Slideshow Camps

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  • Camps

    The Nazi camp system was vast and varied.

    Map of the major Nazi concentration and extermination camps / USHMM

  • Incarceration

    Some camps served as penal colonies for those defined as "enemies of the state."

    The electrified barbed-wire fence, moat, and watchtower at Dachau, 1945

  • Slave Labor

    Forced-labor camps were designed to exploit prisoners for SS and private German industries, often working the prisoners to death.

    Prisoners working a construction site in a Bulgarian labor camp, 1943 / USHMM

  • Death Camps

    At Nazi killing centers, victims were murdered in gas chambers and their bodies disposed of either in mass burial pits or by burning them in specially designed crematoria or mass pyres.

    The main gate of Auschwitz with the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free), 1945 / USHMM