List of Nazi concentration camps

Types and characteristics

Historians classify facilities into several categories: concentration camps for political prisoners and social outsiders; forced labour camps where inmates were exploited in industry and construction; extermination (death) camps organised primarily to murder victims; transit and collection camps; prisoner‑of‑war camps; and numerous subcamps attached to larger complexes. Common practices included selection for work or death, starvation, forced labour, medical abuse, and systematic violence.

Notable examples

• Auschwitz (Auschwitz‑Birkenau) — the largest complex, combining labour and extermination functions.
• Dachau — one of the earliest camps, initially used against political opponents.
• Bergen‑Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Majdanek.
• Extermination camps primarily designed for mass murder: Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec.

Scale and estimates

Estimates of the total number of camps and subcamps vary. A 1967 inventory by the German Ministry of Justice listed roughly 1,200 camps and branch camps, while organisations such as the Jewish Virtual Library note higher estimates that include many temporary or small facilities. The Holocaust resulted in the systematic murder of millions, including approximately six million Jews, alongside Roma and Sinti, political prisoners, disabled people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others.

History, liberation and legacy

Concentration camps evolved from early repression of political opponents into a wider system of racial persecution and economic exploitation as the regime implemented the Final Solution. Allied forces liberated surviving camps in 1944–1945, revealing the scale of atrocities and prompting war crimes trials. Today many former camp sites are preserved as museums and memorials to educate the public, commemorate victims and support historical research and remembrance.