Plan your Visit to Yad Vashem
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Yad Vashem is open to the general public, free of charge. All visits to Yad Vashem must be reserved in advance.

The World of the Camps

Time there is not like it is here on earth… The inhabitants of this [other] planet had no names, they had no parents nor did they have children… They breathed according to different laws of nature, they did not live – nor did they die – according to the laws of this world. Their name was the number.”

Ka-Tzetnik (Yechiel Dinur)

Jews were made to work on farms, repair roads, clear forests and, especially, toil in industrial and armaments plants. Large concerns and private enterprises unhesitatingly exploited the labor of Jewish prisoners, who were beaten relentlessly by supervisors and were subjected to reduced and pilfered food rations by staff at all levels. Deprived of medicines and exposed to ceaseless brutality, more than half a million Jews died in the labor camps

Labor and Concentration Camps

Labor and Concentration Camps

On March 9, 1933, several weeks after Hitler assumed power, the first organized attacks on German opponents of the regime and on Jews broke out across Germany. Less than two weeks later, Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, was opened. Situated near Munich, Dachau became a place of internment for German Jews, Communists, Socialists, and liberals – anyone whom the Reich considered its enemy....
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Daily Life in the Camps

Daily Life in the Camps

The hierarchic structure of the concentration camps followed the model established in Dachau. The German staff was headed by the Lagerkommandant (camp commander) and a team of subordinates, comprised mostly of junior officers. One of them commanded the prisoners’ camp, usually after being specially trained for this duty. Male and female guards and wardens of various kinds were subordinate to...
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