Concentration Camps

The concentration camps, which were run by the SS, were typically Nazi institutions. Originally set up for Germans hostile to the regime, theoretically in order to reindoctrinate them, in practice they prevented opponents of Nazism for causing trouble. On the outbreak of war the camps spread, to become international cities, in which tens of thousands of involuntary inhabitants lived in isolation from the world with their own social hierarchy and their own economy. These camps were death factories. Thirteen large camps received detainees from the thousands of local units through which the SS organized their activities. The camps, perhaps, exemplified the 'new order', which the Nazis planned to impose on the world after victory. They claimed millions of victims. Some of them, especially the Auschwitz- Birkenau complex, were reserved for Jews. Nazi hatred of the Jews was unquenchable. German propaganda taxed the Jews with every conceivable physical, moral and intellectual defect. It illogically held them responsible for capitalism, democracy and bolshevism. Jews had to be eradicated from society like a pestilence which would otherwise bring about the disintegration of nations. They were called the 'anti-race'. The Nazis used this metaphysical condemnation as grounds for humiliating them, secluding them from society, and depriving them of property under a policy of 'Aryanization of commerce'. The Jews were herded into ghettos in east Europe and sent to special camps for mass extermination. Six million perished in this way.