I am reading the book, "I Shall Live: Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds" by Henry Orenstein. He writes that as the war started it was public that the Germans were sending people to concentration camps. The quote, "We had the example of Hitler's treatment of the German Jews to warn us of what we could expect: "Crystal Night," when Jewish shops had been smashed, the concentration camps, all had been well publicized." How "public" were the Nazi's about the fact they were sending people to camps? Specifically, I am looking for sources for media from the time that broadcast information about the camps. Also, I understand that the Nazi's were not public about the "final solution", what I am wanting is information about the camps knowledge in general. I have looked through the reddit history and am only able to find information about the media and the killing, not the information on the camps in general.
There are two main types of camps and they are very often confused.
The regular concentration camps, established from 1933 on, were prison camps, originally for political prsoners and Jews only, later for common criminals too as well as homosexuals, Jehova's witnesses and "asocials" (prostitutes and vagrants mainly). Most of the latter categories were still being sent to ordinary prisons right through the end of the war, by the way. It was only political prisoners that were always sent to a concentration camp. These camps were as well known and public as ordinary prisons. In fact, public knowledge of their existence was essential to keeping the German population properly cowed and obedient. Why were some Jews lumped in with the political prisoners? Because that's how the nazi ideology saw them: the Jews were the enemies of the German people. Before the start of the war and prior to the establishment of the death camps, some tens of thousands prominent and/or troublesome Jews were therefore sent to a concentration camp. By the way, most were released and encouraged to emigrate. At that time the aim of the nazis was to get rid of the Jews in Germany by driving them out of the country.
The extermination camps (or in the case of Auschwitz and Majdanek, the extermination sections of the camp), established from late 1941 on, were Geheime Reichssache (secret state affairs). They could not be spoken about to anybody not directly involved in the running of them. These camps were six: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka; and the extermination sectors of Auschwitz and Majdanek (which were regular concentration camps as well). This secrecy went to absurd lengths: prisoners in Auschwitz had to pretend that they did not know about the gas chambers and crematoria although they were, you know, right there.
Of people sent to these extermination camps it was said that they were being "evacuated" or "resettled in the East".