Extermination camp

Unlike concentration camps, where prisoners were registered and forced to work, extermination camps existed almost solely to kill; only small squads of prisoners were kept alive to run them. The first began operating in December 1941 at Chełmno, where victims were killed with exhaust fumes in gas vans. In 1942 the Operation Reinhard camps – Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka – came into operation, as did the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was also a concentration camp. Majdanek had a similar dual role.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, about 2.7 million Jews were murdered at Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Auschwitz – almost half of all victims of the Holocaust. The camps were built and run by Germans in occupied Poland; calling them 'Polish camps' is wrong.