German camps in occupied Poland during World War II

Nazi German camps in occupied Poland during World War II

Left to right (top to bottom): Concentration camp in Płaszów near Kraków, built by Nazi Germany in 1942 • Inmates of Birkenau returning to barracks, 1944 • Slave labour for the Generalplan Ost, making Lebensraum latifundia • Majdanek concentration camp (June 24, 1944) • Death gate at Stutthof concentration camp • Map of Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland, marked with white skulls in black squares

Operation

Period

September 1939 – April 1945

Location

Prisoners

Total

5 million Polish slave labour

Dead victims

6,000,000 Poles and Polish Jews

The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 across the entire territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in the central part of the country (see map). After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland, a much greater system of camps was established, including the world's only industrial extermination camps constructed for the specific purpose of carrying out the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

German-occupied Poland was a prison-like territory. It contained 457 camp complexes. Some of the major concentration and forced labour camps consisted of dozens of subsidiary camps scattered over a broad area. At the Gross-Rosen concentration camp (to which Polish nationals were expelled from the annexed part of Poland) the number of subcamps was ninety seven (97). Under Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) with thousands of prisoners each, the number of satellite camps was forty-eight (48); their detailed description of purpose is provided by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.Stutthof concentration camp had forty (40) subcamps officially and as many as 105 subcamps in operation, some as far as Elbląg, Bydgoszcz and Toruń, at a distance of 200 kilometres (120 mi) from the main camp.