The Prelude to the Terror. Early Concentration Camps under National Socialism

Auftakt des Terrors is an exhibition of the Working Group Memorials at Sites of Early Concentration Camps, which will be shown at the Topography of Terror from March 01, 2023 to March 28, 2023.

90 years ago, the National Socialists took power in Germany at the end of January 1933. Concentration camps played a central role in enforcing and securing National Socialist rule. Today, many people know the names of the large concentration or extermination camps such as Buchenwald or Auschwitz, but few have heard of the so-called early concentration camps such as Ahrensbök or Breitenau. The early concentration camps were established in the first months of the Nazi dictatorship and some were closed again after only a few weeks or months. The National Socialist regime tested instruments of violence there. This did not mark the path to mass murder by the millions, but it did pave the way. The early concentration camps marked the beginning of the terror.

The exhibition informs about the role and function of these camps, gives an outlook on the further development of the concentration camp system, and finally sheds light on the history of the memory of the early camps. The exhibition, which was created in a cooperative project of the member institutions of the Memorials at Sites of Early Concentration Camps working group, will be presented nationwide in several copies, in part simultaneously, starting at the end of February 2023.