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become emblematic of Nazi terror, but the way the camps functioned
reflected some key points in Nazi thinking. Central to Hitler's view of the
world were the twin goals of expanding Germany's territory and purifying the
so-called Aryan race. Camps of various kinds evolved over the twelve years
of Nazi rule to further these goals. The development of the camps also
reflected pragmatic considerations that changed over time. From surveying
the camps, we can see how much power Hitler had to implement his plans,
and when he and the rest of the Nazi leadership needed to pay attention to
public opinion, both inside Germany and abroad.
THE EARLY TARGETS
The first concentration camp in Germany opened in Dachau in 1933, at a
time when the Nazi government was still consolidating its power.
Accordingly, it focused on political prisonerscommunists, social democrats,
and dissidents who posed a threat to the new regime and were unpopular
with most other Germans.
All of these early victims were easy targets, people whom other
Germans did little or nothing to protect, and whose disappearance
from the public scene they often welcomed.
Soon Nazi authorities and the police began to consign members of other
groups to the new camps: homosexual men arrested as criminal offenders;
Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to obey demands to cease their activities;
women accused of prostitution; people labeled "asocial" because they were
homeless, begged, or for some other reason did not fit into Nazi society.
In 1936, in preparation for the Olympic Games in Berlin, German police
"cleaned up" the city, arresting people deemed inappropriateprostitutes,
street people, petty thievesand forcing hundreds of Gypsies (Sinti and
Roma) into makeshift camps. All of these early victims were easy targets,
people whom other Germans did little or nothing to protect, and whose
disappearance from the public scene they often welcomed.
NAZIS INCREASE POWER
AND
TARGETED POPULATIONS
This was the first time Jews were sent to concentration camps for no
other reason than that they were Jews.
In November 1938 during the Kristallnacht Pogrom (also called the "Night of
Broken Glass"), Hitler Youth, stormtroopers, and other thugs torched
hundreds of synagogues all over Germany and attacked German Jews, their
homes, and their property. At the same time, police arrested approximately
30,000 Jewish men and locked them in concentration camps, where they
were held in "protective custody." This was the first time Jews were sent to
concentration camps for no other reason than that they were Jews.
THE "EUTHANASIA" PROGRAM
During the following year, 1939, Nazi authorities began deadly attacks on
one of their major targets: people considered handicapped. Rather than
sending them to concentration camps where they would have to be housed
and fed along with people who were being held and then sometimes
released, disabled people were taken from hospitals and other institutions
and sent to designated locations for "special treatment." That "special
treatment" was killing. In just a few years, with the cooperation of scores of
doctors, social workers, hospital administrators, and others, Nazi officials
organized and carried out the murder of at least 70,000 Germans deemed
"unfit for life." To the extent possible, the authorities tried to hide these
killings from the rest of the population, so that family members would not
protest.
GERMAN ANNEXATIONS
AND
RULE