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Notes -
There were zero extermination camps. There were concentration and labor camps and transit camps.
ALL of the alleged "Extermination Camps" were located in areas conquered by the Soviet Union.
In 1945 Allied propaganda claimed that all the concentration camps, particularly those in Germany itself were "death camps". The camps that initially figured most prominently were those in Germany such as Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen... I'm sure most of us were shown horrific footage as children of the liberation of these camps, and it would have been those camps which had been liberated by the Western Allies.
But observers among the British and American occupation forces in Germany, while admitting that many inmates had died of disease and starvation in the last months of the war, had found no evidence at all of "gas chambers". So the eastern camps in the Russian zone of occupation like Auschwitz and Treblinka became the most prominent "Extermination camps" although Western observers were denied access to investigate those camps. All of the footage you would have been shown as a child are now acknowledged to have been concentration camps and not extermination camps.
Essentially, the "gas chamber" claim was alleged at the Western Camps but then disproven in every single camp the Western Allies investigated. Only in the camps where the Western Allies were denied access to investigate are those camps still alleged to have been "extermination camps."
Jews were concentrated into camps for the same reasons the Japanese were concentrated into camps in the United States.
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