Full List of All Camps

This page lists the principal Nazi camps. The full network included over 1,200 sub-camps and is too long to list completely; the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos compiled by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in seven volumes, is the comprehensive reference. The list below covers the main camps that operated as independent administrative units, grouped by function.

Extermination camps

The six camps built or adapted for the killing of Jews on arrival.

  • Auschwitz-Birkenau (occupied Poland), 1941 to 1945. Around 1.1 million dead, of whom around 1 million were Jews. Combined labour and extermination camp.
  • Treblinka (occupied Poland), 1942 to 1943. Around 800,000 dead, almost all Jews. Pure extermination camp.
  • Bełżec (occupied Poland), 1942. Around 600,000 dead, almost all Jews. Pure extermination camp.
  • Chełmno (occupied Poland, annexed to the Reich), 1941 to 1945. Around 320,000 dead, almost all Jews. Used mobile gas vans.
  • Sobibor (occupied Poland), 1942 to 1943. Around 200,000 dead, almost all Jews. Pure extermination camp.
  • Majdanek (occupied Poland, near Lublin), 1941 to 1944. Around 80,000 dead, of whom around 60,000 were Jews. Combined labour and extermination camp.

Major concentration camps

The principal camps in the Reich and occupied territory that operated primarily as concentration and labour camps. Each had numerous sub-camps.

  • Dachau (Bavaria), 1933 to 1945. The original camp. Around 40,000 dead.
  • Sachsenhausen (near Berlin), 1936 to 1945. Around 30,000 dead.
  • Buchenwald (near Weimar), 1937 to 1945. Around 56,000 dead.
  • Mauthausen (Austria, near Linz), 1938 to 1945. Around 90,000 dead. SS Stage III, the most severe in the system.
  • Flossenburg (Bavaria), 1938 to 1945. Around 30,000 dead.
  • Ravensbruck (north of Berlin), 1939 to 1945. The major women’s camp. Around 30,000 to 50,000 dead.
  • Neuengamme (near Hamburg), 1938 to 1945. Around 43,000 dead.
  • Stutthof (near Danzig), 1939 to 1945. Around 65,000 dead.
  • Bergen-Belsen (Lower Saxony), 1943 to 1945. Around 50,000 dead, the great majority in the final three months.
  • Mittelbau-Dora (Thuringia), 1943 to 1945. Around 20,000 dead. The underground rocket factory camp.
  • Natzweiler-Struthof (Vosges, France), 1941 to 1944. Around 20,000 dead. The only main camp on French territory.
  • Gross-Rosen (Lower Silesia), 1940 to 1945. Around 40,000 dead.
  • Hinzert (Hunsruck), 1939 to 1945. Smaller camp, around 1,000 dead.
  • Niederhagen (near Paderborn), 1940 to 1943. Smaller camp.
  • Płaszów (near Kraków), 1942 to 1945. Around 8,000 dead. The camp depicted in the film Schindler’s List.
  • Janowska (Lvov), 1941 to 1944. Around 200,000 dead, mostly Jews. Combined labour and killing camp.
  • Kaiserwald (Riga), 1943 to 1944. Latvian Jews and others. Around 12,000 dead.
  • Vaivara (Estonia), 1943 to 1944. Around 8,000 dead.

Major transit camps

The assembly points from which Jews and others were sent to the killing camps.

  • Theresienstadt (occupied Czechoslovakia), 1941 to 1945. Around 33,000 dead in the camp itself and around 88,000 deported from there to extermination camps. Used as a Nazi propaganda showpiece presented to the Red Cross.
  • Westerbork (Netherlands), 1939 to 1945. Around 100,000 Jews deported through it to the death camps.
  • Drancy (Paris suburb), 1941 to 1944. Around 67,000 Jews deported through it.
  • Mechelen (Belgium), 1942 to 1944. Around 25,000 Jews deported through it.
  • Fossoli (Italy), 1943 to 1944. Around 5,000 Jews deported through it.
  • Risiera di San Sabba (Trieste), 1943 to 1945. The only Italian camp with a crematorium.

The sub-camp network

Each major camp had a network of sub-camps attached to it. Auschwitz had around 45. Buchenwald had around 87. Dachau had around 100. The sub-camps were generally smaller, often built around a particular factory or construction project, and held a few hundred to a few thousand prisoners each. Conditions varied widely. The most lethal sub-camps had death rates similar to the main camps. The full list of sub-camps runs to over 1,200 sites and is in the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos.

Notes on the death tolls

The figures given here are working approximations. The death tolls of the smaller camps are reasonably well established by post-war investigation. The death tolls of the largest camps, particularly Auschwitz, have been refined repeatedly as more documents have been recovered. The figure of 1.1 million for Auschwitz, for example, replaced an earlier Soviet figure of 4 million; the lower figure is now accepted by mainstream historians on the basis of the German records that were preserved. The total figure for the Holocaust as a whole, around six million Jews, is the sum of these individual figures plus the killings outside the camp system.

See also

Sources

  • Geoffrey Megargee (ed), Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, USHMM and Indiana University Press, multiple volumes
  • USHMM Camp Encyclopedia online
  • Yad Vashem Camps Database