Outside

Concentration camps were instituted almost from the moment the Nazis seized power. Dachau the first was created by Himmler on 20, March 1933, as a place where Communists, Social Democrats and other alleged political enemies were to be "concentrated" and held. These political prisoners had been arrested in considerable numbers following the emergency "protective custody" decree of 28 February, which was implemented immediately after the Reichstag fire.* Dachau, after a brief phase of quixotic brutality by the SS administration became the model for the concentration camp. Now Himmler established the camps as "legally independent administrative units outside the penal code and the ordinary processes of law."
--Robert Jay Lifton, "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing And The Psychology Of Genocide", p. 152