What was the largest concentration camp located in Poland?
1 Answer
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Explanation:
Quite often the phrases concentration camp and extermination camp are taken to mean the same thing but they are not, although there is a partial overlap. Camps such as Treblinka were extermination camps whose sole purpose was to kill as many people as possible, primarily Jews and utilise their bodies and possessions for the German war effort.
However concentration camps especially after World War 2 broke out were partly extermination camps but also partly huge industrial complexes. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, on arrival, the Germans would divide up the people for either immediate execution or to be put to work, either in the death camp or as slave labour in the industrial complex which formed part of the camp. There they were worked to death for German companies such as I G Farben.
Posssibly the worst fate was that suffered by those who became victims of the camp doctors and their sick experiments, the most famous being Josef Mengele.
Goering used the phrase concentration camp as part of his defence at Nuremberg. He argued that what it meant was merely a concentration of political opponents and others and was based on the concentration camps set up by the British during the Boer War to isolate the Boer community thus denying the Boer guerrillas logistical support.
