Auschwitz-Birkenau
This is the gate to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp.
Located in Oswiecim, Poland, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp was established May 26, 1940. It is estimated that a minimum of two to two and a half million people were killed here. This number is a guess by historians but it is more likely that close to four million people were killed.
The Auschwitz complex was divided in three major camps:
There were also several subcamps. There were as many as seven gas chambers that used Zyklon-B poison gas and three cremators. Auschwitz II included a camp for new arrivals and those who would be sent to work elsewhere. Auschwitz II also included a Gypsy camp, a family camp, a camp for holding and sorting plundered goods, and a women's camp. Auschwitz III provided slave labor for a major industrial plant for producing synthetic rubber. The highest number of inmates, including sub-camps was approximately 155,000. Deaths included that of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and soviet POWs. There were also about 330,000 deaths for other causes
In April 1940, Rudolph Hoss, who become the first commandant, identified the Silesian town of Oswiecim as a possible site for a concentration camp. The function of the camp was initially to intimidate Poles and prevent resistance to German rule. It was also seen as a cornerstone of the policy to re-colonize Upper Silesia, which had once been a German region, with 'pure Aryans'. On April 27th, Hitler ordered construction of the camp.
In May 1940, Poles were evicted from the vicinity of the barracks (most of them were executed), and a work crew made up of concentration camp prisoners was sent from Sachsenhausen. 300 Jews from the large Jewish community of Oswiecim were also pressed into service.
The first transport of prisoners (almost all Polish civilians) arrived in June 1940 and the SS administration and staff was established. On March 1st, 1941, the camp population was 10,900. The camp quickly developed a reputation for torture and mass shootings.
Hitler visited Auschwitz in March 1941 and commanded its enlargement to hold 30,000 prisoners. Hitler also ordered the construction of a second camp for 100,000 inmates on the site of the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau), roughly 4 km from the main camp. This massive camp was intended to be filled with captured Russian POWs who would provide the slave labor to build the SS 'utopia' in Upper Silesia. Extensive construction work began in October 1941, under terrible conditions and with massive loss of life. About 10,000 Russian POWs died in the process.
This is the death camp in 1945.
The population of the main camp grew from 18,000 in December 1942 to 30,000 in March 1943. In July or August 1941, Hitler briefed Höss about the 'Final Solution'. On September 3, 1941, Soviet POWs at the Auschwitz main camp were used in trials of the poison gas Zyklon-B. This poison gas was produced by the German company "Degesch". They were gassed in underground cells in. After this trial, a gas chamber was rigged-up just outside the main camp and in February 1942, two temporary gas chambers opened at Birkenau. The crematories were located at Erfurt.
This is the entrance to a gas chamber.
In March 1942, a women's camp was established at Auschwitz with 6,000 inmates. In August 1942, it was moved to Birkenau. By January 1944, 27,000 women were living in Birkenau in separated quarters.
In February 1943, a section for Gypsies was established at Birkenau and in September 1943 an area was reserved for Czech Jews deported from Theresienstadt, the so-called 'Family Camp'. The gas chambers and crematoria opened in March 1943.
In Autumn 1943, the camp administration was reorganized following a corruption scandal. By the end of 1943, the prisoner population of Auschwitz main camp, Birkenau, Monowitz and other sub camps was over 80,000: 18,437 in the main camp, 49,114 in Birkenau, and 13,288 at Monowitz. Up to 50,000 prisoners were scattered around 51 sub camps such as Rajsko, an experimental agricultural station, and Gleiwitz, a coal mine.
The situation in the sub camps was often even worse than in the main camps. In the middle of 1944, Auschwitz was designated a huge SS -run security area. The camp population reached in August 1944 105,168. The last roll-call on January 18th, 1945 showed 64,000 inmates.
During its history, the prison population of Auschwitz changed significantly. At first, its inmates were almost entirely Polish. From April 1940 to March 1942, on about 27,000 inmates, 30 percent were Poles and 57 percent were Jews. From March 1942 to March 1943 of 162,000 inmates, 60 percent were Jews.
Auschwitz became a significant source of slave labor locally and functioned as an international clearing house. Of 2.5 million people who were deported to Auschwitz, 405,000 were given prisoner status and serial numbers. Of these, approximately 50 percent were Jews and 50 percent were Poles and other nationalities. Of those who received numbers, 65,000 survived. It is estimated that about 200,000 people passed through the Auschwitz camps and survived.
Those deported to Auschwitz arrived at the nearby train station and were marched or trucked to the main camp where they were registered, tattooed, undressed, had their body hair shaven off, showered while their clothes were disinfected with Zyklon-B gas, and entered the camp under the infamous gateway inscribed 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ("Labor make you free")
A similar system operated later at Birkenau in 1942-43, except that for the majority the 'showers' proved to be gas chambers. Only about 10 percent of Jewish transports were registered, disinfected, shaven and showered in the 'central sauna' before being assigned barracks. In May of 1944, a spur line was built right into the camp to accelerate and simplify the handling of the tens of thousands of Hungarian and other Jews deported in the spring and summer of 1944.
The history of Auschwitz-Birkenau as an extermination center is complex. From late 1941 to October 1942, the mortuary at Auschwitz main camp, which was already equipped with a crematorium, was adapted as a gas chamber. It measured approximately 835 square feet. In the spring of 1942, two gas chambers at Birkenau were constructed out of peasant huts, known as the 'bunkers'.
The first 'bunker', with two sealed rooms, operated from January 1942 to the end of that year. The second, with four air tight rooms, became redundant in the spring of 1943, but remained standing and was used again in the autumn of 1944 when extra 'capacity' was needed for the murder of Hungarian Jews and the liquidation of the ghettos. The second measured about 1.134 square feet. The victims murdered in the 'bunkers' were first obliged to undress in temporary wooden barracks erected nearby. Their bodies were taken out of the gas chambers and pushed to pits where they were burned in the open. Between January 1942 and March 1943, 175,000 Jews were gassed to death here, of whom 105,000 were killed from January to March 1943.
These were the clothes and shoes that were stripped from the people as they came into the camp.
This is a picture of children at the camp.