to be killed – despite having been deceived into believing they were to be deloused and then returned to the camp. As a result, the Nazis identified and isolated "difficult individuals" who might alert the prisoners, and removed them from the mass – lest they incite revolt among the deceived majority of prisoners en route to the gas chambers. The "difficult" prisoners were led to
3264-516: The Lublin Jews who earlier had resided outside the camp, were forced to live in the camp after its expansion. Also in 1941, the camp was officially made part of the SS enterprise Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW). Effectively it remained outside DAW control by staying under the direct aegis of Globočnik. This changed only in 1943, after Globočnik resigned as the Lublin district SS-and-Police Leader and
3360-587: The Lublin district. The Lipowa camp became a subcamp of the latter in 1943. The Nisko Plan was abandoned for pragmatic reasons; nevertheless, the Zwangsarbeitslagers (German for "forced labor camps") already established for DAW became the industrial base of other SS projects such as Ostindustrie . A number of them functioned until Aktion Erntefest , others beyond the massacres. The antisemitic regime in Nazi Germany intended to achieve
3456-625: The Lublin reservation. The main camp of the entire complex was set up in Bełżec initially (before the construction of death camps ) for Jewish forced labor. In March 1942, it became the first Nazi extermination camp of Operation Reinhard , with permanent gas chambers arranged by Christian Wirth in fake shower rooms. Though the Burggraben camps were temporarily closed in late 1940, many of them were reactivated in 1941. Two additional extermination camps, Sobibor and Majdanek , were later set up in
3552-607: The Lublin reservation. While this would have resulted in short-term expulsions of one million people, this number was cut down for capacity reasons to 80,000 after intervention on 28 November 1939 by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office . The reservation was not kept secret; the local population was aware and the international press reported on it. Reports in the Luxembourgian paper Luxemburger Wort of 12 November and
3648-481: 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 , Belzec , Sobibor , Treblinka , Majdanek and Auschwitz (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau). Death camps were designed specifically for
3744-636: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and from Vienna . Eichmann also set up a transit camp in Nisko , a town on the western border of the Lublin district, from which the deportees were to be expelled eastward. The first Jews were shipped to Lublin on 18 October 1939. The first train loads consisted of Jews deported from Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. When the second and third transports were prepared, Heinrich Müller, on behalf of SS head Heinrich Himmler , ordered on 19 October
3840-431: The SS headquarters had envisioned four large camps, governor Hans Frank refused to finance such a large project. Thus Odilo Globočnik decided instead to set up various small camps run at a lower cost. This resulted in desperate conditions: the inmates were crowded in dark and dirty rooms with no glass in the windows, had to sleep on the floor, the sick were not separated from the healthy, and the supply of food, water and soap
3936-573: The Search for a Solution to the Jewish Question, 1939–1941", focused on the presumed Nazi intention for territorial solutions preceding the subsequent genocide. Nevertheless, already at the beginning of war, on 24 October 1939 The Times noted that the German plan to create a Jewish state was cynical, and would surely doom the Jews to a deadly famine. Most historians of Nazi Germany and
Fort VII - Misplaced Pages Continue
4032-731: The Soviet POWs . The Nazi's so-called " Final Solution of the Jewish Question ", based on the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard , after the June 1941 onset of the Nazi–Soviet war. The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppen , who followed the Wehrmacht army during Operation Barbarossa on
4128-637: The Vistula. Hitler approved of this priority shift: While in early October he had envisioned the short-term expulsion of all Jews from Vienna and 300,000 Jews from the Altreich to the Lublin reservation, in late October he approved Himmler's plans for deportation of 550,000 Jews from the new eastern provinces and all "Congress Poles" , meaning Poles from the Soviet partition residing in the Third Reich, to
4224-482: The addresses of those members of their race still in hiding". Once the door of the filled gas chamber was sealed, pellets of Zyklon B were dropped through special holes in the roof. Regulations required that the Camp Commandant supervise the preparations, the gassing (through a peephole), and the aftermath looting of the corpses. Commandant Höss reported that the gassed victims "showed no signs of convulsion";
4320-497: The authority of the Judenrat in neighboring Lublin. By April, when the reservation was dissolved, the total number of Jews who had been transported to Nisko had reached 95,000. Many deportees had died due to starvation, either during the transport or during their stay in the reservation. Additional deaths in the reservation were caused by typhus and typhoid fever epidemics, the lack of housing and any "sources of livelihood",
4416-573: The camp became the sub-camp of Majdanek concentration camp complex. When the Lublin reservation was planned, the reservation was to be combined with several forced labor camps ( Zwangsarbeiterlager , ZAL s) along the Nazi–Soviet demarcation line . The reservation was to supply the ZALs with workforce to erect military defense facilities, including a large anti-tank ditch along the demarcation line code-named Burggraben ("fortress' ditch"). While initially
4512-625: The camp for about six months, before being sentenced to death, a long prison term or transfer to a larger concentration camp, such as Dachau and Auschwitz , or in rare cases being released. Prisoners in this period included political and military activists in the Polish Underground State . Following Himmler 's decree of 28 May 1941 the camp was renamed as a police prison and corrective labour camp (Polizeigefängnis der Sicherheitspolizei und Arbeitserziehungslager) . In this period some prisoners (called niedzielnicy in Polish, from
4608-439: The camp, of whom 4,500 died. Other estimates put the total number of prisoners as high as 45,000, and the number of deaths at around 20,000. Deaths were the result of either to execution: including shooting, hanging or gassing; mistreatment, torture, and contagious disease. On the 20 October 1939 the first Jewish victims from Posen (Poznań), Benno Rindfleisch and Julius Tychauer, were shot at Fort VII. Several more Jews were shot in
4704-426: The chamber door closed. To psychologically maintain the "calming effect" of the delousing deception, an SS man stood at the door until the end. The Sonderkommando talked to the victims about life in the camp to pacify the suspicious ones, and hurried them inside; to that effect, they also assisted the aged and the very young in undressing. Many young mothers hid their infants beneath their piled clothes fearing that
4800-567: The command of Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl , and Treblinka (operational by July 1942) under Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl from T4, the only doctor to have served in such a capacity. Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gas chambers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September. The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms extermination camp ( Vernichtungslager ) and death camp ( Todeslager ) were interchangeable in
4896-418: The corpse of a relative, or saw them entering the gas chambers. According to Höss, they were obviously shaken by this but "it never led to any incident". He mentioned the case of a Sonderkommando who found the body of his wife, yet continued to drag corpses along "as though nothing had happened". At Auschwitz, the corpses were incinerated in crematoria and the ashes either buried, scattered, or dumped in
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#17327728291324992-593: The country with the Soviet Union , the Lublin area became part of the Generalgouvernement headed by Hans Frank . Once under Nazi German control, the area was inspected by Frank's deputy Artur Seyss-Inquart in November ;1939. He reported that – according to the local governor – the area, "swampy in its nature", would serve well as a reservation for Jews, and that "this action would cause [their] considerable decimation." On 25 November, Frank informed
5088-420: The courage to joke with the children, to encourage them, despite the mortal terror visible in their own eyes". Some women would suddenly "give the most terrible shrieks while undressing, or tear their hair, or scream like maniacs"; these prisoners were taken away for execution by shooting. In such circumstances, others, meaning to save themselves at the gas chamber's threshold, betrayed the identities and "revealed
5184-671: The delousing "disinfectant" might harm them. Camp Commandant Höss reported that the "men of the Special Detachment were particularly on the look-out for this", and encouraged the women to take their children into the "shower room". Likewise, the Sonderkommando comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion". Yet, not every prisoner was deceived by such tactics; Commandant Höss spoke of Jews "who either guessed, or knew, what awaited them, nevertheless ... [they] found
5280-509: The diesel [engine] did not start. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue", says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian ( Trawniki ) assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes – the stopwatch recorded it all –
5376-490: The diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons, in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window, because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists [then] hammered out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns. In
5472-419: The extermination camps were actually transit camps from which Jews were deported farther east. However, these theories are disproven by surviving German documents, which show that Jews were sent to the camps to be murdered. Extermination camp research is difficult because of extensive attempts by the SS and Nazi regime to conceal the existence of the extermination camps. The existence of the extermination camps
5568-586: The extermination of Poland's Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos . At first, the victims' bodies were buried with the use of crawler excavators , but they were later exhumed and incinerated in open-air pyres to hide the evidence of genocide in what became known as Sonderaktion 1005 . The six camps considered to be purely for extermination were Chełmno extermination camp , Bełżec extermination camp , Sobibor extermination camp , Treblinka extermination camp , Majdanek extermination camp and Auschwitz extermination camp (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau). Whereas
5664-477: The extermination process by removing corpses from the gas chambers and burning them. At the camps of Operation Reinhard, including Bełżec , Sobibór , and Treblinka , trainloads of prisoners were murdered immediately after arrival in gas chambers designed exclusively for that purpose. The mass killing facilities were developed at about the same time inside the Auschwitz II-Birkenau subcamp of
5760-456: The extermination programme. 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. In the early years of World War II, the Jews were primarily sent to forced labour camps and ghettoised, but from 1942 onward they were deported to the extermination camps under
5856-572: The fear the Nazis would lose international reputation due to the international press reports. The rationale of the abandonment was not one of principle, but a pragmatic one, and deportations continued at a slower pace. In the functionalism versus intentionalism debate, which began in the 1960s, the Nisko Plan was brought up by Holocaust historians as an example of escalation of the Nazi anti-Jewish measures in World War ;II. Christopher Browning in his article, "Nazi Resettlement Policy and
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#17327728291325952-482: The floor or on rotting straw. There was little or no access to washing facilities, and parasites and disease spread easily. Prisoners were subjected to torture and humiliation by the guards. On the "stairway of death" prisoners would be made to run up carrying a heavy stone, and possibly kicked down from the top by a guard. Food rations were minimal, as officially the prisoners were not working. However, some of them were made to work in unofficial workshops. Only one prisoner
6048-448: The gassings at Chełmno north of Łódź using gas vans began already in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange . The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt (OT). By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands for Operation Reinhard: Sobibór (ready in May 1942) under
6144-476: The gassings. As the Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss justified the extermination by explaining the need for "the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler's orders". After the gassings, the Sonderkommando removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then extracted any gold teeth. Initially, the victims were buried in mass graves, but were later cremated during Sonderaktion 1005 in all camps of Operation Reinhard . The Sonderkommando
6240-431: The ghettos for "special treatment" in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both Orpo and Schupo . Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen , Oranienburg , Ravensbrück , and 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
6336-400: The guise of "resettlement". For political and logistical reasons, the most infamous Nazi German killing factories were built in occupied Poland , where most of the intended victims lived; Poland had the greatest Jewish population in Nazi-controlled Europe . On top of that, the new death camps outside of Germany's prewar borders could be kept secret from the German civil populace. During
6432-428: The initial phase of the Final Solution , gas vans producing poisonous exhaust fumes were developed in the occupied Soviet Union (USSR) and at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland , before being used elsewhere. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia . There were two types of death chambers operating during
6528-507: The local administration that an influx of "millions of Jews" was proposed. Also in November, Odilo Globočnik was put in charge of all issues regarding the Jews in the Lublin area, representing the SS as the area's SS and Police Leader. Globočnik set up a department led by a Dr. Hofbauer to plan the settlement of the expected Jews and their conscription to forced labor . The original Lublin Reservation comprised an area of 800 to 1,000 square kilometres (300 to 400 square miles) located between
6624-403: The midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and, showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See, for yourself, the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday, and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day – dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!" Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss reported that the first time Zyklon B pellets were used on
6720-477: The murder of 2,750 patients at Kościan , about 1,100 patients at Owińska , as well as 1,558 patients and 300 civilian Poles at Działdowo ; the experience gained allowed Lange to become the first commandant of Chełmno extermination camp (until April 1942). In mid November 1939 the camp was renamed as a Gestapo prison and a transit camp (Geheime Staatspolizei Staatspolizeileitstelle Posen. Übergangslager – Fort VII) . In this period prisoners usually remained in
6816-551: The near-complete extermination of the European Jews through the Holocaust. In late summer 1939, Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler, with one of his foremost Nazi ideologues Alfred Rosenberg , developed the idea for a Jewish "reservation" ( Judenreservat ). The town of Lublin in Poland had been the focus of Nazi planners since the early 1930s, after Herrmann Seiffert described it as the center of Jewish worldwide power and source of their genetic potential. After Nazi Germany had defeated Poland in September 1939 and partitioned
6912-647: The outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting. He was told by the commanding officer there that the shootings were proving psychologically damaging to those being asked to pull the triggers. Thus, Himmler concluded that another method of mass killing was required. Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss claimed in his memoir that many Einsatzkommandos were "unable to endure wading through blood any longer" and went mad or killed themselves, but he gives no specific numbers to support this claim. The Nazis had first used gassing with carbon monoxide cylinders to murder 70,000 disabled people in Germany in what they called
7008-648: The participation of SS- Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann ("architect of the Holocaust "); as well as Heinrich Müller of the Gestapo , Hans Frank (Hitler's lawyer) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart of the Generalgouvernement administration. Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik , the former Gauleiter of Vienna who was appointed the SS and Police Leader of the new Lublin District, was put in charge of
7104-473: The process of gradually liquidating the camp began, so that the site could be used for industrial purposes. Prisoners were made to work on the construction of a new camp south of Poznań, in Żabikowo (called Poggenburg by the Germans), and were then transferred there, the last ones being moved on 25 April 1944. Fort VII became a Telefunken factory producing radio equipment for submarines and aircraft. After
7200-583: The project. While the Burggraben camps had been closed in late 1940, some were reinforced in spring 1941 on Himmler's initiative and again put under Globočnik's supervision to finish the anti-tank ditch. On 23 March 1940, Hermann Göring with Himmler's approval put a hold on the Nisko Plan, and by the end of April, final abandonment was announced by Krüger. Reasons for the abandonment included Frank's refusal to accept further influx of deportees into "his" General-Government which he viewed as overcrowded, and
7296-556: The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration . In the post-war period the government of the People's Republic of Poland created monuments at the extermination camp sites. These early monuments mentioned no ethnic, religious, or national particulars of the Nazi victims. The extermination camps sites have been accessible to everyone in recent decades. They are popular destinations for visitors from all over
7392-413: The reservation. During the early implementation of the plan, the Nazis set up a system of ghettos for Jewish civilians to use them as forced labor for the German war effort. The first forced labor camps were established for the Burggraben project intended to fortify the Nazi–Soviet demarcation line and to supply the local SS units at Lublin from Lipowa. In total, about 95,000 Jews were deported to
7488-484: The river. At Sobibór , Treblinka , Bełżec , and Chełmno , the corpses were incinerated on pyres. The efficiency of industrialised murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau led to the construction of three buildings with crematoria designed by specialists from the firm J. A. Topf & Söhne . They burned bodies 24 hours a day, and yet the death rate was at times so high that corpses also needed to be burned in open-air pits. The estimated total number of people who were murdered in
7584-483: The same fate in the end. At the Lazaret killing station they held the sick so they would never see the gun while being shot. They did it "in such a matter-of-course manner that they might, themselves, have been the exterminators", wrote Höss. He further said that the men ate and smoked "even when engaged in the grisly job of burning corpses which had been lying for some time in mass graves." They occasionally encountered
7680-593: The same month in Poznań and in nearby Buk and Kornik. But the majority of the Jewish population of Posen was transported to the Lublin district , most likely ultimately perishing at Belzec or Sobibor . The prison's documentation was destroyed near the end of the war. According to reports submitted by the prison to the register of deaths, the official number of prisoners who died at Fort VII was 479. Prisoners included citizens of other countries as well as Polish nationals, from
7776-508: The six Nazi extermination camps is 2.7 million, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All six camps are located in present-day Poland. The Nazis attempted to either partially or completely dismantle the extermination camps in order to hide any evidence that people had been murdered there. This was an attempt to conceal not only the extermination process but also the buried remains. As
7872-643: 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. The Reinhard extermination camps were under Globocnik's direct command; each of them was run by 20 to 35 men from the SS-Totenkopfverbände branch of the Schutzstaffel , augmented by about one hundred Trawnikis – auxiliaries mostly from Soviet Ukraine, and up to one thousand Sonderkommando slave labourers each. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from
7968-424: The victims crammed into the railway transports . The Nazis deceived the victims upon their arrival, telling them that they were at a temporary transit stop, and would soon continue to German Arbeitslagers (work camps) farther to the east. Selected able-bodied prisoners delivered to the death camps were not immediately killed, but instead were pressed into labor units called Sonderkommandos to help with
8064-931: The war the building was used as a storage facility by the Polish army. Plans were made in 1976 to turn the site into a museum in memory of the victims of the camp. The museum opened on 13 August 1979, and is called Muzeum Martyrologii Wielkopolan Fort VII ("Fort VII Museum of the Wielkopolska Martyrs"). 52°25′01″N 16°52′05″E / 52.41694°N 16.86806°E / 52.41694; 16.86806 Extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps ( German : Vernichtungslager ), also called death camps ( Todeslager ), or killing centers ( Tötungszentren ), in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland , during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in
8160-484: The word niedziela , "Sunday") would be held in the camp temporarily between ending work on Saturday and beginning work on Monday. About 2,000 to 2,500 prisoners were held at the camp at any one time, guarded by approximately 400 members of the SS . There were 27 cells for men and three for women. According to conservative estimates of the Fort VII State Museum, a total of 18,000 prisoners passed through
8256-646: The world, especially the most infamous Nazi death camp, Auschwitz near the town of Oświęcim . In the early 1990s, the Jewish Holocaust organisations debated with the Polish Catholic groups about "What religious symbols of martyrdom are appropriate as memorials in a Nazi death camp such as Auschwitz?" The Jews opposed the placement of Christian memorials such as the Auschwitz cross near Auschwitz I where mostly Poles were killed. The Jewish victims of
8352-550: Was also to be at Majdanek. Besides gassing, the camp guards continued killing prisoners via mass shooting, starvation, torture, etc. SS Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS , told a Swedish diplomat during the war, about life in a death camp. He recounted that on 19 August 1942, he arrived at Bełżec extermination camp (which was equipped with carbon monoxide gas chambers) and
8448-635: Was an operation to deport Jews to the Lublin District of the General Governorate of occupied Poland in 1939. Organized by Nazi Germany , the plan was cancelled in early 1940. The idea for the expulsion and resettlement of the Jews of Europe into a remote corner of the Generalgouvernement territory, bordering the cities of Lublin and Nisko , was devised by Adolf Hitler and formulated by his SS henchmen. The plan
8544-399: Was carried out by an SS chemist, Dr. August Becker , whereby around 400 patients and staff from psychiatric hospitals in Poznań were gassed at Bunker No. 17. The extermination of mentally ill was conducted by SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange of the Gestapo in occupied Poznań. Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg . He and his men were responsible also for
8640-552: Was developed in September 1939, after the invasion of Poland , and implemented between October 1939 and April 1940, in contrast to similar Nazi " Madagascar " and other Jewish relocation plans that had been drawn up before the attack on Poland, at the beginning of World War II. It bore similarities to the American Indian reservations . Hitler devised the idea with the help of Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , including
8736-673: Was given by Heydrich when he reported in Berlin in January. He stated the number would increase to 400,000 by the end of the year. Among the Jews deported to the reservation in February ;1940 were the Pomeranian Jews , resulting in Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg declaring his Pomeranian Gau the first Gau of the Altreich to be judenrein ("cleansed of Jews"). The deportees were put under
8832-449: Was insufficient. About 30% of the inmates did not have shoes, pants, or shirts. This situation caused a rapid spread of lice and diseases. Of all Burggraben - ZAL -camps, the later extermination camp Bełżec was the main camp. The Burggraben project was abandoned in late 1940 due to pressure applied by the German military ( Wehrmacht ), who regarded it to be of no military use. Heinrich Himmler, however, disagreed and continued to support
8928-515: Was one of the ring of defensive forts built around the perimeter of Poznań by the Prussian authorities in the late 19th century, in the second stage of their Festung Posen plan. It was built in 1876–1880 (with improvements in 1887–1888). At present, it stands in the western part of the city, on today's ul. Polska in the Ogrody neighbourhood, part of Jeżyce district. In the interwar period it
9024-444: Was responsible for burning the corpses in the pits, stoking the fires, draining surplus body fat and turning over the "mountain of burning corpses ... so that the draft might fan the flames", wrote Commandant Höss in his memoir while in the Polish custody. He was impressed by the diligence of prisoners from the so-called Special Detachment who carried out their duties despite their being well aware that they, too, would meet exactly
9120-421: Was shown the unloading of 45 train cars filled with 6,700 Jews, many already dead. The rest were marched naked to the gas chambers , where: Unterscharführer Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. Captain Wirth comes up. I can see he is afraid, because I am present at a disaster. Yes, I see it all and I wait. My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and
9216-529: Was used for storage purposes. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Fort VII was chosen as the site of the first concentration camp in occupied Poland , called Konzentrationslager Posen . It was probably created by decision of the Reichsstatthalter of the Poznań region, Arthur Greiser . It began functioning at some time around October 1939. The prisoners were mostly Poles from
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