German Prison Camps
During the Holocaust, Nazis placed concentration camps all throughout Europe. Concentration camps were to be used to hold political prisoners, but by the time World War II had started the concentration camps had grown and changed to also include Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other people who were not considered "pure" by the Nazis. Most of these people were not political prisoners that were being used for labor. Rather, they were in these concentration camps, dying due to the fact that they were under horrible living conditions and were actually being worked to death. By the time 1941 had come around the Nazis had begun building Chelmno, which was the first extermination camp that was being used to exterminate Jews and Gypsies. A year later, three other death camps known as Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec were also built. At the same time killing centers were being implemented into the camps Auschwitz and Majdanek.