Background
Originally, when the concentration camps were established in 1933, they were used for forced labour, imprisonment, and for re-education purposes, not for mass murder. But as the National Socialist regime developed, so did camp brutality. By the time of WWII, people were dying from starvation, untreated disease and murder in Germany and Austria, at places such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen-Gusen.
By 1942, the Nazis had decided to undertake the Final Solution. Operation Reinhard would be the first step in the systematic liquidation of the Jews in Europe; beginning with those within the General Government. The purpose of creating Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka was for only one role to efficiently kill thousands of people. These camps differed from the likes of Auschwitz-Birkenau or Majdanek because these also operated as forced-labour camps.
The organizational apparatus behind the extermination program was developed during Aktion T4 when more than 70,000 German handicapped men, women and children were murdered between 1939 and 1941. The SS officers responsible for Aktion T4, such as Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, and Irmfried Eberl, were all given key roles in establishing the death camps.
Read more about this topic: Operation Reinhard
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