Extermination camp
Nazi death camps established to systematically murder / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extermination camps (also known as death camps) were built by Nazi Germany during World War II. The goal of the death camps was to kill millions of people as quickly as possible. At the death camps, people were murdered mostly by being given poison gas in gas chambers. However, the Nazis also killed many people in other ways at the death camps. They killed some in mass executions (for example, by shooting many people at once). They killed others through "extermination through labor." This was by making prisoners do very hard forced labor without giving them the food, medical care, or other basic things they needed to survive. Many other people died at the death camps from starvation, illness, and freezing to death.[1][2]
The Nazis sent many different kinds of people to the death camps. However, about 90% of the people killed in the death camps were Jewish. Nazi Germany wanted to 'exterminate' the Jewish people (they wanted to kill all of the Jews, so they would not exist any more). This plan was called the Final Solution.[3] It is now called the Holocaust.[1][4]
The fascist Ustaše government in the Independent State of Croatia also set up death camps during World War II. At death camps like Jasenovac, they murdered many Serbs, Jews, and other people. As many as 750,000 Serbs may have been killed at these death camps.[5]