ABSTRACT
Concentration and extermination camps were a cornerstone of the Nazis’ attempt to rid the Reich of perceived enemies and inferiors. Lager system was the term used for the system of camps created by the Nazis. These included camps for forced laborers and prisoners of war as well as transit camps, concentration camps and sub-camps, and death camps. The extermination camps were Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The death camps were located in Poland, a country that had been home to Eastern Europe’s largest Jewish population. The most infamous of the extermination camps was Auschwitz. It was a complex mixture of camps and sub-camps. A railway spur led directly into the camp, making it easier to offload Jews from the trains and into the gas chambers. Chelmno was the first camp to routinely use gas vans to kill Jews.
