Rather than annex the central area of conquered Poland in 1939, the Nazis established and occupied an administrative district called the General Government. This region became the geographic center of the Holocaust. The General Government contained the cities of Warsaw, Krakow, and Lublin, and 12 million inhabitants including most of Poland's Jews. During the war, the region provided the Third Reich with raw materials and cheap labor, and territory in which to exploit and exterminate the Jews of Europe. In the General Government, the Nazis established over 300 labor camps and concentration camps, as well as five of the six death camps.
After using the General Government to murder the Jews of Europe, the Nazis planned to concentrate the non-Jewish Polish people into the area, and gradually transform them into a slave population that would serve the German “master race.” Toward this end, they executed Polish intellectuals, artists, scientists, and government leaders, closed all high schools and universities, and demolished every museum and national monument in Poland.
