Jews In World War 2
By Keith D. Dickson
As early as 1933, the Nazis had been sending people to concentration camps. Initially, these
camps were located in Germany (like Dachau and Bergen-Belsen) and were used for
“undesirable” people: To the Nazis, these undesirable people included Communists,
Democrats, Socialists, political prisoners, homosexuals, and Jews. During the war, these
camps also held Soviet prisoners of war and slave laborers. Executions were commonplace,
and most inmates of the camps were simply worked to death. It wasn’t until later, however,
that the camps came to be associated with Jews. The death camps, on the other hand, were
intended only for the Jews from the beginning; these were the camps the Nazis created in
order to exterminate them.
As the Nazi control spread through Europe, the deportation of Jews to concentration camps
and death camps grew: Between 1939 and 1941, Austria, Hungary, and even France (led by
the Vichy government) deported Jews. Although Germany had been removing Jews from
Germany for some time, it wasn’t until 1941 that the Nazis began a massive deportation of
Jews.
The ghettos of Poland were another Nazi creation. To get the Lebensraum he wanted from
