THE PROCESS OF CREATING THE NAZI CAMP SYSTEM IN POLAND DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Abstract

This article analyzes the process of creating the German camp system in Poland. The Nazi racial politics towards the Jews promoted their isolation from the so-called "full part of society". For this purpose, two main mechanisms for their separation were created: concentration camps, some of which were transformed into "factories of death", and Jewish ghettos. The establishment of concentration camps in Poland was preceded by a long process of organizational and legal registration first in Germany itself, and later on the territories occupied by it. This process was accompanied by numerous Jewish pogroms and arrests, which was an integral part of the Nazi anti-Semitic policy. Concentration camps were carefully thought out and well-organized institutions with a refined mechanism of prisoners’ maintenance, coercion and punishment. Different by their intended purpose were "death camps" that were not intended to hold prisoners, but to destroy them quickly and in large scale. Most of them were located on the territory of Poland, where the Jews from all over Europe were brought. These included Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Maydanek. It was observed in the article that German concentration camps were created to isolate, repress and destroy the undesirable elements of the regime. Despite the early formation of this system, its dissemination in the territories occupied by the Nazis, particularly in Poland, took place in 1938-1939s. At that time the German concentration camps turned into an instrument of ruthless anti-Semitic policy that became a classic genocide. Due to the fact that the concentration camps capacities did not allow to sufficiently fulfill their tasks, during 1939-1945s in Poland, new, so-called "death camps" were established. They were equipped with gas chambers and crematorium that carried out large-scale destruction of the Jews.