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Laurence Rees | 400 pages | 01 Sep 2005 | Ebury Publishing | 9780563522966 | English | London, United Kingdom News / Museum / Auschwitz-Birkenau

After a brief delay, the SS transported around 3, Blechhammer prisoners from Gross-Rosen to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. On January 27, , the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberated more than six thousand prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying. Berenbaum, Michael, and Yisrael Gutman, editors. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Auschwitz from A to Z. An Illustrated History of the Camp. Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dlugoborski, Waclaw et al. Auschwitz, — Central Issues in the History of the Camp. Langbein, Hermann. People in Auschwitz. Levi, Primo. New York: Collier Books, Swiebocka, Teresa, editor. Auschwitz: A History in Photographs. We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors. You are searching in English. How did postwar trials shape approaches to international justice? Sobibor Uprising. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Auschwitz The largest of its kind, the Auschwitz camp complex was essential to carrying out the Nazi plan for the "Final Solution. Key Facts. More information about this image. Number of Victims It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1. Auschwitz I Auschwitz I, the main camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Like most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed for three purposes: To incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time To provide a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned construction-related enterprises and, later, armaments and other war-related production To serve as a site to kill small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of . Deportations to Auschwitz Trains arrived at Auschwitz frequently with transports of from virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied to Germany. The approximate breakdown of deportations from individual countries: Hungary: , Poland: , France: 69, Netherlands: 60, Greece: 55, Bohemia and Moravia: 46, Slovakia: 27, Belgium: 25, Yugoslavia: 10, Italy: 7, Norway: Other including concentration camps : 34, With the deportations from Hungary , the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the German plan to murder the Jews of Europe achieved its highest effectiveness. The Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz On October 7, , several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. Evacuation of Auschwitz and its Subcamps In mid-January , as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. The Liberation of Auschwitz On January 27, , the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberated more than six thousand prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying. Glossary Terms. Series: Auschwitz. Series: Auschwitz Subcamps. Series: Killing Centers. Besides the SS, what organizations or professions were involved in the design, construction, and operation of the camp? Were the German and Polish populations aware of Auschwitz, its purposes, and the conditions within? How would you begin to research this question? Rees, Laurence. Kapos were responsible for the prisoners' behavior while they worked, as was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels. Lunch was three quarters of a liter of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables mostly potatoes and rutabaga three times. The evening meal was grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labor were given extra rations. A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until the absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July , roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner, Tadeusz Wiejowski , had escaped; following an escape in , a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's workmates or barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death. Then they had some free time to use the washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew "nighttime quiet" was marked by a gong at nine o'clock. Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep. Sunday was not a work day, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower, [] and were allowed to write in German to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help. No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in the camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers. About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women's camp. Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them. Women were at first held in blocks 1—10 of Auschwitz I, [] but from 6 August , [] 13, inmates were transferred to a new women's camp Frauenkonzentrationslager or FKL in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector Bauabschnitt BIa; it was later extended into BIb, [] and by October it held 32, women. Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October , their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive. There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another. Sterilization experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist, Carl Clauberg , and another German doctor, . German doctors performed a variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy of X-rays as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an effort to glue them shut. Prisoners were infected with spotted fever for vaccination research and exposed to toxic substances to study the effects. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price. In April , the children were killed by hanging to conceal the project. A Jewish skeleton collection was obtained from among a pool of Jewish inmates, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. The collection was sanctioned by and under the direction of August Hirt. Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler- Struthof and killed in August Prisoners could be beaten and killed by guards and kapos for the slightest infraction of the rules. Flogging during roll- call was common. A flogging table called "the goat" immobilized prisoners' feet in a box, while they stretched themselves across the table. Prisoners had to count out the lashes—"25 mit besten Dank habe ich erhalten" "25 received with many thanks" — and if they got the figure wrong, the flogging resumed from the beginning. If their shoulders were too damaged afterwards to work, they might be sent to the . Prisoners were subjected to the post for helping a prisoner who had been beaten, and for picking up a cigarette butt. Known as block 13 until , block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, reserved for inmates suspected of resistance activities. Split into four sections, each section measured less than 1. The courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, known as the "death wall", served as an execution area, including for Poles in the area who had been sentenced to death by a criminal court. The accused were led to the wall one at a time, stripped naked and with their hands tied behind their backs. Danuta Czech noted that a "clandestine Catholic mass " was said the following Sunday on the second floor of Block 4 in Auschwitz I, in a narrow space between bunks. An estimated 4, Polish political prisoners were executed at the death wall, including members of the camp resistance. An additional 10, Poles were brought to the camp to be executed without being registered. About 1, Soviet prisoners of war died by execution, although this is a rough estimate. A Polish government-in-exile report stated that 11, prisoners and 6, prisoners of war had been executed. And yet, at that last moment, many of them shouted 'Long live Poland', or 'Long live freedom'. For unknown reasons, they were not subject to selection and families were allowed to stay together. The first transport of German Roma arrived on 26 February that year. There had been a small number of Romani inmates before that; two Czech Romani prisoners, Ignatz and Frank Denhel, tried to escape in December , the latter successfully, and a Polish Romani woman, Stefania Ciuron, arrived on 12 February and escaped in April. Shortly after this, the SS removed nearly 2, from the family camp to work, and on 2 August gassed the other 2, Ten thousand remain unaccounted for. The SS deported around 18, Jews to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezin , Czechoslovakia , [] beginning on 8 September with a transport of 2, male and 2, female prisoners. An infirmary was set up in barracks 30 and 32, and barracks 31 became a school and kindergarten. On 8 March , 3, of the prisoners men, women and children were sent to the gas chambers; the men were taken to crematorium III and the women later to crematorium II. Several twins were held back for medical experiments. The first gassings at Auschwitz took place in early September , when around inmates—Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish inmates—were killed with in the basement of block 11 in Auschwitz I. The building proved unsuitable, so gassings were conducted instead in crematorium I, also in Auschwitz I, which operated until December There, more than victims could be killed at once. After its decommissioning as a gas chamber, the building was converted to a storage facility and later served as an SS air raid shelter. Dwork and van Pelt write that a chimney was recreated; four openings in the roof were installed to show where the Zyklon B had entered; and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt with the original components. In early , mass exterminations were moved to two provisional gas chambers the "red house" and "white house", known as bunkers 1 and 2 in Auschwitz II, while the larger crematoria II, III, IV, and V were under construction. Bunker 2 was temporarily reactivated from May to November , when large numbers of Hungarian Jews were gassed. From Jews were being transported to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. On 29 April the first 1, Jews from Hungary arrived at the camp. Crematoria II and III were given new elevators leading from the stoves to the gas chambers, new grates were fitted, and several of the dressing rooms and gas chambers were painted. Cremation pits were dug behind crematorium V. According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper , of the 1,, Jews deported to Auschwitz, around , were registered in the camp and given serial numbers; 25, were sent to other camps; and , were killed soon after arrival. During "selection" on arrival, those deemed able to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp registered , and the rest were sent to the left to be gassed. The group selected to die included almost all children, women with small children, the elderly, and others who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fit for work. The crematoria consisted of a dressing room, gas chamber, and furnace room. The dressing room had numbered hooks on the wall to hang clothes. In crematorium II, there was also a dissection room Sezierraum. The victims undressed in the dressing room and walked into the gas chamber; signs said "Bade" bath or "Desinfektionsraum" disinfection room. A former prisoner testified that the language of the signs changed depending on who was being killed. It was found in , signed "A. A": []. It would be difficult to even imagine that so many people would fit in such a small [room]. They would have suffocated from the lack of air within several hours. Then all the doors were sealed tight and the gas thrown in by way of a small hole in the ceiling. There was nothing more that the people inside could do. And so they only screamed in bitter, lamentable voices. Others complained in voices full of despair, and others still sobbed spasmodically and sent up a dire, heart-rending weeping. And in the meantime, their voices grew weaker and weaker Because of the great crowding, people fell one atop another as they died, until a heap arose consisting of five or six layers atop the other, reaching a height of one meter. Mothers froze in a seated position on the ground embracing their children in their arms, and husbands and wives died hugging each other. Some of the people made up a formless mass. Others stood in a leaning position, while the upper parts, from the stomach up, were in a lying position. Some of the people had turned completely blue under the influence of the gas, while others looks entirely fresh, as if they were asleep. Sonderkommando wearing gas masks dragged the bodies from the chamber. Just before cremation, jewelry was removed, along with dental work and teeth containing precious metals. The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and the ashes were buried, thrown in the Vistula river, or used as fertilizer. Any bits of bone that had not burned properly were ground down in wooden mortars. At least 1. The Germans tried to conceal how many they had killed. In addition the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of corpses burned. Earlier estimates of the death toll were higher than Piper's. Following the camp's liberation, the Soviet government issued a statement, on 8 May , that four million people had been killed on the site, a figure based on the capacity of the crematoria. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities," he wrote. Around one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died in Auschwitz. Camp of Death pamphlet by Natalia Zarembina []. The resistance sent out the first oral message about Auschwitz with Dr. Aleksander Wielkopolski, a Polish engineer who was released in October The report said of the Jews in the camp that "scarcely any of them came out alive". According to Fleming, the booklet was "widely circulated amongst British officials". The Polish Fortnightly Review based a story on it, writing that "three crematorium furnaces were insufficient to cope with the bodies being cremated", as did The Scotsman on 8 January , the only British news organization to do so. On 24 December , the resistance groups representing the various prisoner factions met in block 45 and agreed to cooperate. Fleming writes that it has not been possible to track Pilecki's early intelligence from the camp. Pilecki compiled two reports after he escaped in April ; the second, Raport W , detailed his life in Auschwitz I and estimated that 1. Reporting that inmates were being killed "through excessive work, torture and medical means", it noted the gassing of the Soviet prisoners of war and Polish inmates in Auschwitz I in September , the first gassing in the camp. It said: "It is estimated that the Oswiecim camp can accommodate fifteen thousand prisoners, but as they die on a mass scale there is always room for new arrivals. The Polish government-in-exile in London first reported the gassing of prisoners in Auschwitz on 21 July , [] and reported the gassing of Soviet POWs and Jews on 4 September According to Fleming, the British press responded, in and the first half of , either by not publishing reports about Auschwitz or by burying them on the inside pages. The British reticence stemmed from a Foreign Office concern that the public might pressure the government to respond or provide refuge for the Jews, and that British actions on behalf of the Jews might affect its relationships in the Middle East. There was similar reticence in the United States, and indeed within the Polish government-in-exile and the Polish resistance. According to Fleming, the scholarship suggests that the Polish resistance distributed information about the Holocaust in Auschwitz without challenging the Allies' reluctance to highlight it. After breaking into a warehouse, three of them dressed as SS officers and stole rifles and an SS staff car, which they drove out of the camp with the fourth handcuffed as a prisoner. Both survived the war. Jerzy Tabeau no. The distribution of the Vrba-Wetzler report , and publication of parts of it in June , helped to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. On 27 May , Arnost Rosin no. The prisoners implore the Polish Government to have the camp bombed. The destruction of the electrified barbed wire, the ensuing panic and darkness prevailing, the chances of escape would be great. The local population will hide them and help them to leave the neighbourhood. The prisoners are confidently awaiting the day when Polish planes from Great Britain will enable their escape. This is the prisoners unanimous demand to the Polish Government in London. Pierse replied that it was not technically feasible to bomb the camp without harming the prisoners. The Sonderkommando who worked in the crematoria were witnesses to the mass murder and were therefore regularly killed themselves. After escaping through a fence using wirecutters, they managed to reach Rajsko , where they hid in the granary of an Auschwitz satellite camp, but the SS pursued and killed them by setting the granary on fire. By the time the rebellion at crematorium IV had been suppressed, members of the Sonderkommando were still alive and had been killed. The Sonderkommando and other prisoners began the job of dismantling the buildings and cleaning up the site. According to Polish historian Andrzej Strzelecki, the evacuation of the camp was one of its "most tragic chapters". Between 1 December and 15 January , over one million items of clothing were packed to be shipped out of Auschwitz; 95, such parcels were sent to concentration camps in Germany. Beginning on 17 January, some 58, Auschwitz detainees about two-thirds Jews —over 20, from Auschwitz I and II and over 30, from the subcamps—were evacuated under guard, at first heading west on foot, then by open-topped freight trains, to concentration camps in Germany and Austria: Bergen-Belsen , Buchenwald , Dachau , Flossenburg , Gross-Rosen , Mauthausen , Dora-Mittelbau , Ravensbruck , and Sachsenhausen. Crematorium IV had been partly demolished after the Sonderkommando revolt in October, and the rest of it was destroyed later. On 26 January, one day ahead of the 's arrival, crematorium V was blown up. They found 7, prisoners alive in the three main camps, in the other subcamps, and over corpses. They threw "strangely embarrassed glances at the sprawling bodies, at the battered huts and at us few still alive They did not greet us, nor did they smile; they seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint, which sealed their lips and bound their eyes to the funereal scene. It was that shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defence. Georgii Elisavetskii, a Soviet soldier who entered one of the barracks, said in that he could hear other soldiers telling the inmates: "You are free, comrades! Then he used some Yiddish : "They think that I am provoking them. They begin to hide. We have come to liberate you' Finally, as if the barrier collapsed The Soviet military medical service and Polish Red Cross PCK set up field hospitals that looked after 4, prisoners suffering from the effects of starvation mostly diarrhea and tuberculosis. Water was obtained from snow and from fire-fighting wells. Before more help arrived, 2, patients there were looked after by a few doctors and 12 PCK nurses. All the patients were later moved to the brick buildings in Auschwitz I, where several blocks became a hospital, with medical personnel working hour shifts. The liberation of Auschwitz received little press attention at the time; the Red Army was focusing on its advance toward Germany and liberating the camp had not been one of its key aims. Boris Polevoi reported on the liberation in Pravda on 2 February but made no mention of Jews; [] inmates were described collectively as "victims of Fascism". Only Auschwitz staff, up to 15 percent, ever stood trial; [6] most of the cases were pursued in Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany. He writes that this may have been because there were only women overseers, and therefore they were more visible and memorable to the inmates. He was imprisoned in Heide , then transferred to Minden for interrogation, part of the British occupation zone. The trials ended on 22 December , with 23 death sentences, seven life sentences, and nine prison sentences ranging from three to 15 years. The report became the basis of their book, Anatomy of the SS State , the first comprehensive study of the camp and the SS. The court convicted 19 of the defendants, giving six of them life sentences and the others between three and ten years. In the decades since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a primary symbol of the Holocaust. Historian Timothy D. Some of the roads among postwar building development nearby are named commemoratively, [] e. On 2 July , the Polish government passed a law establishing a state memorial to remember "the martyrdom of the Polish nation and other nations in Oswiecim". Dwork and van Pelt write that, in addition, Auschwitz I played a more central role in the persecution of the Polish people, in opposition to the importance of Auschwitz II to the Jews, including Polish Jews. Visitors to the site have increased from , in , to over one million in , [] to two million in Within the It is the most representative part of the Auschwitz complex, which consisted of nearly 50 camps and sub-camps. The Auschwitz Birkenau camp complex comprises brick and wooden structures 57 in Auschwitz and 98 in Birkenau and about ruins. There are also ruins of gas chambers and crematoria in Birkenau, which were dynamited in January The overall length of fencing supported by concrete poles is more than 13 km. Individual structures of high historical significance, such as railway sidings and ramps, food stores and industrial buildings, are dispersed in the immediate setting of the property. These structures, along with traces in the landscape, remain poignant testimonies to this tragic history. The Auschwitz I main camp was a place of extermination, effected mainly by depriving people of elementary living conditions. It was also a centre for immediate extermination. Here too were the main supply stores, workshops and SS companies. Work in these administrative and economic units and companies was the main form of forced labour for the inmates in this camp. Birkenau was the largest camp in the Auschwitz complex. It became primarily a centre for the mass murder of Jews brought there for extermination, and of Roma and Sinti prisoners during its final period. Sick prisoners and those selected for death from the whole Auschwitz complex — and, to a smaller extent, from other camps — were also gathered and systematically killed here. It ultimately became a place for the concentration of prisoners before they were transferred inside the Third Reich to work for German industry. The property is of adequate size to ensure the complete representation of the features and processes that convey its significance. Potential threats to the integrity of the property include the difficulty in preserving the memory of the events and their significance to humanity. The Auschwitz camp complex has survived largely unchanged since its liberation in January The remaining camp buildings, structures and infrastructure are a silent witness to history, bearing testimony of the crime of genocide committed by the German Nazis. They are an inseparable part of a death factory organized with precision and ruthless consistency. The attributes that sustain the Outstanding Universal Value of the property are truthfully and credibly expressed, and fully convey the value of the property. At Auschwitz I, the majority of the complex has remained intact. The architecture of the camp consisted mostly of pre-existing buildings converted by the Nazis to serve new functions. The preserved architecture, spaces and layout still recall the historical functions of the individual elements in their entirety. In Birkenau, which was built anew on the site of a displaced village, only a small number of historic buildings have survived. Due to the method used in constructing those buildings, planned as temporary structures and erected in a hurry using demolition materials, the natural degradation processes have been accelerating. All efforts are nevertheless being taken to preserve them, strengthen their original fabric and protect them from decay. Auschwitz | The Holocaust Encyclopedia

Those deported to the camp complex were gassed, starved, worked to death and even killed in medical experiments. The vast majority were murdered in the complex of gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust - the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe's Jewish population. Auschwitz was at the centre of that genocide. When the Nazis came to power in they began to strip Jewish people of all property, freedoms and rights under the law. After the German invasion and occupation of Poland in , the Nazis started deporting Jewish people from the Third Reich to parts of Poland, where they created ghettos to separate them from the rest of the population. Nazis spoke about their invasion as a race war between Germany and Jewish people, as well as the Slavic population and the Roma. Groups of German soldiers called set out across newly conquered lands in Eastern Europe to massacre civilians. By the end of , they had killed , people, and by they had murdered about two million - 1. Behind the lines, Nazi commanders were experimenting with ways to kill en masse. They feared that shooting people was too stressful for their soldiers, and so came up with more efficient means of murder. Experimental gas vans had been used to kill mentally disabled people in Poland as early as Poisonous fumes were pumped into a sealed compartment to suffocate those inside. By the winter of , the Nazis had constructed gas chambers at Auschwitz. Nazi leaders met in January at the to coordinate the industrial slaughter - what they called a "final solution to the Jewish question" - killing the entire European Jewish population, 11 million people, by extermination and forced labour. Auschwitz was originally a Polish army barracks in southern Poland. Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland in September , and by May turned the site into a jail for political prisoners. This area - with the infamous lie Arbeit Macht Frei written above the entrance in German - meaning work sets you free - became known as Auschwitz I. The first people to be gassed were a group of Polish and Soviet prisoners in September Work began on a new camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the following month. This became the site of the huge gas chambers where hundreds of thousands were murdered until November , and the crematoria was where their bodies were burned. Other private companies like Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert also ran factories nearby, to use the prisoners as slave labour. When Auschwitz was eventually liberated, it had more than 40 camps and subcamps. People from all over Europe were crammed into cattle wagons without windows, toilets, seats or food, and transported to Auschwitz. The latter group were ordered to strip naked and sent to the showers for "delousing" - a euphemism used for the gas chambers. Guards from the so-called "Hygienic Institute" would then drop powerful Zyklon-B gas pellets into the sealed chambers, and wait for people to die. It took about 20 minutes. The thick walls could not hide the screams of those suffocating inside. Then Sonderkommandos - other prisoners, usually Jews forced to work for the guards or be killed - would remove artificial limbs, glasses, hair and teeth before dragging the corpses to the incinerators. Ashes of the bodies were buried or used as fertiliser. Belongings of those gassed and those sent to work were taken for sorting in a part of the camp known as "Canada" - so named because the country was seen as a land of plenty. SS guards sought to hide their crimes as Soviet troops closed in, and tried to destroy their extensive prisoner records - making it hard to fully quantify the number of victims. Lauder and Joel Citron. The virtual tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial includes over high-quality panoramic photographs. The images present the site of the former camp, historical descriptions, witness accounts, archival documents and photographs, artworks and objects related to the history of the camp. Images from www. Their use must not tarnish the good reputation of the victims of KL Auschwitz. Any interference in the integrity of the images — including cropping or graphic processing — is prohibited. Publishers undertake to indicate the authors and origin of the images: www. Museum The post-camp relics are protected by the Museum created in History KL Auschwitz was the largest of the German and extermination centers. Visiting The authentic Memorial consists of two parts of the former camp: Auschwitz and Birkenau. Chancellor of Germany and Prime Minister of Poland at the Memorial for 10th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation The fact that German support for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation celebrating the 10th anniversary of its creation doubled from 60 to million euros was announced at the Auschwitz Memorial by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. Over twenty million PLN for the development of the Visitor Service Centre The significant financial support will help to develop the infrastructure for providing services to visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. Inauguration of the national Auschwitz-Birkenau Institute in Spain. Little shoe and suitcase. The story of Amos Steinberg continues. Auschwitz concentration camp - Wikipedia

However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by During World War II , more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January , with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60, prisoners on a forced march to other locations. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz, they found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses left behind. To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the construction of death camps. Auschwitz, the largest and arguably the most notorious of all the Nazi death camps, opened in the spring of Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the country in These detainees included anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and luminaries from the cultural and scientific communities. For one thing, it was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent. For another, it was in close proximity to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the network of Nazi camps. However, not all those arriving at Auschwitz were immediately exterminated. At its peak of operation, Auschwitz consisted of several divisions. The original camp, known as Auschwitz I, housed between 15, and 20, political prisoners. Birkenau, the biggest of the Auschwitz facilities, could hold some 90, prisoners. It also housed a group of bathhouses where countless people were gassed to death, and crematory ovens where bodies were burned. The majority of Auschwitz victims died at Birkenau. More than 40 smaller facilities, called subcamps, dotted the landscape and served as slave-labor camps. The largest of these subcamps, Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, began operating in and housed some 10, prisoners. By mid, the majority of those being sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz were Jews. Upon arriving at the camp, detainees were examined by Nazi doctors. Those detainees considered unfit for work, including young children, the elderly, pregnant women and the infirm, were immediately ordered to take showers. However, the bathhouses to which they marched were disguised gas chambers. Once inside, the prisoners were exposed to Zyklon-B poison gas. Sick prisoners and those selected for death from the whole Auschwitz complex — and, to a smaller extent, from other camps — were also gathered and systematically killed here. It ultimately became a place for the concentration of prisoners before they were transferred inside the Third Reich to work for German industry. The property is of adequate size to ensure the complete representation of the features and processes that convey its significance. Potential threats to the integrity of the property include the difficulty in preserving the memory of the events and their significance to humanity. The Auschwitz camp complex has survived largely unchanged since its liberation in January The remaining camp buildings, structures and infrastructure are a silent witness to history, bearing testimony of the crime of genocide committed by the German Nazis. They are an inseparable part of a death factory organized with precision and ruthless consistency. The attributes that sustain the Outstanding Universal Value of the property are truthfully and credibly expressed, and fully convey the value of the property. At Auschwitz I, the majority of the complex has remained intact. The architecture of the camp consisted mostly of pre-existing buildings converted by the Nazis to serve new functions. The preserved architecture, spaces and layout still recall the historical functions of the individual elements in their entirety. In Birkenau, which was built anew on the site of a displaced village, only a small number of historic buildings have survived. Due to the method used in constructing those buildings, planned as temporary structures and erected in a hurry using demolition materials, the natural degradation processes have been accelerating. All efforts are nevertheless being taken to preserve them, strengthen their original fabric and protect them from decay. Many historic artefacts from the camp and its inmates have survived and are currently kept in storage. Some are exhibited in the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum. These include personal items brought by the deportees, as well as authentic documents and preserved photographs, complemented with post-war testimonies of the survivors. The property is protected by Polish law under the provisions of heritage protection and spatial planning laws, together with the provisions of local law. The site, buildings and relics of the former Auschwitz Birkenau camp are situated on the premises of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which operates under a number of legal Acts concerning the operation of museums and protection of the Former Nazi Extermination Camps, which provide that the protection of these sites is a public objective, and its fulfilment is the responsibility of the State administration. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a State cultural institution supervised directly by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, who ensures the necessary financing for its functioning and the fulfillment of its mission, including educational activities to understand the tragedy of the Holocaust and the need to prevent similar threats today and in future. The Museum has undertaken a long-term programme of conservation measures under its Global Conservation Plan. It is financed largely through funds from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which is supported by states from around the world, as well as by businesses and private individuals. The existing legal system provides appropriate tools for the effective protection and management of the property. In addition, the International Auschwitz Council acts as a consultative and advisory body to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland on the protection and management of the site of the former Auschwitz Birkenau camp and other places of extermination and former concentration camps situated within the present territory of Poland. Several protective zones surround components of the World Heritage property and function de facto as buffer zones. They are covered by local spatial development plans, which are consulted by the Regional Monuments Inspector. For better management and protection of the attributes of the Outstanding Universal Value of the property, especially for the proper protection of its setting, a relevant management plan must be put into force. It was divided into ten sections separated by electrified barbed-wire fences. The camp included sections for women; men; a family camp for Roma Gypsies deported from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; and a family camp for Jewish families deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto. Auschwitz-Birkenau was also a killing center and played a central role in the German effort to kill the Jews of Europe. Bunker I began operating in spring , the larger Bunker II in mid-summer These gassing facilities soon proved inadequate for the task of murdering the large numbers of Jewish deportees being sent to Auschwitz. Between March and June , four large crematoria were built within Auschwitz- Birkenau, each with a gas chamber, a disrobing area, and crematory ovens. Gassing of newly arrived transports ceased at Auschwitz by early November Jewish deportees arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately underwent selection. The SS staff chose some of the able-bodied for forced labor and sent the rest directly to the gas chambers, which were disguised as shower installations to mislead the victims. The belongings of all deportees were confiscated and sorted in the "Kanada" Canada warehouse for shipment back to Germany. Canada symbolized wealth to the prisoners. Trains arrived at Auschwitz frequently with transports of Jews from virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied to Germany. The approximate breakdown of deportations from individual countries:. With the deportations from Hungary , the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the German plan to murder the Jews of Europe achieved its highest effectiveness. Between late April and early July , approximately , Jews were deported from Hungary. Of the nearly , Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz, approximately , of them were sent directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They deployed approximately , at forced labor in the Auschwitz camp complex. The SS authorities transferred many of these Hungarian Jewish forced laborers within weeks of their arrival in Auschwitz to other concentration camps in Germany and Austria. On October 7, , several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. During the uprising, the prisoners killed three guards and blew up the crematorium and adjacent gas chamber. The prisoners used explosives smuggled into the camp by Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Germans crushed the revolt and killed almost all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged in early January The Auschwitz SS stopped gassing newly arrived prisoners by early November On orders from Himmler, camp officials began dismantling the crematoria. The SS destroyed the remaining gassing installations as Soviet forces approached in January It housed prisoners assigned to work at the Buna synthetic rubber works, located on the outskirts of the small village of Monowice. In the spring of , German conglomerate I. Farben established a factory in which its executives intended to exploit concentration camp labor to manufacture synthetic rubber and fuels. Farben invested more than million Reichsmarks about 2. Between July and October there was a pause in transports, due to a typhus epidemic and quarantine. Between and , the SS authorities at Auschwitz established 44 subcamps. Some subcamps, such as Freudenthal and Bruenn Brno , were located in Moravia. In general, subcamps that produced or processed agricultural goods were administratively subordinate to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Subcamps whose prisoners were deployed at industrial and armaments production or in extractive industries e. This division of administrative responsibility was formalized after November Auschwitz inmates were employed on huge farms, including the experimental agricultural station at Rajsko. They were also forced to work in coal mines, in stone quarries, in fisheries, and especially in armaments industries such as the SS-owned German Equipment Works established in Periodically, prisoners underwent selection. If the SS judged them too weak or sick to continue working, they were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and killed. Prisoners selected for forced labor were registered and tattooed with identification numbers on their left arms in Auschwitz I. They were then assigned to forced labor at the main camp or elsewhere in the complex, including the subcamps. In mid-January , as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60, prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began.

Auschwitz | Facts, Location, & History | Britannica

Some subcamps, such as Freudenthal and Bruenn Brno , were located in Moravia. In general, subcamps that produced or processed agricultural goods were administratively subordinate to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Subcamps whose prisoners were deployed at industrial and armaments production or in extractive industries e. This division of administrative responsibility was formalized after November Auschwitz inmates were employed on huge farms, including the experimental agricultural station at Rajsko. They were also forced to work in coal mines, in stone quarries, in fisheries, and especially in armaments industries such as the SS-owned German Equipment Works established in Periodically, prisoners underwent selection. If the SS judged them too weak or sick to continue working, they were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and killed. Prisoners selected for forced labor were registered and tattooed with identification numbers on their left arms in Auschwitz I. They were then assigned to forced labor at the main camp or elsewhere in the complex, including the subcamps. In mid-January , as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60, prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march either northwest for 55 kilometers approximately 30 miles to Gliwice Gleiwitz or due west for 63 kilometers approximately 35 miles to Wodzislaw Loslau in the western part of Upper Silesia. Those forced to march northwest were joined by prisoners from subcamps in East Upper Silesia, such as Bismarckhuette, Althammer, and Hindenburg. Those forced to march due west were joined by inmates from the subcamps to the south of Auschwitz, such as Jawischowitz, Tschechowitz, and Golleschau. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. At least 3, prisoners died on route to Gliwice alone. Possibly as many as 15, prisoners died during the evacuation marches from Auschwitz and the subcamps. The rail journey lasted for days. Without food, water, shelter, or blankets, many prisoners did not survive the transport. In late January , SS and police officials forced 4, prisoners to evacuate Blechhammer on foot. Blechhammer was a subcamp of Auschwitz- Monowitz. The SS murdered about prisoners during the march to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. SS officials also killed as many as prisoners left behind in Blechhammer as a result of illness or unsuccessful attempts to hide. After a brief delay, the SS transported around 3, Blechhammer prisoners from Gross-Rosen to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. On January 27, , the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberated more than six thousand prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying. Berenbaum, Michael, and Yisrael Gutman, editors. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Auschwitz from A to Z. An Illustrated History of the Camp. Oswiecim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dlugoborski, Waclaw et al. Auschwitz, — Central Issues in the History of the Camp. Langbein, Hermann. People in Auschwitz. Levi, Primo. New York: Collier Books, Swiebocka, Teresa, editor. Auschwitz: A History in Photographs. We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors. You are searching in English. How did postwar trials shape approaches to international justice? Sobibor Uprising. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Auschwitz The largest of its kind, the Auschwitz camp complex was essential to carrying out the Nazi plan for the "Final Solution. Key Facts. More information about this image. Number of Victims It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1. Auschwitz I Auschwitz I, the main camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Like most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed for three purposes: To incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time To provide a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned construction-related enterprises and, later, armaments and other war- related production To serve as a site to kill small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany. Deportations to Auschwitz Trains arrived at Auschwitz frequently with transports of Jews from virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied to Germany. The approximate breakdown of deportations from individual countries: Hungary: , Poland: , France: 69, Netherlands: 60, Greece: 55, Bohemia and Moravia: 46, Slovakia: 27, Belgium: 25, Yugoslavia: 10, Italy: 7, Norway: Other including concentration camps : 34, With the deportations from Hungary , the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the German plan to murder the Jews of Europe achieved its highest effectiveness. The Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz On October 7, , several hundred prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed. Evacuation of Auschwitz and its Subcamps In mid-January , as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. The Liberation of Auschwitz On January 27, , the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberated more than six thousand prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying. Glossary Terms. Series: Auschwitz. Series: Auschwitz Subcamps. Series: Killing Centers. The Nazi policy of spoliation, degradation and extermination of the Jews was rooted in a racist and anti-Semitic ideology propagated by the Third Reich. Auschwitz Birkenau was the largest of the concentration camp complexes created by the Nazi German regime and was the one which combined extermination with forced labour. At the centre of a huge landscape of human exploitation and suffering, the remains of the two camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau were inscribed on the World Heritage List as evidence of this inhumane, cruel and methodical effort to deny human dignity to groups considered inferior, leading to their systematic murder. The fortified walls, barbed wire, railway sidings, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz Birkenau show clearly how the Holocaust, as well as the Nazi German policy of mass murder and forced labour took place. The collections at the site preserve the evidence of those who were premeditatedly murdered, as well as presenting the systematic mechanism by which this was done. The personal items in the collections are testimony to the lives of the victims before they were brought to the extermination camps, as well as to the cynical use of their possessions and remains. The site and its landscape have high levels of authenticity and integrity since the original evidence has been carefully conserved without any unnecessary restoration. Criterion vi : Auschwitz Birkenau, monument to the deliberate genocide of the Jews by the German Nazi regime and to the deaths of countless others, bears irrefutable evidence to one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. It is also a monument to the strength of the human spirit which in appalling conditions of adversity resisted the efforts of the German Nazi regime to suppress freedom and free thought and to wipe out whole races. The site is a key place of memory for the whole of humankind for the Holocaust, racist policies and barbarism; it is a place of our collective memory of this dark chapter in the history of humanity, of transmission to younger generations and a sign of warning of the many threats and tragic consequences of extreme ideologies and denial of human dignity. Within the It is the most representative part of the Auschwitz complex, which consisted of nearly 50 camps and sub-camps. The Auschwitz Birkenau camp complex comprises brick and wooden structures 57 in Auschwitz and 98 in Birkenau and about ruins. There are also ruins of gas chambers and crematoria in Birkenau, which were dynamited in January The overall length of fencing supported by concrete poles is more than 13 km. Individual structures of high historical significance, such as railway sidings and ramps, food stores and industrial buildings, are dispersed in the immediate setting of the property. These structures, along with traces in the landscape, remain poignant testimonies to this tragic history. The Auschwitz I main camp was a place of extermination, effected mainly by depriving people of elementary living conditions. It was also a centre for immediate extermination. Here too were the main supply stores, workshops and Schutzstaffel SS companies. Work in these administrative and economic units and companies was the main form of forced labour for the inmates in this camp. Birkenau was the largest camp in the Auschwitz complex. It became primarily a centre for the mass murder of Jews brought there for extermination, and of Roma and Sinti prisoners during its final period. Sick prisoners and those selected for death from the whole Auschwitz complex — and, to a smaller extent, from other camps — were also gathered and systematically killed here. It ultimately became a place for the concentration of prisoners before they were transferred inside the Third Reich to work for German industry. The property is of adequate size to ensure the complete representation of the features and processes that convey its significance. Potential threats to the integrity of the property include the difficulty in preserving the memory of the events and their significance to humanity. The Auschwitz camp complex has survived largely unchanged since its liberation in January The remaining camp buildings, structures and infrastructure are a silent witness to history, bearing testimony of the crime of genocide committed by the German Nazis. They are an inseparable part of a death factory organized with precision and ruthless consistency. The attributes that sustain the Outstanding Universal Value of the property are truthfully and credibly expressed, and fully convey the value of the property. At Auschwitz I, the majority of the complex has remained intact. The architecture of the camp consisted mostly of pre-existing buildings converted by the Nazis to serve new functions. The preserved architecture, spaces and layout still recall the historical functions of the individual elements in their entirety. In Birkenau, which was built anew on the site of a displaced village, only a small number of historic buildings have survived. Due to the method used in constructing those buildings, planned as temporary structures and erected in a hurry using demolition materials, the natural degradation processes have been accelerating. All efforts are nevertheless being taken to preserve them, strengthen their original fabric and protect them from decay. Many historic artefacts from the camp and its inmates have survived and are currently kept in storage. Some are exhibited in the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum. These include personal items brought by the deportees, as well as authentic documents and preserved photographs, complemented with post-war testimonies of the survivors. The property is protected by Polish law under the provisions of heritage protection and spatial planning laws, together with the provisions of local law.

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