Why were concentration camps known as death camps?

Answer 1

The Birkenau section (Auschwitz II) contained the biggest Nazi killing centre of all. The majority of Jews sent to Auschwitz were gassed or shot as soon as practical after arrival.

See also related question.

Answer 2

A lot of medical experimentation was done at Auschwitz - Dr. Josef Mengele carried out procedures like:

-Seeing how long soldiers could last in the cold by placing inmates in a freezer until they expired

-Shooting inmates to see how wounds could be treated with minimal supplies

-Poisoning inmates to test cyanide alternatives

Just to name a few.

Answer 3

Concentration camps are accurately described as death camps, since people were sent there to be killed, and millions of people were killed in those camps.

Historians make a distinction between "concentration" and "death" camps, in the case of Nazi Germany.

A concentration camp was essentially a combination prison and forced (slave) labor camp, with conditions deteriorating as the war progressed. In the mid-1930s, when the concentration camps were originally established, they were little different from open-air prisons; by 1945, conditions had degraded terribly - beatings (often fatal) were common from sadistic guards, food was poor quality and in short supply, so starvation was a constant danger, and inadequate clothing and shelter lead to death from exposure. Death rates at the Nazi concentration camps far exceeded any normal prison or POW camp, and thus the common misperception that "concentration camps" were intended to kill their inmates. This was not true, as many concentration camps supplied the labor for nearby war-critical factories. The guards were merely indifferent to the survival of their charges; that is, the concentration camps weren't designed for mass slaughter, though certainly large numbers of people perished in them.

The death camps, however, were specifically designed and set up for mass killing. They often had neighbor concentration camps, where prisoners were forced into harsh labor (sometimes at the death camps). However, the death camps themselves were intended strictly for murder. They contained very little in the way of accommodations - there were barracks and mess for the guards, and just enough of both for a tiny workforce of prisoners. People sent to the death camps were brought off the trains, and directly into the killing places, where they were murdered immediately. A tiny fraction were spared, to clean and work at disposing the murdered victims; eventually, even those spared as slave workers were fed to the death machines. Death camps were thus pure instruments of murder - there was no pretension of forced labor or imprisonment.

To compare the two, the well-known concentration camp Dachau had a death rate around 12% (27,000+ killed vs 230,000 total inmates). The most infamous of the death camps, Auschwitz, had a survival rate of less than 0.01% for those sent to the death camp portion - virtually all of those who survived had been assigned to the neighboring Auschwitz I and Monowitz camps, which were the forced labor concentration camp. Auschwitz II (sometimes known as Birkenau) was the death camp. Of more than 2 million people transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz complex, around one-third probably survived, with modern estimates that around 1.1-1.3 million people being killed in the gas chambers, and another several hundred thousand dying of disease/exposure/abuse/starvation in the labor camps.

There are generally 6 recognized Nazi death camps: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Majkanek. All other camps were properly called concentration camps.

Answer 4

it was called a death camp because it was ment to kill the Jews not hold them