Transit camps were compounds in which prisoners of the Nazis were assembled and detained while awaiting transfer to ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps.  Among the largest and most infamous of these transit camps were Bergen-Belsen in Germany, Malines in Belgium, Drancy in France, and Westerbork in the Netherlands.

In transit camps, prisoners were often permitted to wear their own clothes and were sometimes granted limited correspondence with the outside world.  Living conditions in these camps were usually better than in concentration camps and death camps, but food shortages, lack of medicine, overcrowding, epidemics, and brutality by guards were common.