Many of the early concentration camps were improvised. Here, roll call is held for political prisoners aboard a ship used as a floating concentration camp. Ochstumsand camp, near Bremen, Germany, or From its rise to power in , the Nazi regime built a series of incarceration sites to imprison and eliminate real and perceived "enemies of the state. Many of these sites were called concentration camps. The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
After Germany's annexation [Anschluss] of Austria in March , Austrian political prisoners came into the Nazi concentration camp system. Following the violent Kristallnacht "Night of Broken Glass" pogroms in November , Nazi officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews throughout the country, the first time Jews were arrested en masse precisely because they were Jews. Over 30, German Jews were incarcerated in the Dachau , Buchenwald , and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany, initially until each could provide proof of their ability to emigrate.
Many people refer to all of the Nazi incarceration sites during the Holocaust as concentration camps. The term concentration camp is used very loosely to describe places of incarceration and murder under the Nazi regime, however, not all sites established by the Nazis were concentration camps.
Nazi-established sites include:. Between and , Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44, camps and other incarceration sites including ghettos. The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and mass murder. Items 1 through 1 of 2. The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January These camps were set up to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged political opponents.
They were established on the local level throughout Germany. Gradually, most of these early camps were disbanded and replaced by centrally organized concentration camps under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS Schutzstaffel ; the elite guard of the Nazi state. Dachau was the only concentration camp opened in that remained in operation until , and was the model for the Nazi concentration camp system that replaced the earlier camps.
