The Płaszów camp was established in 1942 under the authority of the SS and police leaders in Krakow (Cracow). Płaszów was initially a forced-labor camp for Jews, but became a concentration camp in 1944. The largest number of people confined there at any one time was more than 20,000. Thousands of people were killed in Płaszów, mostly by shooting.
![Major Nazi camps in Europe, January 1944 [LCID: eur72160]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/db2e26ad-3a0a-4946-9ce2-70e513ed39d5.gif "Major Nazi camps in Europe, January 1944 [LCID: eur72160]")
This map shows some of the Nazi camps that existed in German-occupied Europe in 1943–1944. These include killing centers, concentration camps, labor camps, and transit camps.
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established tens of thousands of camps. The regime imprisoned millions of people in these camps. The Nazis used these sites for many purposes, including the imprisonment of real and perceived enemies and the mass murder of Jewish people. Nazi camps were sites of cruelty, torture, deprivation, unchecked disease, grueling forced labor, and extreme violence.
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![Nazi camps in occupied Poland, 1939-1945 [LCID: pol72110]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/3482f20c-51c9-4b2e-ab6a-39a202c52f6c.gif "Nazi camps in occupied Poland, 1939-1945 [LCID: pol72110]")
![Krakow environs, 1942-1944 [LCID: pla42030]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/8ac0bcfb-494b-47fd-9487-a2bcf0e11349.gif "Krakow environs, 1942-1944 [LCID: pla42030]")
![Plaszow concentration camp, January 1944 [LCID: pla22044]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/2c331789-b9bf-4110-a2d5-6884eb7b97a4.gif "Plaszow concentration camp, January 1944 [LCID: pla22044]")
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