Introduction

So my name is Nick Waxman.

I'm professor for modern European history at

Birkbeck College at the University of London,

and this is a brief lecture cause on the history of the Nazi concentration camps.

Now, when we think about Nazi terror about Nazi crimes, we tend to think

about Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was the deadliest concentration camp,

the deadliest camp of the mall during the Second World War,

and it has become a global symbol for

inhumanity for the crimes committed by the Nazi regime

during the war.

It's no coincidence that the 27th of January is Holocaust Memorial Day.

On that day in 1945 Soviet troops liberated the last remaining prisoners

in Auschwitz.

So after the war,

Auschwitz became has become a symbol of inhumanity and of Nazi crimes.

Um, but there are many misunderstandings and myths about Auschwitz

and about the Nazi camps overall,

and some of these myths I want to tackle in this brief lecture course,

One of the misconceptions I often come across when I

talk to people about the camps is that they equate

Auschwitz with the concentration camps and with the Holocaust,

as if they are all effectively the same thing.

So let me say three things about that, um, to introduce this subject.

The first is that there is more to the Holocaust in Auschwitz now.

Some six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis

during the Second World War. Around one million of those were murdered

in Auschwitz.

That makes Auschwitz the single most deadly sight of the Holocaust. Nowhere else

did

the Nazi dictator of murder more Jews than in Auschwitz.

Nonetheless,

most Jews were killed elsewhere, and I will say more about that

in a later lecture on the Holocaust.

The important thing to say here is that there is more to the Holocaust

than Auschwitz.

The second point is that there is also more to Auschwitz than the Holocaust.

When you Google on the Web,

he will come across a number of websites which say effectively,

that Auschwitz was set up as a Holocaust extermination camp.

That is not the case.

Auschwitz was first set up in 1940 not long after the Nazi occupation of Poland,

and it was set up in 1940 to destroy to intimidate the Polish political opposition.

The vast majority of prisoners in the first phase of Auschwitz as

a concentration camp are Polish political prisoners later in 1941 in autumn,

1941 thousands of Soviet POWs are dragged to Auschwitz as well.

This is after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941

and they are taken to Auschwitz as part of a gigantic

plan by the Nazi dictatorship to settle German living space,

as they call it

in the East in the occupied eastern.

Auschwitz plays a role in this, as do those Soviet POWs who are held here.

It's only in 1942 so halfway through

the Second World War that Auschwitz also becomes

a destination for mass deportations of Jews

to Auschwitz becomes a Holocaust extermination camp.

But even doing this time,

Auschwitz also has other functions.

It functions as a hub for slave labour for medical experiments,

gruesome medical experiments and also for political deterrence and repression.

That means there are any number of prisoner groups still

in Auschwitz in the second half of the war.

In addition to Jews, we have Polish political prisoners,

political prisoners from elsewhere in Europe, Soviet POWs,

also Sinti and Roma so called gipsies.

The point here is that Auschwitz as other concentration camps do,

always has multiple functions.

It has more than one function,

so there is more to Auschwitz than the Holocaust.

The third point is that there is also

more to the concentration camp system than Auschwitz.

Auschwitz is the largest concentration camp.

Auschwitz is the deadliest concentration camp by far,

but it's not the only concentration camp.

There are more than 25 main concentration

camps set up during the Nazi dictatorship,

and over 1100 attached satellite camps, which are set up.

So Auschwitz is part of this web of camps.

It's not the only camp, and it isn't the first concentration camp, either.

The camps emerge already during the Nazi capture of power

in 1933 initially to destroy the German political opposition.

Uh, the first one of these first as S camps, which are set up,

is doctor How outside Munich and a how is established in spring 1933.

That is more than seven years before Auschwitz is first set up,

and it influences camps like Auschwitz in terms of the structure, organisation

and the training of special s tormentors and stuff.

So Auschwitz is part of this web of camps

and it is connected to these other concentration camps.

We have deportation trains which go from other camps to Auschwitz,

and we have deportation trains with prisoners who

go from Auschwitz to these other concentration camps.

Towards the end of the war in January 1945 the S s also forces tens of thousands

of Auschwitz prisoners on death marches as the

Soviet troops approach towards camps more further,

inside Germany and and many thousands,

tens of thousands of prisoners died during death marches and

death transports in the final months of the regime.

So actually it is part of

a larger web of camps. It is connected to these different camps.

And when we think about these different concentration camps,

the important point to understand is that they are all different.

They are not the same. There isn't a typical concentration camp.

Even the same camp isn't the same all the way through its existence.

So, Doc, how in 1933

is very, very different,

almost unrecognisable to Dhaka in 1939 which again

is completely different to Dacca in 1945.

It's different in terms of the staff in terms of

the space the way the camp operates and looks,

and also in terms of the treatment and conditions.

And that's the last thing to stress here.

The camps during the war become sites of mass death

and mass extermination on a systematic scale that is very different

before the outbreak of the Second World War.

There is torment, violence and abuse, but not yet systematic mass killing.

And that is something I'm going to explore in the next lecture on the origins

and the early stages of the camp system after the Nazi capture of power in 1933.