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Essay / Concentration Camps Essay - 558
In 1933, the first concentration camps were formed almost immediately after Hitler became Chancellor and control of the police was given to the Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick and the acting Prussian Minister of the Interior Hermann Goring. Used to torture captured enemies, these "camps" held approximately 45,000 people until 1933, when they were largely due to the burning of the Reichstag that same year. There were only about 3,000 prisoners left in the camps when Heinrich Himmler took full control of the police and began using the camps to torture "racially undesirable elements" such as prisoners, Jews, homosexuals and others. many other ethnic groups. During World War II, the number of camps exploded to over 300 as many "undesirable elements" were incarcerated en masse, usually without legal process. At the start of World War II in 1939, concentration camps became a place where millions of people were enslaved, tortured, stabbed, and worked to death, all in the effort of war. During the war, Nazi camps for "undesirable people" spread across the country as...