Glossary-Detail

Death camps or centres were built by the Germans during the Second World War and used for the systematic mass murder of European Jews and Roma. Soviet prisoners of war and other groups were also murdered at these sites. The death camps were located in the German-occupied territory of Poland, mainly in the Generalgouvernement. The main death camps were Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno, and the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek. In the death camps, poison gas chambers were built specifically for the purpose of killing people. In Auschwitz and Majdanek there were also sections of the camp where prisoners were first used for forced labour until they were worked to death or murdered. More than three million people were murdered in gas chambers or by shooting in the death camps. The direct perpetrators were mainly from the SS, who ran the concentration camps, but many state institutions such as the Reichsbahn and private companies were also involved in the Holocaust.