“Vehicles of Genocide: Labor, Concentration, and Death Camps”
Lecture outline:
I) Precursor to Nazi Camps
II) Origins of Nazi Concentration Camps
A) Dachau: the model concentration camp
B) Administration of the camp system
1) Schutzstaffel – protection squadron – the SS
2) Heinrich Himmler
3) Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps
4) Theodor Eicke
C) Further growth of the camp system
1) Concentration camps:
(a) Dachau (1933)
(b) Sachsenhausen (1936)
(c) Buchenwald (1937)
(d) Flossenbürg (1938)
(e) Mauthausen (1938)
(f) Ravensbrück (1939)
III) The Labor Camps
A) SS enterprises
B) Changes during the war
1) SS Economic Administration Main Office
2) Oswald Pohl
3) Soviet POWs
IV) The Death Camps
A) Changing nature of the camps
B) Einsatzgruppen
1) Final Solution of the Jewish Question
C) Note on the term death camp
D) Chelmno – the first death camp (1941)
E) Other death camps
1) Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka (1942)
2) Majdanek (1943)
F) Means of execution – gas chambers
1) Zyklon B
V) The End of the War and the End of the Camps
A) Destruction
B) Liberation
VI) The aftermath of the camp system
A) Cost in human lives
B) What Germans knew about camps
C) Remembering the camps
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Websites for selected concentration camp memorials:
 Notes:
o Not every camp has a memorial. Memorials to sub-camps are generally part of
the memorial to the main camp.
o This list only contains websites for major camps where there is English text.
 Auschwitz-Birkenau:
http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/new/index.php?language=EN&tryb=start&id=675&menu=g
 Bergen-Belsen: http://www.bergenbelsen.de/en/
 Buchenwald: http://www.buchenwald.de/index_en.html
 Dachau: http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/english.html
 Majdanek: http://www.majdanek.pl/?lng=1
 Mauthausen: http://www.mauthausen-memorial.at/
 Mittelbau-Dora: http://www.dora.de/media_en/index.html
 Ravensbruck: http://www.ravensbrueck.de/mgr/english/memorial/index.htm
 Sachenhausen: http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm
 Theresienstadt: http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/showdoc.do?docid=164
Selected Holocaust education resources:
 Literature:
o Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the
Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
o ——. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,
September 1939-March 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
o Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1: The Years of Persecution,
1933-1939. New York: Harper Perennial, 1997.
o ——. Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 2: The Years of Extermination. New
York: Harper Perennial, 2007.
o Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the
Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1986.
o Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1990.
o Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2003.
o Krausnick, Helmet, et al. Anatomy of the SS State. Translated by Richard Barry.
New York: Walker and Company, 1968.
 Websites:
o Notable resources:
 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org/
 Yad Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org/
 Simon Wiesenthal Center:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242023
o Within Florida:
 Florida Holocaust Museum (in St. Petersburg):
http://www.flhm2.org/?CFID=14584911&CFTOKEN=53316773
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
Holocaust Documentation and Education Center (in Hollywood):
http://www.hdec.org/
 Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida (in Naples):
http://www.hmswfl.org/
 Holocaust Memorial (in Miami Beach): http://www.holocaustmmb.org/
 Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida (in
Maitland): http://www.holocaustedu.org/
 Florida Atlantic University Center for Holocaust and Human Rights
Education: http://www.coe.fau.edu/main/holocaust/default.htm
 Jewish Museum of Florida (in Miami): http://www.jewishmuseum.com/
 Tampa Bay Holocaust Memorial Museum and Education Center:
http://www2.sptimes.com/Holocaust_museum/default.html
o Other states:
 University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute:
http://college.usc.edu/vhi/
 University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies:
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/
 Virginia Holocaust Museum: http://www.va-holocaust.com/
 Holocaust Memorial Center (in Michigan): http://holocaustcenter.org/
 Holocaust Museum Houston: http://www.hmh.org/
 El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center:
http://home.elp.rr.com/ephmsc/Info.html
o Other websites:
 The Nizkor Project: http://www.nizkor.org/
 Modern History Sourcebook:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook44.html
 Literature of the Holocaust:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/holhome.html
 Holocaust Survivors: http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/
 Holocaust History Project: http://www.holocaust-history.org/
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