Concentration camps during the Holocaust were spread across much of Nazi‑controlled Europe, with the largest networks in today’s Germany and Poland, but also in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, the Baltic states, and other occupied areas. They formed a vast system of imprisonment, forced labor, and mass murder created by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945.

Main locations

Most Nazi concentration and extermination camps were located in:

  • Germany (for example: Dachau near Munich, Buchenwald near Weimar, Sachsenhausen near Berlin, Ravensbrück north of Berlin, Neuengamme near Hamburg).
  • Occupied Poland (for example: Auschwitz‑Birkenau near Oświęcim, Majdanek near Lublin, Treblinka, Sobibor, Bełżec, Chełmno, Stutthof, Gross‑Rosen).
  • Austria (for example: Mauthausen and its many subcamps).
  • Czech Republic (then Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), especially the Terezín/Theresienstadt camp.
  • France (for example: Natzweiler‑Struthof in Alsace).
  • Netherlands (for example: Westerbork and Vught, used as transit and concentration camps).
  • Baltic region and Eastern Europe , including camps in Latvia and Estonia as part of the wider system of Nazi incarceration and murder.

Types of camps

Nazi authorities built different types of camps, often in the same regions.

  • Concentration and forced‑labor camps : Places like Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, and Mauthausen exploited prisoners for brutal labor under lethal conditions.
  • Extermination (death) camps : Camps such as Auschwitz‑Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Bełżec, Chełmno, and Majdanek in occupied Poland were designed primarily for mass murder, especially of Jews, using gas chambers and other methods.
  • Transit and holding camps : Places like Westerbork in the Netherlands and Theresienstadt in today’s Czech Republic were used to concentrate and deport people onward to killing or labor sites.

Scale of the system

The camp system was far larger than the handful of well‑known names.

  • Historians estimate that the Nazi regime created tens of thousands of sites of incarceration, including camps, ghettos, and other facilities between 1933 and 1945.
  • Around major camps like Auschwitz, networks of many subcamps existed near factories, mines, and construction projects, spreading the system across wide regions of Central and Eastern Europe.

Visiting and remembering today

Many former camps are now memorials and museums to educate and commemorate the victims.

  • Sites such as Auschwitz‑Birkenau, Dachau, Buchenwald, Majdanek, and others are preserved or marked with monuments and exhibitions.
  • They serve as historical evidence of the crimes committed and as places of remembrance and warning against antisemitism, racism, and totalitarian violence.

Information gathered from public sources and historical documentation available on the internet and portrayed here.