For over a decade this work has taken me into the archives, onto the grounds of the camps themselves, and through the survivor testimony and documentary record of the Nazi persecution system. Understanding how the camps operated, who was held where, what records survive, and how to cross-reference fragmented documentation across national and institutional archives is the foundation for every case I investigate. Whether you are tracing a prisoner, a survivor, a liberator, or a victim of war crimes, a paper trail and context exists.
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A camp in northern Germany where tens of thousands died of disease and starvation, Anne Frank among them.

One of the largest camps on German soil, near Weimar, with hundreds of subcamps.

The first Nazi concentration camp, opened in 1933 near Munich, and the model and training ground for the entire system.

A camp in northeastern Bavaria built around granite quarries and, later, aircraft production.

A camp in Lower Silesia centered on a granite quarry, grown into a large industrial-labor network.

The main SS concentration camp in the occupied Baltic, near Riga, where the surviving Jews of Latvia were concentrated.

The central camp of a vast network in Austria, classified by the SS for its harshest labor regime.

The only concentration camp on French soil, in the Vosges mountains of Alsace.

The largest camp in northwest Germany, near Hamburg, with a wide network of subcamps.

The largest concentration camp built for women, north of Berlin, with a men's compound added later.

A model camp north of Berlin and the administrative center of the entire concentration camp system.

The largest civilian camp in Nazi-occupied Latvia, near Riga, officially a police prison and labor camp.

The first camp established outside Germany's 1937 borders, east of Danzig (Gdańsk).

A walled garrison town in Bohemia used as a ghetto, a transit point, and a propaganda showpiece.

The largest camp of the Nazi system, in occupied Poland, and the deadliest killing center of the Holocaust.

The first of the Operation Reinhard killing centers in occupied Poland.

The first Nazi camp to carry out mass murder by gas, in occupied Poland.

A camp on the edge of Lublin that served both as a concentration camp and a killing site.

A killing center in eastern occupied Poland, site of a prisoner revolt and mass escape in 1943.

A killing center northeast of Warsaw, second only to Auschwitz in the number of people murdered.
Researched and written by Erin Faith Allen · Fortitude Research