Lecture 11: The Concentration and Extermination
Camps
Preliminary
proposals due; journals back next Tuesday
study questions for Primo Levi book:
What were the factors that enabled him to survive?
(How many can you come up with?)
Why did his tormentors/persecutors behave as
they did? (different reasons for each)
Film next Wed & Thu: "Escape from Sobibor,"
2hrs., Girvetz 1119, 7-9pm.
Deaths in concentration camps, extermination centers
Phases and turning points
1933-40: <100,000 (average: 14,000/yr)
1941: 1,100,000
1942: 2,700,000
1943: 500,000
1944: 600,000
1945 (4 mos.): 100,000 (annual rate: 300,000)
Early Concentration Camps (phases 1a, 1b,
1c)
March-April 1933: 25,000 potential opponents
taken into "protective custody"
50 "camps" to alleviate overcrowding
in prisons
run by local police and SA, except in Munich-Dachau
(Himmler=SS & Mu. police)
July 1933: Theodore Eicke named commander,
implements "new regime"
1935: Himmler persuades Hitler not to dissolve
camps; SS camp network set up:
1936 Sachsenhausen; 1937 Buchenwald and Dachau; [1937: 8,000
total in camps] 1938 Flossenbürg and Mauthausen, Neuengamme
[Dec. 38: 33,000 incl. 25,000 Jews];
1939 Ravensbrück [Sept. 39: 29,000 in all camps]
Functions of early camps:
direct and indirect silencing of opposition, "pacification"
of broader populace, by:
Physical absence
psychological destruction
isolation and mistrust
Wartime phases (phases 2a, 2ab, 2b)
War and racist war: labor, extermination, extermination through
labor
camps in occupied countries: Poland (Stutthof,
Maidanek, Auschwitz), Breendonk, Herzogenbosch
"Stalag" (Stammlager=core camp): prisoner
of war camps run by the Wehrmacht
system of branch or subcamps (Aussenlager): outsourcing of
labor
August 1944: 20 main camps with 165 subcamps, 524,286 inmates
December 44: 500 subcamps, 714,000 inmates; 40,000
guards