Auschwitz is the German name of the Polish town Oświęcim, situated about 60 km southwest of Krakow. Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area, a major constituent of the Holocaust. There were three main camps, and thirty-nine subcamps. The three main camps were:
- Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative centre for the whole complex, and the site for murder of roughly 70,000 Polish intellectuals and Soviet Prisoners of War
- Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp and the site of the murder of roughly 1 million Jews and some 19,000 Romany
- Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the IG Farben company
About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, with about 300 attempts successful. A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others.
"Arbeit macht frei" |
The entrance to Auschwitz I was (and still is) marked with the cynical sign "Arbeit macht frei", "work liberates". The camp's prisoners who left the camp during the day for construction or farm labor were made to march through the gate at the sounds of an orchestra. Contrary to what is depicted in several films, however, the majority of the Jews were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II camp, and did not pass under this sign.
The SS selected some prisoners, often German criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of the other inmates. The various classes of prisoners were distinguishable by special marks on their clothes; Jews were generally treated worst. All inmates had to work; except in the associated arms factories, Sundays were reserved for cleaning and showering and there were no work assignments.
The harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the prisoners.
Block 11 of Auschwitz I was the "prison within the prison", where violations of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners had to spend several days in tiny cells too small to sit down. Others were executed by shooting, hanging or starving.
In September 1941, the SS conducted tests in block 11, killing 850 Poles and Russians using Zyklon B gas, a pesticide that had previously been used to kill lice. The tests deemed successful, a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942 and was then converted into an air-raid shelter.
The first women arrived in the camp on March 26, 1942. From April 1943 to May 1944, the gynecologist Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in block 10 of Auschwitz I, with the aim of developing a simple injection method to be used on the Slavic people. Dr. Josef Mengele experimented on twins in the same complex. Prisoners in the camp hospital who were not quick to recover were regularly killed by lethal injection employing phenol.
The camp brothel, established in the summer of 1943 on Himmler's order, was located in block 24 and was used to reward privileged prisoners. It was staffed by women specifically selected for the purpose, and by volunteers from the female prisoners.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is the camp that most people know simply as "Auschwitz". It was the site of imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and the murder of over one million people, mainly Jews and Roma and Sinti.
The camp is located in Brzezinka (Birkenau), about 3 kilometers from Auschwitz I. Construction started in 1941 as part of the Endlösung.
The camp was about 2.5 kilometers by 2 kilometers large and was divided into several sections, each of which was separated into fields. Fields as well as the camp itself were surrounded with barbed, electrified wire (which was used by some of the inmates to commit suicide). The camp held up to 100,000 prisoners at one time.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
Birkenau main entrance visible in the background |
Most people arrived at the camp by rail, often after horrifying trips in cattle wagons lasting several days. From 1944 railway tracks extended into the camp itself; before that, arriving prisoners were marched from the Auschwitz railway station to the camp. At times, the whole transport would be sent to its death immediately. At other times, the Nazis would perform "selection", choosing whom to kill right away and whom to imprison as labor force. Dr. Mengele often participated in these selections. Young children were taken from their mothers and placed with older women to be gassed, along with the sick, weak and old.
Those arriving prisoners who survived the initial selection would go on to spend some time in quarantine quarters and eventually work on the camp's maintenance or expansion or be sent to one of the surrounding satellite work camps.
One section of the camp was reserved for female prisoners. In another section known as "Canada", the belongings of the arriving victims were sorted and stored, to be transferred to the German government.
The gas chamber/crematorium complexes were all constructed alike: an underground undressing room holding around 2000 victims, adjacent to the gas chamber with fake shower heads. The toxic agent Zyklon B was discharged from openings in the ceiling. A crematorium was part of the same building.
Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944. Between May and July 1944, about 440,000 Jews from Hungary were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and mostly killed there. When the crematoria could not keep up, bodies were burned in open pits.
Many Roma had been imprisoned in a special section of the camp, mostly in family units. They were gassed in July 1944.
On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommando (those prisoners kept separate from the main camp and involved in the operation of the gas chambers and crematoria) staged an uprising. Female prisoners had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but all 250 were killed soon after. On October 10, eight hundred Gypsy children were systematically murdered at Birkenau.
The surrounding satellite work camps were closely connected to German industry and were associated with arms factories, foundries and mines.
The largest work camp was Auschwitz III Monowitz, starting operations in May 1942. It was associated with the synthetic rubber and liquid fuel plant Buna-Werke owned by IG Farben.
In regular intervals, doctors from Auschwitz II would visit the work camps and select the weak and sick for the gas chambers of Birkenau.
The allies fighting Germany were in possession of detailed air photographs of all camps since May 31, 1944. Two escaped prisoners (Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler) had compiled precise descriptions and maps which reached the allies in the summer of 1944. On September 13, 1944, American bombers flew an attack on the Buna Werke factory associated to Auschwitz III, partly destroying it.
The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the Germans in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troups. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; most of the prisoners were marched West. Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind; about 7500 prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
After the war, Auschwitz remained in a state of disrepair for several years.
The Buna Werke were taken over by the Polish government and became the foundation for the chemical industry of the region.
The Polish government then decided to restore Auschwitz I and turn it into a museum honoring the victims of fascism; Auschwitz II, where buildings were prone to decay, was preserved but not restored.
Today, the Auschwitz I museum site combines elements from several periods into a single complex: for example the gas chamber at Auschwitz I (which did not exist by the war's end) was restored and the fence was moved (because of building being done after the war but before the establishment of the museum). However, in most cases the departure from the historical truth is minor, and is mentioned as such.
Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are also open to the public. The Auschwitz concentration camp is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II read mass on the grounds of Auschwitz II to some 500 000 people. After the pope had announced that Edith Stein would be beatified, some Catholics erected a cross near bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been gassed. A short while later, a Star of David appeared at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols there; eventually they were removed.
Carmelite nunss opened a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. After some Jewish groups called for the removal of the convent, representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987.
One year later the Carmelites erected the 26-foot tall cross from the 1979 mass near their site, just outside block 11 and barely visible from within the camp. This lead to protests by Jewish groups, who said that mostly Jews were killed at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be kept away from the site. Some Catholics have pointed out that the people killed in Auschwitz I were mainly Polish Catholics. The Catholic Church told the Carmelites to move by 1989, but they stayed on until 1993, leaving the large cross behind. In 1998, after further calls to remove the cross, some 300 smaller crosses were erected by local activists near the large one, leading to further protests and heated exchanges. Following an agreement between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish government, the smaller crosses were removed in 1999 but the large papal one remains. See Auschwitz cross for more details.
In 1996, Germany made January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the official day for the commemoration of the victims of national socialism.
Several authors, sometimes sympathetic to holocaust revisionism, have criticised what they claim to be historical inaccuracies about Auschwitz, perpetrated by the Polish government, Jewish lobby groups, popular literature and Hollywood as part of the holocaust industry.
They sometimes point out that the communist Polish government used to cite numbers of 3-4 million murders in Auschwitz, which later scholarship has corrected to the figures given above.
Auschwitz III and satellite camps
Knowledge of the Allies
Evacuation and liberation
Well-known inmates
After the war
Criticisms
External links
References
