The concentration camps themselves were a show of power certainly, and a particularly important deterrent for political dissidents, or in fact political activity of any kind, or of any violent or non violent resistance to the Nazis. These concentration camps were built first for political dissidents, especially German Communists, who had been gaining traction parallel to the rise of the Nazis in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. They were also seen as part of purification of Germany, as a place to throw political prisoners, gay men, people the Nazis labeled ‘asocials’, and of course Jews. Later, especially after Germany invaded the Soviet Union these camps became a vital part of the German economy, along with ghetto labor and specially built labor camps. The forced laborers were primarily political prisoners, Soviet POWs, Jews (mostly young men), Poles and other Slavic peoples, and others arrested for various reasons. These forced laborers inside and outside of concentration camps became the backbone of the German war effort supported by what was likely the equivalent of billions of dollars stolen from those murdered, and especially from Jews. It’s important to remember that these camps, and the murder of European Jews were not incidental to the Nazis. The murder of Jews was central to Nazi worldview. To most of the upper echelons and many of the regular people the war could not be won while the Jews still lived. Most Jews who were killed, were killed by mass shootings or in death camps. Death camps other than Auschwitz were relatively small and did not house many prisoners, a few hundred at the upper end. At these camps (Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek) Jewish prisoners were killed by gas within a few hours of arrival. Two million people died in just three of these camps. This happened very fast. During one period of 100 days in 1942 1.5 million Jews were killed by gas and by mass shootings, this accounted for a quarter of all Jews who would be killed. About 2 million more people were killed in mass shootings, mostly close to where they had lived. 1.1 million people, mostly Jews were murdered in Auschwitz alone. The Operation Reinhard camps, the Einsatzgruppen, and Auschwitz account for over two thirds of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Majdanek and Auschwitz functioned both as labor/concentration camps and as death camps, however in both cases Jews were much more likely to be killed immediately than to be kept alive for forced labor. Auschwitz was a huge complex, but it was also profitable. In fact the entire operation of killing was enormously profitable. Many people wonder how the Germans paid to have so many trains used for “non military purposes”. The answer is simple, the Jews themselves were forced to pay for tickets on the death trains, or had their property stolen to pay for their own slaughter. The entire accumulated property of 6 million people is a lot of money. The concentration camps in Germany which we often think about were for most of their operational periods not primarily meant to house Jews, though many tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned and died in these places. Also though they were places of mass death they were not technically death camps because they killed through labor and living conditions rather than outright immediately on arrival. The reason for this misconception is that most of the prisoners liberated from such camps by the British and the Americans were Jewish. During 1945 and the last months of 1944 Jewish prisoners from labor camps in the East and from Majdanek and Auschwitz were moved on death marches to the concentration camps within Germany to keep them from being liberated by the advancing Red Army. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945, while most of the concentration camps were liberated in April of that year. When the Americans confronted the Holocaust it was in these concentration camps, not in places like Auschwitz or Babi Yar where most of the victims of the Holocaust actually died.