The first Nazi concentration camp was established on March 22, 1933. Originally used for “political prisoners,” Dachau and later Oranienburg, Esterwegen, and Lichtenburg were all used to isolate “subversives” and would become a model for the mass establishment of camps in Nazi-controlled territory.²⁵ Nazi Germany would expand its territory into Austria and Czechoslovakia between 1938-1939. With the expansion, came an increase in subversives, political opponents and the need for more concentration camps 

It’s important to note the difference between concentration camps and prisons. The Holocaust Encyclopedia states that “concentration camps, unlike prisons, are independent of any judicial review”. Nazi camps had three main functions: to imprison anyone perceived as a threat to the Nazi Party; to “eliminate individuals and small, targeted groups of individuals by murder” outside of public view; and, to “exploit forced labor of the prisoner population”.²⁶ After the start of the war, the camps increased the usage of forced labor. Laborers were used for SS construction projects, industrial sites, and the production of goods for the German war effort.²⁷ Now that we have a basic understanding of concentration camps, let’s take a better look at the Final Solution. 

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (Endlösung der Judenfrage) was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews”.²⁸ This closing stage of the Holocaust took place from 1941-1945. Many Jews had been killed prior to this movement, but this was when the majority of Jewish people were massacred during the Holocaust. When Nazi leaders decided to carry out the Final Solution is unknown. It is very apparent, however, that the Final Solution was the climax of a decade of severely prejudiced anti-Jewish efforts made by the Nazis. 

As previously discussed, once Hitler came to power policies were quickly set in place to systemically isolate and exclude German Jews from the rest of German society. Legislative acts had effectively removed Jews from Germany’s economy and ghettos were established and utilized for the mass deportation of Jews before moving them to concentration camps well before 1941. Around 1938, Germany established the Einsatzgruppen -a mobile killing squad that would follow German troops into newly invaded territories and kill any civilian enemies. The scale of the Einsatzgruppen‘s mass shootings wildly increased after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 where “they conducted shooting operations aimed at annihilating entire Jewish communities”.²⁹ Roma communities and anyone perceived as a member or leader of the Communist Party were also targeted. The Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the mass shootings as such:  

Often referred to as an Aktion, a massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or ordered to report to a central destination. The victims were then marched or transported to the killing site. If a mass grave had not already been dug, the victims were forced to dig one. They were stripped of clothes and valuables and driven in groups to the pit. The Einsatzgruppen and their assistants either shot the victims at the edge so that they fell in, or forced them into the grave to be shot. Friends and families often had to watch their loved ones die before them.³⁰

In the autumn of 1941, the SS and the Einsatzgruppen implemented mobile gas vans. These trucks were paneled and had exhaust pipes pumping poisonous carbon monoxide into closed off spaces, killing those locked into the back of the vans. These mass shootings and gas vans worked hand in hand as Germany continued to expand their invasions across Eastern Europe and would last until Germany evacuated the Soviet Union in 1944. Between 1 and 1.5 million Jews would die in shooting operations or in gas vans in the German occupied Soviet Union alone.³¹

On July 17, 1941 - four weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union - Hitler would task Heinrich Himmler with the responsibility of overseeing all security matters in the Soviet Union. He gave Himmler “broad authority to physically eliminate any perceived threats to permanent German rule.” Two weeks later, Hitler’s second-in-command Hermann Göring would authorize Himmler’s direct subordinate, Reinhard Heydrich, “to make preparations for the implementation of a ‘complete solution of the Jewish question’”.³² In October of 1941, Himmler would authorize the implementation of a plan to murder all Jews residing in Generalgouvernement - the occupied lands of Poland, Slovakia, and the Soviet Union.

This plan would be labeled under the code name “Operation Reinhard,” named after Heydrich after he was assassinated in Prague.³³ Leaders under Operation Reinhard would organize the deportation of Jews to three death camps across Poland: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. Operation Reinhard would see up to 1.7 millions Jews killed in these death camps and mass shootings throughout the Generalgouvernement. The majority of these victims were “Polish Jews, although German, Austrian, Czech, Dutch, French, Yugoslav, and Greek Jews also died in the Reinhard killing centers [death camps]”.³⁴

A smaller goal of Operation Reinhard was to exploit a small number of Jews in this territory as forced laborers before murdering them. These small few would be transported to the concentration camp Lublin/Majdanek, a labor camp that was primarily used to house Jewish laborers and political prisoners. This camp was also used occasionally as a killing center for Generalgouvernement Jews, with gas chambers that would kill tens of thousands of Jews (primarily laborers that grew too weak to work). Death camp Chelmno would be “the first stationary facility where poison gas was used for the mass murder of Jews”³⁵ after being established in 1941. At least 172,000 people were murdered here.  

In order to implement the plan onto the Jews of “‘Greater Germany’ as well as Jews residing in German-occupied or German-influenced areas of western, southern, southeastern and northern Europe”³⁶ Auschwitz-Birkenau would be designated as a death camp in 1942. Approximately 1 million Jews from “Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, German-occupied western and southwestern Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, and Hungary”³⁷ would be massacred at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Throughout the entirety of the Final Solution plan, German authorities killed up to 6 million Jews (⅔ of all Jews living in Europe in 1939) by means of poison gas, shooting, and other means.