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Concentration Camps were established by the Nazi regime, beginning with Dachau in 1933, to imprison "enemies of the state." Prisoners included the political opposition, dissenting clergy, undesirable ethnic groups, such as Jews and Gypsies, homosexuals, and numerous others classified simply as "antisocials" or "useless mouths." Concentration camps were established for different purposes-as prisons, forced labor camps, or extermination centers-particularly the death factories of Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, as well as in the killing sections in Auschwitz and Majdanek (also called Lublin). The Nazis established an estimated 15,000 camps in Germany and occupied countries, a vast network of suffering and death. Men profiled at this website primarily liberated three camps--Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. This web site also includes digitized archival film footage for the liberation of Ohrdruf camp, the first camp to be liberated on German soil. |
