Concentration and Death Camps Chart

Starved prisoners, nearly dead from hunger, pose in concentration camp May 7, 1945 in Ebensee, Austria. (Courtesy of the National Archives/Newsmakers)

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Updated on March 23, 2020

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis ran about 20 concentration camps (with multiple sub-camps) within Germany and Poland, constructed to remove political dissidents and anyone they considered "Untermenschen" (German for "subhuman") from the larger society. Some were temporary holding camps (detention or assembly), and a few of these camps also served as death or extermination camps, with facilities—gas chambers and ovens—specifically built to kill large numbers of people quickly and hide the evidence.

What Was the First Camp?

The first of these camps was Dachau, built in 1933, just months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. It was strictly a concentration camp at first, but in 1942, the Nazis built extermination facilities there.

Auschwitz, on the other hand, was not built until 1940, but it soon became the largest of all the camps and was both a concentration and a death camp right from its construction. Majdanek was also large and it too was both a concentration and death camp.

As part of Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhardt), three more death camps were created in 1942—Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The purpose of these camps was to kill all the Jews remaining in the area known as the "Generalgouvernement" (part of occupied Poland).

When Did the Camps Close?

Some of these camps were liquidated by the Nazis starting in 1944. Others continued to operate until either Russian or American troops liberated them.

A Chart of Concentration and Death Camps

Camp	Function	Location	Opened	Evacuated	Liberated	Est. No. Murdered
Auschwitz	Concentration/ Extermination	Oswiecim, Poland (near Krakow)	May 26, 1940	Jan. 18, 1945	Jan. 27, 1945 by Soviets	1,100,000
Belzec	Extermination	Belzec, Poland	March 17, 1942		Liquidated by Nazis December 1942	600,000
Bergen-Belsen	Detention; Concentration (After 3/44)	near Hanover, Germany	April 1943		April 15, 1945 by British	35,000
Buchenwald	Concentration	Buchenwald, Germany (near Weimar)	July 16, 1937	April 6, 1945	April 11, 1945 Self-Liberated; April 11, 1945 by Americans
Chelmno	Extermination	Chelmno, Poland	Dec. 7, 1941; June 23, 1944		Closed March 1943 (but reopened); Liquidated by Nazis July 1944	320,000
Dachau	Concentration	Dachau, Germany (near Munich)	March 22, 1933	April 26, 1945	April 29, 1945 by Americans	32,000
Dora/Mittelbau	Sub-camp of Buchenwald; Concentration (After 10/44)	near Nordhausen, Germany	Aug. 27, 1943	April 1, 1945	April 9, 1945 by Americans
Drancy	Assembly/ Detention	Drancy, France (suburb of Paris)	August 1941		Aug. 17, 1944 by Allied Forces
Flossenbürg	Concentration	Flossenbürg, Germany (near Nuremberg)	May 3, 1938	April 20, 1945	April 23, 1945 by Americans
Gross-Rosen	Sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; Concentration (After 5/41)	near Wroclaw, Poland	August 1940	Feb. 13, 1945	May 8, 1945 by Soviets	40,000
Janowska	Concentration/ Extermination	L'viv, Ukraine	Sept. 1941		Liquidated by Nazis November 1943
Kaiserwald/ Riga	Concentration (After 3/43)	Meza-Park, Latvia (near Riga)	1942	July 1944
Koldichevo	Concentration	Baranovichi, Belarus	Summer 1942			22,000
Majdanek	Concentration/ Extermination	Lublin, Poland	Feb. 16, 1943	July 1944	July 22, 1944 by Soviets	360,000
Mauthausen	Concentration	Mauthausen, Austria (near Linz)	Aug. 8, 1938		May 5, 1945 by Americans	120,000
Natzweiler/ Struthof	Concentration	Natzweiler, France (near Strasbourg)	May 1, 1941	Sept. 1944		12,000
Neuengamme	Sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; Concentration (After 6/40)	Hamburg, Germany	Dec. 13, 1938	April 29, 1945	May 1945 by British	56,000
Plaszow	Concentration (After 1/44)	Krakow, Poland	Oct. 1942	Summer 1944	Jan. 15, 1945 by Soviets	8,000
Ravensbrück	Concentration	near Berlin, Germany	May 15, 1939	April 23, 1945	April 30, 1945 by Soviets
Sachsenhausen	Concentration	Berlin, Germany	July 1936	March 1945	April 27, 1945 by Soviets
Sered	Concentration	Sered, Slovakia (near Bratislava)	1941/42		April 1, 1945 by Soviets
Sobibor	Extermination	Sobibor, Poland (near Lublin)	March 1942	Revolt on October 14, 1943; Liquidated by Nazis October 1943	Summer 1944 by Soviets	250,000
Stutthof	Concentration (After 1/42)	near Danzig, Poland	Sept. 2, 1939	Jan. 25, 1945	May 9, 1945 by Soviets	65,000
Theresienstadt	Concentration	Terezin, Czech Republic (near Prague)	Nov. 24, 1941	Handed over to Red Cross May 3, 1945	May 8, 1945 by Soviets	33,000
Treblinka	Extermination	Treblinka, Poland (near Warsaw)	July 23, 1942	Revolt on April 2, 1943; Liquidated by Nazis April 1943
Vaivara	Concentration/ Transit	Estonia	Sept. 1943		Closed June 28, 1944
Westerbork	Transit	Westerbork, Netherlands	Oct. 1939		April 12, 1945 camp handed over to Kurt Schlesinger

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Rosenberg, Jennifer. "Concentration and Death Camps Chart." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/concentration-and-death-camps-chart-4081348. Rosenberg, Jennifer. (2023, April 5). Concentration and Death Camps Chart. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/concentration-and-death-camps-chart-4081348 Rosenberg, Jennifer. "Concentration and Death Camps Chart." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/concentration-and-death-camps-chart-4081348 (accessed May 30, 2023).