What were the differences betweeen holocaust work camps and death camps?

As far as I know they were all put into a "workcamp" durring this is when they were killed... in a variety of ways... such as the "gas chamber" where they would tell a bunch of people they were going to work then lock them in the room and gas them. So basicly workcamps were "deathcamps" the ones that survived were the furtunate ones... accept they may have survived their loved ones... so how fortunate is that. I know a woman who's mother is a surviver of the holocaust but she lost her whole family...

In one, you were worked to death. The other, you arrived and were killed.

The differe´nce was little. In the death camp like Auschwitz people were killed after they arrived. In the working camps people were exploited for a short time until they died of sickness or exhaustion. They had to be useful for slave labour and the extermination should be done by hard labour. This way the convicts were useful for a certain time and at the end they died anyway.

Weren't they one and the same? Over Auschwitz there was a banner that read "Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “work makes (one) free." The camp was subdivided into three parts. Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz-Birkenau (the extermination part) and many sattelite camps that were associated with many German companies and served as work camps. The largest being Auschwitz-Monowitz.

The difference is the purpose. Work camps were used for labor and workers were kept alive to work until they were worn out. Death camps were where those deemed unable to work or otherwise undesirable and dangerous/useless were killed right away.

Death camps predate the Holocaust and may be the inspiration for that era's work camps.

I guess it depends on how you define "death camp". The Germans didn't distinguish the camps in that way. Some of the major camps had rapid extermination facilities (like gas chambers) where many/most new inmates were murdered, so we might classify them as "death camps". Note however, that all the "death camps" had major slave labor operations too. For a really chilling view of how the Nazi's viewed things, read the memoirs of a concentration camp commandant. I believe it is titled in English "The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz" (I read it in German - Kommandant in Auschwitz").

in the death camps they will kill them in gas chambers and torcher them or use them as full time slaves.and in the holocaust they will take them away from there family and if they didnt coroporate them they will get shot in the head or starve to death.