How Many Concentration Camps?

(June 23, 2009)

Most people are familiar with the names of the major concentration camps — Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka — and may think that these were the only places where Jews and other prisoners were held by the Nazis. Actually, each of the 23 main camps had subcamps, nearly 900 of them. These included camps with euphemistic names, such as “care facilities for foreign children,” where pregnant prisoners were sent for forced abortions. When the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) decided to document all of the camps, the belief was that the list would total approximately 7,000, but researchers have found that the total is far greater, more than 20,000 spread across Europe. The USHMM is publishing an encyclopedia of the camps, with the first volume, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–-1945, Volume 1, focusing on SS-run camps.