Concentration Camps & Ghettos
The system of concentration camps and ghettos were two central, yet distinct, instruments of persecution, terror, and mass murder utilized by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. While both served to isolate and control targeted populations, particularly Jews, their structure, purpose, and scale differed significantly. Understanding these differences is crucial for grasping the complex mechanisms of the Nazi genocide.
Concentration Camps were established across the Greater German Reich and German-occupied Europe, primarily as sites of terror, forced labor, and mass extermination, managed by the SS. These camps were categorized into concentration camps (for detention and forced labor), death camps (designed solely for industrialized mass murder, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka), and transit camps. Ghettos, on the other hand, were designated, confined areas—often walled-off neighborhoods within cities, primarily in German-occupied Eastern Europe—where the Nazis forced Jews to live under overcrowded, squalid, and starvation conditions prior to their deportation to concentration and death camps. They served as a mechanism to segregate, exploit, and liquidate Jewish communities.
Concentration Camps 🏰
- Auschwitz Totenbuch (Death Book)
- Bergen-Belsen
- Buchenwald
- Dachau
- Drancy (France)
- Gross-Rosen
- Holocaust.cz (Terezin/Theresienstadt)
- Jasenovac concentration camp (Croatia)
- Majdanek State Museum (Added: Reputable link to another major camp)
- Mauthausen
- Ravensbrück
- Sachsenhausen
- Sobibor (nl)
- Sobibor (pl)
- Stutthof
- Wannsee Conference
- Yad Vashem: Concentration Camps
Ghettos 🏘️
- Ghettos in Occupied Europe
- Introduction: Ghettos in German Occupied Eastern Europe
- Lodz Ghetto
- Lodz Ghetto street names
- The ghettos
- Warsaw Ghetto
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Ghettos
Credits
Compiled by Mark Rabideau, Opa & Professional Genealogist.