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AUSCHWITZ
(in Polish,
Oswiecim), largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp located
in the Polish town of Oswiecim, 37 miles west of Cracow. One-sixth
of all Jews murdered by the Nazis were gassed at Auschwitz. In April
1940 SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of a new
concentration camp in Oswiecim, a town situated within the part of
Poland that was annexed to Germany at the beginning of World War II.
The first Polish political prisoners arrived in Auschwitz in June
1940. By March 1941 there were 10,900 prisoners, still mostly
Polish. Auschwitz soon became known as the most brutal of the Nazi
concentration camps.
In March 1941 Himmler ordered that a second, much larger section of
the camp be built 1.9 miles from the original camp. This site was to
be used as an extermination camp. It was named Birkenau, or
Auschwitz II. Eventually, Birkenau held the most prisoners in the
Auschwitz complex, including Jews, Poles, Germans, and gypsies. It
also had the worst, most inhuman conditions---and contained the
complex of gas chambers and crematoria.
A third section, Auschwitz III, was constructed in nearby Monowitz,
and consisted of a forced labor camp called Buna-Monowitz and 45
other forced labor subcamps. The name Buna was based on the Buna
synthetic rubber factory on site, owned by I.G. Farben, Germany's
largest chemical company. The mainly Jewish inmates who worked at
that factory and others owned by German firms were pushed to the
point of total exhaustion, at which time they were replaced by new
laborers. Auschwitz was first run by camp commandant Rudolf Hoess,
and was guarded by a cruel regiment of the SS death head unit. The
staff was assisted by several privileged prisoners who were given
better food, better conditions, and an opportunity to survive if
they agreed to enforce the brutal order of the camp.
Auschwitz I and II were surrounded by electrically-charged
four-meter high barbed wire fences, which were guarded by SS men
armed with machine guns and rifles. The two camps were further
closed in by a series of guard posts located two-thirds of a mile
beyond the fences. In March 1942 trains carrying Jews began arriving
daily. Sometimes several trains would arrive on the same day, each
carrying one thousand or more victims coming from the ghettos of
Eastern Europe, as well as from Western and Southern European
countries. During 1942 transports arrived from Poland, Slovakia, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Theresienstadt. Jews continued
to arrive throughout 1943, as did Gypsies. Hungarian Jews were
brought to Auschwitz in 1944, as were Jews from the last Polish
ghettos to be liquidated.
By August 1944 there were 105,168 prisoners in Auschwitz. Another
50,000 Jewish prisoners lived in Auschwitz's satellite camps. The
camp's population constantly grew, in spite of the high mortality
rate caused by exterminations, starvation, hard labor and contagious
diseases.
When Jews arrived at the platform in Birkenau, they were thrown out
of their train cars without their belongings and forced to make two
lines, men and women separately. SS officers, including the infamous
Dr. Josef Mengele, would conduct selections among these lines,
sending most victims to one side, condemning them to death in the
gas chambers. A minority was sent to the other side destined for
forced labor. Those who were sent to their deaths were killed that
same day and their corpses were burnt in the crematoria. Those not
sent to the gas chambers were taken to quarantine where their hair
was shaved, they were given striped prison uniforms, and were
registered as prisoners. Their registration numbers were tattooed on
their left arms. Most prisoners were then sent to perform forced
labor in Auschwitz I, III, subcamps,or other concentration camps,
where their life expectancy usually was a few months. Prisoners who
stayed in quarantine had a life expectancy of a few weeks.
The prisoners' camp routine consisted of many duties to perform. The
daily schedule included waking at dawn, straightening one's cot,
morning roll call, the trip to work, long hours of hard labor,
standing in line for a pitiful meal, the return to camp, block
inspection, and evening roll call. During roll call, prisoners were
made to stand completely motionless and quiet for hours, in the
thinnest of clothing, no matter what the weather. Whoever fell or
even stumbled was sent to die. Each prisoner, in his own way, had to
focus all his energy on just getting through the day's tortures.
The gas chambers in the Auschwitz complex constituted the largest
and most efficient extermination method used by the Nazis. Four
chambers were in use at Birkenau, each with the potential to kill
6,000 people every day. They were built to look like shower rooms in
order to confuse the victims: new arrivals at Birkenau were told
that they were being sent to work, but first needed to shower and be
disinfected. They would be led into the shower-like chambers, where
they were quickly gassed to death with the highly poisonous Zyklon-b
gas.
Some prisoners at Auschwitz, including twins and dwarfs, were used
as the subjects of torturous pseudo-medical experiments. They were
tested for endurance under terrible conditions such as heat and
cold, or sterilized.
Despite the horrible conditions, prisoners in Auschwitz managed to
resist the Nazis, including some instances of escape and armed
resistance. In October 1944, members of the Sonderkommando, who
worked in the crematoria, succeeded in killing several SS men and
destroying one gas chamber. All of the rebels died, leaving behind
diaries that provided authentic documentation of the atrocities
committed at Auschwitz.
By January 1945 Soviet troops were advancing towards Auschwitz. The
Nazis, desperate to withdraw, sent most of the 58,000 remaining
prisoners on a death march. Most prisoners were killed en route to
Germany. The Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27; soldiers
found just 7,650 barely living prisoners throughout the entire camp
complex. In all, some one million Jews had been murdered there.
From the Facts On File
Encyclopedia of the
Holocaust, prepared by
Yad Vashem and the Jerusalem Publishing House, edited by Dr. Robert
Rozett and Dr. Shmuel Spector.
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