How many Nazi concentration camps were there in Poland?
Economy of Nazi Germany
A network of slave-labour camps – 457 complexes with dozens of subsidiary camps, scattered over a broad area of German-occupied Poland – exploited to the fullest the labor of their prisoners, in many cases working inmates to their death. At the Gross-Rosen concentration camp (to which Polish nationals were brought in from the annexed part of Poland) the number of subcamps was ninety seven (97). Under Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) with thousands of prisoners each, the number of satellite camps was forty-eight (48). Stutthof concentration camp had forty (40) subcamps officially and as many as 105 subcamps in operation, some as far as Elbląg, Bydgoszcz and Toruń, from the main camp. The "Deutsche Reichsbahn" acquired new infrastructure in Poland worth in excess of 8,278,600,000 złoty, including some of the largest locomotive factories in Europe, the H. Cegielski – Poznań renamed DWM, and Fablok in Chrzanów renamed "Oberschlesische Lokomotivwerke Krenau" as well as the locomotive parts factory Babcock-Zieleniewski in Sosnowiec renamed Ferrum AG later tasked with making parts to V-1 i V-2 rockets also. Under the new management, formerly Polish companies began producing German engines BR44, BR50 and BR86 as early as 1940 with the use of slave labor.
Catholic Church and Nazi Germany during World War II
In Nazi ideological terms, Poland was inhabited by a mixture of Slavs and Jews, both of which were classed as "Untermenschen", or subhumans occupying German "Lebensraum", "living space". The Nazis instigated a policy of genocide against Poland's Jewish minority and murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites. Historically, the church was a leading force in Polish nationalism against foreign domination, thus the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their terror campaigns—both for their resistance activity and their cultural importance. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1811 Polish priests died in Nazi concentration camps. Special death squads of SS and police accompanied the invasion and arrested or executed those considered capable of resisting the occupation: including professionals, clergymen and government officials. The following summer, the "A-B Aktion" round up of several thousand Polish intelligentsia by the SS saw many priests shot in the General Government sector. In September 1939 Security Police Chief Heydrich and General Eduard Wagner agreed upon a "cleanup once and for all of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility". Of the brief period of military control from 1 September 1939 to 25 October 1939, Davies wrote: "according to one source, 714 mass executions were carried out, and 6,376 people, mainly Catholics, were shot. Others put the death toll in one town alone at 20,000. It was a taste of things to come."