Appellplatz is a compound German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 word meaning "roll call

Roll call

Roll call is the calling of the names of people from a list to determine the presence or absence of the listed people . The term applies to the calling itself, to the time moment of this procedure, and to a military signal that announces it Roll call is the calling of the names of people from a...

" (Appell) and "area" or "place" (Platz). In English, the word is generally used to describe the location for the daily roll calls in Nazi concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

 during the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

.

Concentration camp usage

Roll calls were a daily part of the regimen in Nazi concentration camps. The first was at 4:00 in the morning. All prisoners were made to line up in rows and be counted early in the morning and again at night, even those who had died in the interim. The purpose of the roll calls was to count the prisoners, but also to inspect, humiliate and intimidate them. Selektions were also sometimes made during roll calls. There were harsh reprisals for anyone who was late or did not remain perfectly still during the roll call. Reprisals included beatings and death. Prisoners were made to stand at attention for the entire process of counting thousands of prisoners, which sometimes had to be done more than once, if a mistake was made. Prisoners had thin uniforms and were made to stand for roll calls year round, regardless of the weather or temperature. Some people died during the roll call.

See also

• Lagerordnung
  Lagerordnung
  The Lagerordnung was the "Disciplinary and Penal Code", first written for Dachau concentration camp, which became the uniform code at all SS concentration camps in the Third Reich on January 1, 1934. Also known as the Strafkatalog , it detailed the regulations for prisoners...
  
   – the disciplinary and penal code for the concentration camps
• Muselmann – especially weakened concentration camp prisoners