Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40
concentration
In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', ''molar concentration'', ''number concentration'', an ...
and
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s operated by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in
occupied Poland
' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2 ...
(in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. It consisted of
Auschwitz I
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in
Oświęcim
Oświęcim (; german: Auschwitz ; yi, אָשפּיצין, Oshpitzin) is a city in the Lesser Poland ( pl, Małopolska) province of southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rive ...
;
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
, a concentration and extermination camp with
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
Histor ...
labor camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...
for the chemical conglomerate
IG Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
final solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
to the
Jewish question
The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national ...
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...
'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a
prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. P ...
.
The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years.
In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as
functionaries
An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
, established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in
block 11
Block 11 was the name of a brick building in Auschwitz I, the ''Stammlager'' or main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp network. This block was used for executions and torture. Between Block 10 and Block 11 stood the "Death Wall" (reconstru ...
of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over
German-occupied Europe
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.
At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two '' Sonderkommando'' units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...
personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended; several were executed, including camp commandant
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
. The
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.
As the Soviet
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a
death march
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Convent ...
to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of on ...
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
,
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997)
was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part ...
, and
Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel b ...
wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum ( pl, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim (German: ''Auschwitz''), Poland.
The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwi ...
on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...
by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
.
Background
The ideology of
National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
(Nazism) combined elements of "
racial hygiene
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...
",
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
,
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
,
pan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
, and territorial expansionism,
Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
writes.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and his
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
became obsessed by the "
Jewish question
The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national ...
". Both during and immediately after the
Nazi seizure of power
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...
in Germany in 1933, acts of violence against
German Jew
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
s became ubiquitous, and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law.
Harassment and economic pressure encouraged Jews to leave Germany; their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. On 15 September 1935, the Reichstag passed the
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...
. One, the
Reich Citizenship Law
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of ...
, defined as citizens those of "German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully", and the
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the ...
prohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with "German or related blood" and Jews.
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed. The area around Auschwitz was annexed to the German Reich, as part of first
Gau Silesia
The Gau Silesia (German: ''Gau Schlesien'') formed on 15 March 1925, was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1941 in the Prussian Province of Silesia. From 1925 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party for this ...
and from 1941
Gau Upper Silesia
The Gau Upper Silesia (German: ''Gau Oberschlesien'') was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945 in the Upper Silesia part of the Prussian Province of Silesia. The Gau was created when the Gau Silesia was split into Upper Sil ...
. The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The first gassing at Auschwitz—of a group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941. By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German ''
Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
'', ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
outlined the
Final Solution to the Jewish Question
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
to senior Nazis, and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over
occupied Europe
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
to German
extermination camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
Chełmno
Chełmno (; older en, Culm; formerly ) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.
Due to its regional importan ...
,
Majdanek
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
,
Sobibór
Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.
As ...
, and
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
. Most prisoners were gassed on arrival.
Camps
Auschwitz I
Growth
A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp (''Stammlager'') and administrative headquarters of the camp complex. Fifty km southwest of
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
, the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by
Arpad Wigand
Arpad Jakob Valentin Wigand (13 January 1906 – 26 July 1983) was a Nazi German war criminal with the rank of SS-Oberführer who served as the '' SS'' and Police Leader in Warsaw (SS-und Polizeiführer (SSPF) from 4 August 1941 until 23 April 19 ...
, the inspector of the
Sicherheitspolizei
The ''Sicherheitspolizei'' ( en, Security Police), often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Germany for security police. In the Nazi era, it referred to the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the ...
(security police) and deputy of
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach-Zelewski (born Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski; 1 March 1899 – 8 March 1972) was a high-ranking SS commander of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State" ...
Richard Glücks
Richard Glücks (; 22 April 1889 – 10 May 1945) was a high-ranking German Nazi official in the SS. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he was Concentration Camps Inspector (CCI), which became ''Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen' ...
Walter Eisfeld Walter Eisfeld (born 11 July 1905 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt – died 3 April 1940 in Dachau) was a German SS functionary and concentration camp commandant during the Nazi era.
Eisfeld had been a member of the Artamanen-Gesellschaft, a völkisch ...
, former commandant of the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...
in
Oranienburg
Oranienburg () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Oberhavel.
Geography
Oranienburg is a town located on the banks of the Havel river, 35 km north of the centre of Berlin.
Division of the town
Oranienburg ...
, Germany, to inspect it. Around 1,000 m long and 400 m wide, Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built.
Reichsführer-SS
(, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, head of the SS, approved the site in April 1940 on the recommendation of SS-
Obersturmbannführer
__NOTOC__
''Obersturmbannführer'' (Senior Assault-unit Leader; ; short: ''Ostubaf'') was a paramilitary rank in the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) which was used by the SA (''Sturmabteilung'') and the SS (''Schutzstaffel''). The rank of ''Obersturm ...
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
of the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German "career criminals" (''Berufsverbrecher''), the men were known as "greens" (''Grünen'') after the green triangles on their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish the sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles.
Bruno Brodniewicz Bruno Brodniewicz (also spelled Brodniewitsch) born 22 July 1895 in Posen, was a German prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Brodniewicz was the first Lagerälteste (camp elder), carrying prisoner tag number 1. He died in April 15–16, 1 ...
, the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), became ''
Lagerälteste
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
'' (camp elder). The others were given positions such as ''
kapo
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
'' and block supervisor.
First mass transport
The first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 from
Tarnów
Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów ...
, Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758. In a letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was "fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men". By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" (''Interessengebiet'') patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles.
An inmate's first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to the gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception center near the gate with the ''Arbeit macht frei'' sign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothes. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum ( pl, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim (German: ''Auschwitz''), Poland.
The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwi ...
.
Crematorium I, first gassings
Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940. Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over. By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.
The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when Lagerführer
Karl Fritzsch
Karl Fritzsch (10 July 1903 – reported missing 2 May 1945) was a German member of the Nazi secret police ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) from 1933–1945. He was a deputy and acting commandant at the Auschwitz concentration camp. According to Rudolf H ...
, at the instruction of Rudolf Höss, murdered a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwing
Zyklon B
Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...
crystals into their basement cell in
block 11
Block 11 was the name of a brick building in Auschwitz I, the ''Stammlager'' or main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp network. This block was used for executions and torture. Between Block 10 and Block 11 stood the "Death Wall" (reconstru ...
of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September. The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people. Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in the ceiling.
First mass transport of Jews
Historians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
. According to
Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper (born 1941) is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a mo ...
, the Auschwitz commandant
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before the establishment of the women's camp in March 1942. In ''Kommandant in Auschwitz'', he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia." On 15 February 1942, according to
Danuta Czech Danuta Czech (1922 – 4 April 2004) was a Polish Holocaust historian and deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. She is known for her book ''The Auschwitz Chronicle: 1939–1945'' (1990).
Background
Czech was ...
, a transport of Jews from Beuthen,
Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located ...
(
Bytom
Bytom (Polish pronunciation: ; Silesian: ''Bytōm, Bytōń'', german: Beuthen O.S.) is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. Located in the Silesian Voivodeship of Poland, the city is 7 km northwest of Katowice, the regional capital ...
, Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber. In 1998 an eyewitness said the train contained "the women of Beuthen".
Saul Friedländer
Saul Friedländer (; born October 11, 1932) is a Czech-Jewish-born historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA.
Biography
Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews. He was raised in France and lived thro ...
wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the
Organization Schmelt
Organization Schmelt was a Nazi SS organization that ran a system of forced-labor camps with mostly Jewish prisoners. It originated in East Upper Silesia, but spread to the Sudetenland and other areas. Many of its camps were later absorbed into c ...
labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work. According to Christopher Browning, transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941. The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by
Nikolaus Wachsmann
Nikolaus Daniel Wachsmann (born 1971) is a professor of modern European history in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Academic career
Wachsmann was born in Munich. He graduated from the ...
.
Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Polish Jews from
Silesia
Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...
and
Zagłębie Dąbrowskie Zagłębie in Polish means coalfield. It can refer to:
*Górnośląskie Zagłębie Węglowe, a mining region
*Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, a mining region
*Zagłębie Sosnowiec, an association football club
*Zagłębie Lubin, an association football clu ...
was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation. On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women's camp, where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by
Reich Security Head Office
The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...
(RSHA). On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France. "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labor. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners.
There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I.
Perry Broad
Pery Broad, also Perry Broad (25 April 1921 – 28 November 1993) was a Brazilian non-commissioned officer in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) active at Auschwitz concentration camp from April 1942 to 1945. He reached the rank of ''SS-Unterscharführe ...
, an ''SS-Unterscharführer'', wrote that "transport after transport vanished in the Auschwitz crematorium." In the view of
Filip Müller
Filip Müller (3 January 1922 – 9 November 2013) was a Jewish Slovak Holocaust survivor and ''Sonderkommando'' at Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German concentration camp during World War II, where he witnessed the murders of tens of thousand ...
, one of the Auschwitz I '' Sonderkommando'', tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the
Theresienstadt
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Schutzstaffel, SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German occupation of Czechoslovakia, German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstad ...
Grodno
Grodno (russian: Гродно, pl, Grodno; lt, Gardinas) or Hrodna ( be, Гродна ), is a city in western Belarus. The city is located on the Neman River, 300 km (186 mi) from Minsk, about 15 km (9 mi) from the Polish b ...
ghettos.; . Against this,
Jean-Claude Pressac
Jean-Claude Pressac (3 March 1944 – 23 July 2003) was a French pharmacist by profession, who became a published authority on the Auschwitz concentration camp homicidal gas chambers deployed during the Holocaust in World War II. He was the aut ...
estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I. The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of the Auschwitz II ''Sonderkommando'', who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Construction
After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded, although Peter Hayes notes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told the
Polish government-in-exile
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...
in London: "the Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000." Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called a ''Kriegsgefangenenlager'' (prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 in
Brzezinka
Brzezinka (; german: link=no, Birkenau; cs, Březinka) is a village in southern Poland, about from Oświęcim, in the district of Gmina Oświęcim, Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship.
General information
The village is near the c ...
, about three kilometers from Auschwitz I. The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned.
SS-Sturmbannführer
Karl Bischoff
Karl Bischoff (9 August 1897 – 2 October 1950) was a German architect, engineer and SS-''Sturmbannführer''. He served at Auschwitz as chief of the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS. While there he was chief of construction of the ...
, an architect, was the chief of construction. Based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000. There were 174 barracks, each measuring , divided into 62 bays of . The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived,
Robert-Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt (born 15 August 1955) is a Dutch author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics ...
wrote, "of the minimum space needed to exist".
The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men's camp) in the early months died of
hypothermia
Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe h ...
, starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks. Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941, but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II, where most of them had died by May.
Crematoria II–V
The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo from
Silesia
Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...
and
Zagłębie Dąbrowskie Zagłębie in Polish means coalfield. It can refer to:
*Górnośląskie Zagłębie Węglowe, a mining region
*Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, a mining region
*Zagłębie Sosnowiec, an association football club
*Zagłębie Lubin, an association football clu ...
was taken straight from the
Oświęcim
Oświęcim (; german: Auschwitz ; yi, אָשפּיצין, Oshpitzin) is a city in the Lesser Poland ( pl, Małopolska) province of southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rive ...
freight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow. The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the "little red house" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into a gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said "''Zur Desinfektion''" ("to disinfection"). A second brick cottage, the "little white house" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942. When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass-murder in a gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the new
IG Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
plant being constructed at
Monowitz
Monowitz (also known as Monowitz-Buna, Buna and Auschwitz III) was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (''Arbeitslager'') run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existe ...
. Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944.
Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room on the ground floor, and an underground dressing room and gas chamber . The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to the ceiling to resemble showerheads. The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V. By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at a time, the ''Sonderkommando'' were able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day.
Auschwitz III-Monowitz
After examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture
Buna-N
Nitrile rubber, also known as nitrile butadiene rubber, NBR, Buna-N, and acrylonitrile butadiene rubber, is a synthetic rubber derived from acrylonitrile (ACN) and butadiene. Trade names include Perbunan, Nipol, Krynac and Europrene. This rubber i ...
, a type of
synthetic rubber
A synthetic rubber is an artificial elastomer. They are polymers synthesized from petroleum byproducts. About 32-million metric tons of rubbers are produced annually in the United States, and of that amount two thirds are synthetic. Synthetic rubbe ...
essential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerate
IG Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about east of Auschwitz I. Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in the frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labor, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials. In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of
Oświęcim
Oświęcim (; german: Auschwitz ; yi, אָשפּיצין, Oshpitzin) is a city in the Lesser Poland ( pl, Małopolska) province of southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rive ...
be expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building the factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work.
Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it. By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I. Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through the town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons. Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942. Known as ''KL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager'' (Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as the Monowitz concentration camp, it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry.
Measuring , the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring , each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks. IG Farben paid the SS three or four
Reichsmark
The (; sign: ℛℳ; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in West Germany, where it was replaced with the , and until 23 June 1948 in East Germany, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reich ...
for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker. In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) were murdered through malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp, Peter Hayes writes, the inmates were "reduced to walking skeletons". Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced the population by nearly a fifth each month. Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp.
Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labor and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly. The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945, the SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at
Gliwice
Gliwice (; german: Gleiwitz) is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. The city is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Kłodnica river (a tributary of the Oder). It lies approximately 25 km west from Katowice, the regional cap ...
. From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to the
Buchenwald
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...
and
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
concentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by the
1st Ukrainian Front
The 1st Ukrainian Front (Russian: Пéрвый Украи́нский фронт), previously the Voronezh Front (Russian: Воронежский Фронт) was a major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a ...
of the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
.
Subcamps
Several other German industrial enterprises, such as
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
and
Siemens-Schuckert
Siemens-Schuckert (or Siemens-Schuckertwerke) was a German electrical engineering company headquartered in Berlin, Erlangen and Nuremberg that was incorporated into the Siemens AG in 1966.
Siemens Schuckert was founded in 1903 when Siemens & Ha ...
, built factories with their own subcamps. There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners. Designated as ''Aussenlager'' (external camp), ''Nebenlager'' (extension camp), ''Arbeitslager'' (labor camp), or ''Aussenkommando'' (external work detail), camps were built at
Blechhammer
The Blechhammer ( en, sheet metal hammer) area was the location of Nazi Germany chemical plants, prisoner of war (POW) camps, and forced labor camps (german: Arbeitslager Blechhammer; also Nummernbücher). Labor camp prisoners began arriving as ...
,
Jawiszowice
Jawiszowice is a village in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland. It has a long history of coal mining that continues to this day. Jawiszowice is about 12 kilometres from the city of Oświęcim.
History
The village w ...
,
Jaworzno
Jaworzno is a city in southern Poland, near Katowice. It lies in the Silesian Highlands, on the Przemsza river (a tributary of the Vistula). Jaworzno belongs to the historic province of Lesser Poland. The city is situated in the Silesian Voivod ...
Mysłowice
Mysłowice ( szl, Myslowicy; german: Myslowitz) is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. The population of the city is 74,085.
It is located in the south district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union in the Silesian Highlan ...
,
Trzebinia
Trzebinia (; yi, טשעבין ''Tchebin'') is a town in Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland, Poland with an Orlen oil refinery and a major rail junction of the Kraków - Katowice line, with connections to Oświęcim and Spytkowice. The town became p ...
, and as far afield as the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German oc ...
in Czechoslovakia. Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming. For example, ''Wirtschaftshof Budy'', in the Polish village of Budy near
Brzeszcze
Brzeszcze (German: ''Brisk'') is a town in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland, near Oświęcim. As of December 2021, the town has a population of 10,935. The history of the town dates back to the 15th century, and it ...
, was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from the crematoria with sod and manure. Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II, and Rajsko. Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps.
Life in the camps
SS garrison
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
, born in
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...
in 1900, was named the first commandant of Auschwitz when
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
ordered on 27 April 1940 that the camp be established. Living with his wife and children in a two-story
stucco
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...
house near the commandant's and administration building, he served as commandant until 11 November 1943, with
Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 Ap ...
as his deputy. Succeeded as commandant by
Arthur Liebehenschel
Arthur Liebehenschel (; 25 November 1901 – 24 January 1948) was a commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government and executed in 1948.
...
, Höss joined the SS Business and Administration Head Office in Oranienburg as director of Amt DI, a post that made him deputy of the camps inspectorate.
Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 and
Fritz Hartjenstein
Friedrich Hartjenstein (3 July 1905 – 20 October 1954) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. A member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, he served at various Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. After the S ...
of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945.
Heinrich Schwarz
Heinrich Schwarz (14 June 1906 – 20 March 1947) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and concentration camp officer who served as commandant of Auschwitz III-Monowitz in Nazi-occupied Poland and Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace-Lorraine.
...
was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation. Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as the local SS garrison commander (''Standortältester'') to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps.
According to Aleksander Lasik, about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp's existence; 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file. In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz; the higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp. Female guards were known as SS supervisors (''SS-Aufseherinnen'').
Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of ''
Volksdeutsche
In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...
'' from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Camp guards, around three quarters of the SS personnel, were members of the ''
SS-Totenkopfverbände
''SS-Totenkopfverbände'' (SS-TV; ) was the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the ''Totenkopf'' was the univer ...
'' (
death's head
Death's Head is the name of several fictional characters appearing in British comics and American comic books both published by Marvel Comics.
The original Death’s Head is a robotic bounty hunter (or rather, as he calls himself, a "freelance ...
units). Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners. The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property.
Functionaries and ''Sonderkommando''
Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles, were assigned positions of authority as ''Funktionshäftlinge'' (functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. The ''Lagerprominenz'' (camp elite) included ''Blockschreiber'' (barracks clerk), ''
Kapo
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
'' (overseer), ''Stubendienst'' (barracks orderly), and ''Kommandierte'' (trusties). Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners, the functionaries developed a reputation as sadists. Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS.
Although the SS oversaw the murders at each gas chamber, the forced labor portion of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as the '' Sonderkommando'' (special squad). These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874. The ''Sonderkommando'' removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the ''Sonderkommando'' burned them in the crematoria.
Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the ''Sonderkommando'' lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them. Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within the camp, including with the SS. Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly murdered and replaced. About 100 survived to the camp's liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp at
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
, where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived.
Tattoos and triangles
Uniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with a serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war and on the left arm for civilians. Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German: ''Winkel'') sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners ''(Schutzhäftlinge'' or Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals (''Berufsverbrecher'' or BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners (''Asoziale'' or Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and the Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah's Witnesses (''Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung'' or IBV)'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German. An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz. Jews wore a
yellow badge
Yellow badges (or yellow patches), also referred to as Jewish badges (german: Judenstern, lit=Jew's star), are badges that Jews were ordered to wear at various times during the Middle Ages by some caliphates, at various times during the Medieva ...
, the shape of the
Star of David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.
A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative ...
, overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom.
Transports
Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The ''Altejudenrampe'' (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on a new railway line and ramp ''(right)'' between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of
Hungarian Jews
The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...
between May and early July 1944. The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.
Life for the inmates
The day began at 4:30 am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly. Sanitary arrangements were atrocious, with few latrines and a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets; the toilet facilities were "sewage channels" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe.
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
described a 1944
Auschwitz III
Monowitz (also known as Monowitz-Buna, Buna and Auschwitz III) was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (''Arbeitslager'') run by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and t ...
washroom:
Prisoners received half a liter of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food. A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter the weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment. Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted.
After roll call, to the sound of "''Arbeitskommandos formieren''" ("form work details"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter. A prison orchestra, such as the
Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz
The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz (''Mädchenorchester von Auschwitz''; lit. "Girls' Orchestra of Auschwitz") was formed by order of the SS in 1943, during the Holocaust, in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. ...
, was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. ''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
Rutabaga (; North American English) or swede (British English and some Commonwealth English) is a root vegetable, a form of ''Brassica napus'' (which also includes rapeseed). Other names include Swedish turnip, neep (Scots), and turnip (Scott ...
) three times. The evening meal was 300 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 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner,
Tadeusz Wiejowski Tadeusz Wiejowski (died 1941) was a Polish shoemaker who was the first person to escape the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1941 he was recaptured and committed to the Jasło prison camp, where he was executed.
Auschwitz escape
Tadeusz Wiejowski ...
, had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death. After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. 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. Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen. The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw. According to
Miklós Nyiszli
Miklós Nyiszli (17 June 1901 – 5 May 1956) was a Hungarian prisoner of Jewish heritage at Auschwitz concentration camp. Nyiszli, his wife, and young daughter, were transported to Auschwitz in June 1944. Upon his arrival, Nyiszli vo ...
:
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. Observant Jews tried to keep track of the
Hebrew calendar
The Hebrew calendar ( he, הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, translit=HaLuah HaIvri), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance, and as an official calendar of the state of Israel. I ...
and
Jewish holidays
Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' ( he, ימים טובים, , Good Days, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed in Judaism and by JewsThis article focuses on practices of mainstre ...
, including Shabbat, and the weekly Torah portion. 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.
Women's camp
About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female. The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...
, arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women's camp. Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power ... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them." They were given serial numbers 1–999. The women's guard from Ravensbrück,
Johanna Langefeld
Johanna Langefeld (5 March 1900, Kupferdreh, Germany – 26 January 1974) was a German female guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz.
Early life
Born in Kupferdreh (now Essen, Germany) ...
, became the first Auschwitz women's camp ''Lagerführerin''. A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from
Poprad
Poprad (; hu, Poprád; german: Deutschendorf) is a city in northern Slovakia at the foot of the High Tatra Mountains, famous for its picturesque historic centre and as a holiday resort. It is the biggest town of the Spiš region and the ten ...
, Slovakia, arrived on the same day. According to
Danuta Czech Danuta Czech (1922 – 4 April 2004) was a Polish Holocaust historian and deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. She is known for her book ''The Auschwitz Chronicle: 1939–1945'' (1990).
Background
Czech was ...
, this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the
Reich Security Head Office
The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...
(RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS ''Obersturmbannführer''
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
.) A third transport of 798 Jewish women from
Bratislava
Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...
, Slovakia, followed on 28 March.
Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I, but from 6 August 1942, 13,000 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 1943 it held 32,066 women. In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the Gypsy family camp, as were several thousand in the
Theresienstadt family camp
The Theresienstadt family camp ( cs, Terezínský rodinný tábor, german: Theresienstädter Familienlager), also known as the Czech family camp, consisted of a group of Jewish inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who were h ...
.
Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive.
Gisella Perl
Gisella Perl (10 December 1907 – 16 December 1988) was a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, where she helped hundreds of women, serving as an inmate gynecologist for them. She worked without the b ...
, a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948:
Langefeld was succeeded as ''Lagerführerin'' in October 1942 by SS ''Oberaufseherin''
Maria Mandl
Maria Mandl (also spelled Mandel; 10 January 1912 – 24 January 1948) was an Austrian '' SS- Helferin'' (" SS helper") known for her role in the Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she is bel ...
, who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS ''Obersturmführer'' Paul Müller, then SS ''Hauptsturmführer''
Franz Hössler
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler (; 4 February 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a Nazi German SS-''Obersturmführer'' and ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World W ...
. Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilization experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist,
Carl Clauberg
Carl Clauberg (28 September 1898 – 9 August 1957) was a German gynecologist who conducted medical experiments on human subjects (mainly Jewish) at Auschwitz concentration camp. He worked with Horst Schumann in X-ray sterilization experiment ...
, and another German doctor,
Horst Schumann
Horst Schumann (1 May 1906 – 5 May 1983) was an ''SS-Sturmbannführer'' (major) and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means ...
.
Medical experiments, block 10
German doctors performed a variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy of
X-rays
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 Picometre, picometers to 10 Nanometre, nanometers, corresponding to frequency, ...
as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners.
Carl Clauberg
Carl Clauberg (28 September 1898 – 9 August 1957) was a German gynecologist who conducted medical experiments on human subjects (mainly Jewish) at Auschwitz concentration camp. He worked with Horst Schumann in X-ray sterilization experiment ...
injected chemicals into women's
uterus
The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more embryos until birth. The uter ...
es 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. In one experiment,
Bayer
Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational corporation, multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of busi ...
—then part of
IG Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
—paid RM 150 each for 150 female inmates from Auschwitz (the camp had asked for RM 200 per woman), who were transferred to a Bayer facility to test an anesthetic. A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. 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." The Bayer research was led at Auschwitz by Helmuth Vetter of Bayer/IG Farben, who was also an Auschwitz physician and SS captain, and by Auschwitz physicians
Friedrich Entress
Friedrich Karl Hermann Entress (8 December 1914 – 28 May 1947) was a German camp doctor in various concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War. He conducted human medical experimentation at Auschwitz and introduced the proce ...
and
Eduard Wirths
Eduard Wirths (4 September 1909 – 20 September 1945) was the chief SS doctor (''SS-Standortarzt'') at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945. Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the ...
, the "Angel of Death", who worked in Auschwitz II from 30 May 1943, at first in the gypsy family camp.; . Interested in performing research on
identical twins
Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...
, dwarfs, and those with hereditary disease, Mengele set up a kindergarten in barracks 29 and 31 for children he was experimenting on, and for all Romani children under six, where they were given better food rations. From May 1944, he would select twins and dwarfs from among the new arrivals during "selection", reportedly calling for twins with "''Zwillinge heraus!''" ("twins step forward!"). He and other doctors (the latter prisoners) would measure the twins' body parts, photograph them, and subject them to dental, sight and hearing tests, x-rays, blood tests, surgery, and blood transfusions between them. Then he would have them killed and dissected.
Kurt Heissmeyer
Kurt Heissmeyer (26 December 1905 – 29 August 1967) was a Nazi SS physician involved in medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates including children, notably seven-year old Sergio de Simone.
Medical experiments
In order to obtain a ...
, another German doctor and SS officer, took 20 Polish Jewish children from Auschwitz to use in
pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
experiments at the
Neuengamme concentration camp
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...
near Hamburg, where he injected them with the
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
bacilli
Bacilli is a taxonomic class of bacteria that includes two orders, Bacillales and Lactobacillales, which contain several well-known pathogens such as ''Bacillus anthracis'' (the cause of anthrax). ''Bacilli'' are almost exclusively gram-positive ...
to test a cure for tuberculosis. In April 1945, the children were murdered by hanging to conceal the project.
A
Jewish skeleton collection
The Jewish skull collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the Jews' status as ''Untermenschen'' ("sub-humans"), in contrast to the G ...
was obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. Rudolf Brandt and
Wolfram Sievers
Wolfram Sievers (10 July 1905 – 2 June 1948) was ''Reichsgeschäftsführer'', or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945.
Early life
Sievers was born in 1905 in Hildesheim in the Province of Hanover (now in Lower Saxony), the son ...
, general manager of the ''
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...
'' (a Nazi research institute), delivered the skeletons to the collection of the Anatomy Institute at the
Reichsuniversität Straßburg
The Reichsuniversität Straßburg (RUS) was founded 1941 by the National Socialists in Alsace, annexed to Nazi Germany, while the regular University of Strasbourg moved to Clermont-Ferrand in 1940. The purpose was to create a continuity to the G ...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
and under the direction of
August Hirt
August Hirt (28 April 1898 – 2 June 1945) was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II. He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natz ...
. Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and murdered in August 1943. Brandt and Sievers were executed in 1948 after being convicted during the
Doctors' trial
The Doctors' Trial (officially ''United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.'') was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone ...
, part of the
Subsequent Nuremberg trials
The subsequent Nuremberg trials were a series of 12 military tribunals for war crimes against members of the leadership of Nazi Germany between December 1946 and April 1949. They followed the first and best-known Nuremberg trial before the Int ...
.
Punishment, block 11
Prisoners could be beaten and killed by guards and ''kapos'' for the slightest infraction of the rules. Polish historian Irena Strzelecka writes that ''kapos'' were given nicknames that reflected their sadism: "Bloody", "Iron", "The Strangler", "The Boxer". Based on the 275 extant reports of punishment in the Auschwitz archives, Strzelecka lists common infractions: returning a second time for food at mealtimes, removing your own gold teeth to buy bread, breaking into the pigsty to steal the pigs' food, putting your hands in your pockets.
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. Punishment by "the post" involved tying prisoners hands behind their backs with chains attached to hooks, then raising the chains so the prisoners were left dangling by the wrists. If their shoulders were too damaged afterwards to work, they might be sent to the gas chamber. Prisoners were subjected to the post for helping a prisoner who had been beaten, and for picking up a cigarette butt. To extract information from inmates, guards would force their heads onto the stove, and hold them there, burning their faces and eyes.
Known as block 13 until 1941, block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, reserved for inmates suspected of resistance activities. Cell 22 in block 11 was a windowless
standing cell
A standing cell is a special cell constructed so as to prevent the prisoner from doing anything but stand. The ''Stehbunker'' was used in Nazi concentration camps during the Third Reich as a punishment. Standing cells were also used during Jos ...
(''Stehbunker''). Split into four sections, each section measured less than and held four prisoners, who entered it through a hatch near the floor. There was a 5 cm x 5 cm vent for air, covered by a perforated sheet. Strzelecka writes that prisoners might have to spend several nights in cell 22; Wiesław Kielar spent four weeks in it for breaking a pipe. Several rooms in block 11 were deemed the ''Polizei-Ersatz-Gefängnis Myslowitz in Auschwitz'' (Auschwitz branch of the police station at
Mysłowice
Mysłowice ( szl, Myslowicy; german: Myslowitz) is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. The population of the city is 74,085.
It is located in the south district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union in the Silesian Highlan ...
). There were also ''Sonderbehandlung'' cases ("special treatment") for Poles and others regarded as dangerous to Nazi Germany.
Death wall
The courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, known as the "death wall", served as an execution area, including for Poles in the General Government area who had been sentenced to death by a criminal court. The first executions, by shooting inmates in the back of the head, took place at the death wall on 11 November 1941, Poland's
National Independence Day
National Independence Day ( pl, Narodowe Święto Niepodległości) is a national day in Poland celebrated on 11 November to commemorate the anniversary of the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 from the G ...
. The 151 accused were led to the wall one at a time, stripped naked and with their hands tied behind their backs.
Danuta Czech Danuta Czech (1922 – 4 April 2004) was a Polish Holocaust historian and deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. She is known for her book ''The Auschwitz Chronicle: 1939–1945'' (1990).
Background
Czech was ...
noted that a "clandestine
Catholic mass
The Mass is the central liturgical service of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, in which bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. As defined by the Church at the Council of Trent, in the Mass, "the same Christ ...
" was said the following Sunday on the second floor of Block 4 in Auschwitz I, in a narrow space between bunks.
An estimated 4,500 Polish political prisoners were executed at the death wall, including members of the camp resistance. An additional 10,000 Poles were brought to the camp to be executed without being registered. About 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war died by execution, although this is a rough estimate. A Polish government-in-exile report stated that 11,274 prisoners and 6,314 prisoners of war had been executed.
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
wrote that "execution orders arrived in an unbroken stream". According to SS officer
Perry Broad
Pery Broad, also Perry Broad (25 April 1921 – 28 November 1993) was a Brazilian non-commissioned officer in the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) active at Auschwitz concentration camp from April 1942 to 1945. He reached the rank of ''SS-Unterscharführe ...
, " me of these walking skeletons had spent months in the stinking cells, where not even animals would be kept, and they could barely manage to stand straight. And yet, at that last moment, many of them shouted 'Long live Poland', or 'Long live freedom'." The dead included Colonel
Jan Karcz
Jan Karcz (16 October 1892, in Modlica near Kraków – 25 January 1943, in Auschwitz) was a Polish Army Colonel, posthumously promoted to the rank of a Brigadier General.
During the Second World War he was held and murdered in the Birkenau conce ...
and Major
Edward Gött-Getyński
Major Edward Karol Gött-Getyński, or Get-Getyński ''nom-de-guerre'' Sosnowiecki (January 4, 1898 – January 25, 1943) was a Major of Artillery in the Polish Army during the interwar period, and the underground resistance fighter during the ...
, executed on 25 January 1943 with 51 others suspected of resistance activities.
Józef Noji
Józef Noji (8 September 1909 – 15 February 1943) was a Polish long-distance runner.
Noji was one of the best long-distance runners of the Second Polish Republic. At the 1936 Olympics, he finished fifth in the 5000 meter and 14th in the 10000 ...
, the Polish long-distance runner, was executed on 15 February that year. In October 1944, 200 ''Sonderkommando'' were executed for their part in the ''Sonderkommando'' revolt.
Family camps
Gypsy family camp
A separate camp for the
Roma
Roma or ROMA may refer to:
Places Australia
* Roma, Queensland, a town
** Roma Airport
** Roma Courthouse
** Electoral district of Roma, defunct
** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council
*Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
, the ''Zigeunerfamilienlager'' ("Gypsy family camp"), was set up in the BIIe sector of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in February 1943. 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 1942, the latter successfully, and a Polish Romani woman, Stefania Ciuron, arrived on 12 February 1943 and escaped in April.
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
's most infamous physician, worked in the gypsy family camp from 30 May 1943 when he began his work in Auschwitz.
The Auschwitz registry (''Hauptbücher'') shows that 20,946 Roma were registered prisoners, and another 3,000 are thought to have entered unregistered. On 22 March 1943, one transport of 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma was gassed on arrival because of illness, as was a second group of 1,035 on 25 May 1943. The SS tried to liquidate the camp on 16 May 1944, but the Roma fought them, armed with knives and iron pipes, and the SS retreated. Shortly after this, the SS removed nearly 2,908 from the family camp to work, and on 2 August 1944 gassed the other 2,897. Ten thousand remain unaccounted for.
Theresienstadt family camp
The SS deported around 18,000 Jews to Auschwitz from the
Theresienstadt ghetto
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination cam ...
in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, beginning on 8 September 1943 with a transport of 2,293 male and 2,713 female prisoners. Placed in sector BIIb as a "family camp", they were allowed to keep their belongings, wear their own clothes, and write letters to family; they did not have their hair shaved and were not subjected to selection. Correspondence between
block 11
Block 11 was the name of a brick building in Auschwitz I, the ''Stammlager'' or main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp network. This block was used for executions and torture. Between Block 10 and Block 11 stood the "Death Wall" (reconstru ...
in Auschwitz I. The building proved unsuitable, so gassings were conducted instead in crematorium I, also in Auschwitz I, which operated until December 1942. There, more than 700 victims could be killed at once. Tens of thousands were killed in crematorium I. To keep the victims calm, they were told they were to undergo disinfection and Delousing, de-lousing; they were ordered to undress outside, then were locked in the building and gassed. After its decommissioning as a gas chamber, the building was converted to a storage facility and later served as an SS air raid shelter. The gas chamber and crematorium were reconstructed after the war. 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 1942, 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 1944, when large numbers of Hungarian Jews were gassed. In summer 1944 the combined capacity of the crematoria and outdoor incineration pits was 20,000 bodies per day. A planned sixth facility—crematorium VI—was never built.
From 1942, Jews were being transported to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. The gas chambers worked to their fullest capacity from May to July 1944, during the History of the Jews in Hungary#History of the Jews in Hungary, Holocaust in Hungary. A rail spur leading to crematoria II and III in Auschwitz II was completed that May, and a new ramp was built between sectors BI and BII to deliver the victims closer to the gas chambers (images top right). On 29 April the first 1,800 Jews from Hungary arrived at the camp. From 14 May until early July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews, half the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of that period. The crematoria had to be overhauled. 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. The incoming volume was so great that the ''Sonderkommando'' resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.
Selection
According to Polish historian
Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper (born 1941) is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a mo ...
, of the 1,095,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, around 205,000 were registered in the camp and given serial numbers; 25,000 were sent to other camps; and 865,000 were murdered soon after arrival. Adding non-Jewish victims gives a figure of 900,000 who were murdered without being registered.
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. Practically any fault—scars, bandages, boils and emaciation—might provide reason enough to be deemed unfit. Children might be made to walk toward a stick held at a certain height; those who could walk under it were selected for the gas. Inmates unable to walk or who arrived at night were taken to the crematoria on trucks; otherwise the new arrivals were marched there. Their belongings were seized and sorted by inmates in the Kanada warehouses, Auschwitz, "Kanada" warehouses, an area of the camp in sector BIIg that housed 30 barracks used as storage facilities for plundered goods; it derived its name from the inmates' view of Canada as a land of plenty.
Inside the crematoria
The crematoria consisted of a dressing room, gas chamber, and furnace room. In crematoria II and III, the dressing room and gas chamber were underground; in IV and V, they were on the ground floor. The dressing room had numbered hooks on the wall to hang clothes. In crematorium II, there was also a dissection room (''Sezierraum''). SS officers told the victims they had to take a shower and undergo delousing. 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. Some inmates were given soap and a towel. A gas chamber could hold up to 2,000; one former prisoner said it was around 3,000.
The Zyklon B was delivered to the crematoria by a special SS bureau known as the Hygiene Institute. After the doors were shut, SS men dumped in the Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. The victims were usually dead within 10 minutes; Rudolf Höss testified that it took up to 20 minutes. Leib Langfus, a member of the ''Sonderkommando'', buried his diary (written in Yiddish) near crematorium III in Auschwitz II. It was found in 1952, signed "A.Y.R.A":
Use of corpses
''Sonderkommando'' wearing gas masks dragged the bodies from the chamber. They removed glasses and artificial limbs and shaved off the women's hair; women's hair was removed before they entered the gas chamber at Bełżec,
Sobibór
Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.
As ...
, and
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
, but at Auschwitz it was done after death. By 6 February 1943, the Reich Economic Ministry had received 3,000 kg of women's hair from Auschwitz and
Majdanek
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...
. The hair was first cleaned in a solution of sal ammoniac, dried on the brick floor of the crematoria, combed, and placed in paper bags. The hair was shipped to various companies, including one manufacturing plant in Bremen, Bremen-Bluementhal, where workers found tiny coins with Greek letters on some of the braids, possibly from some of the 50,000 Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943. When they liberated the camp in January 1945, the Red Army found 7,000 kg of human hair in bags ready to ship.
Just before cremation, jewelry was removed, along with dental work and teeth containing precious metals. Gold was removed from the teeth of dead prisoners from 23 September 1940 onwards by order of Heinrich Himmler. The work was carried out by members of the ''Sonderkommando'' who were dentists; anyone overlooking dental work might themselves be cremated alive. The gold was sent to the SS Health Service and used by dentists to treat the SS and their families; 50 kg had been collected by 8 October 1942. By early 1944, 10–12 kg of gold were being extracted monthly from victims' teeth.
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 Mortar and pestle, mortars.
Death toll
At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1 million died. Overall 400,207 prisoners were registered in the camp: 268,657 male and 131,560 female. A study in the late 1980s by Polish historian
Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper (born 1941) is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a mo ...
, published by Yad Vashem in 1991, used timetables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate that, of the 1.3 million sent to the camp, 1,082,000 had died there, a figure (rounded up to 1.1 million) that Piper regarded as a minimum.; also see . That figure came to be widely accepted.
The Germans tried to conceal how many they had murdered. In July 1942, according to
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
's post-war memoir, Höss received an order from
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
Richard Glücks
Richard Glücks (; 22 April 1889 – 10 May 1945) was a high-ranking German Nazi official in the SS. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he was Concentration Camps Inspector (CCI), which became ''Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen' ...
, based on records that had been destroyed. Höss regarded this figure as "far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities," he wrote.
Around one in six Jews murdered in the Holocaust died in Auschwitz. By nation, the greatest number of Auschwitz's Jewish victims originated from Hungary, accounting for 430,000 deaths, followed by Poland (300,000), France (69,000), Netherlands (60,000), Greece (55,000), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (46,000), Slovakia (27,000), Belgium (25,000), Germany and Austria (23,000), Yugoslavia (10,000), Italy (7,500), Norway (690), and others (34,000). Timothy Snyder writes that fewer than one percent of the million Soviet Jews murdered in the Holocaust were murdered in Auschwitz. Of the at least 387 Jehovah's Witnesses who were imprisoned at Auschwitz, 132 died in the camp.
Resistance, escapes, and liberation
Camp resistance, flow of information
File:Conspiratorial reportage about Auschwitz death camp 01.jpg, ''Camp of Death'' pamphlet (1942) by Natalia Zarembina
File:Krahelska Pamiętnik więźnia.jpg, Halina Krahelska report from Auschwitz s:pl:Oświęcim - pamiętnik więźnia, Oświęcim, pamiętnik więźnia ("Auschwitz: Diary of a prisoner"), 1942.
File:The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied.pdf, "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", a paper issued by the
Polish government-in-exile
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...
addressed to the Declaration by United Nations, United Nations, 1942
Information about Auschwitz became available to the Allies as a result of reports by Captain Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army who, as "Tomasz Serafiński" (serial number 4859), allowed himself to be arrested in Warsaw and taken to Auschwitz. He was imprisoned there from 22 September 1940 until his escape on 27 April 1943. Michael Fleming (historian), Michael Fleming writes that Pilecki was instructed to sustain morale, organize food, clothing and resistance, prepare to take over the camp if possible, and smuggle information out to the Polish military. Pilecki called his resistance movement Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW, "Union of Military Organization").
The resistance sent out the first oral message about Auschwitz with Dr. Aleksander Wielkopolski, a Polish engineer who was released in October 1940. The following month the Polish underground in Warsaw prepared a report on the basis of that information, ''The camp in Auschwitz'', part of which was published in London in May 1941 in a booklet, ''The German Occupation of Poland'', by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 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 1942, the only British news organization to do so.
On 24 December 1941, 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 1943; the second, Raport W, detailed his life in Auschwitz I and estimated that 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, had been murdered. On 1 July 1942, the ''Polish Fortnightly Review'' published a report describing Birkenau, writing that "prisoners call this supplementary camp 'Paradisal', presumably because there is only one road, leading to Paradise". 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 1941, 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
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...
in London first reported the gassing of prisoners in Auschwitz on 21 July 1942, and reported the gassing of Soviet POWs and Jews on 4 September 1942. In 1943, the ''Kampfgruppe Auschwitz'' (Combat Group Auschwitz) was organized within the camp with the aim of sending out information about what was happening. The ''Sonderkommando'' buried notes in the ground, hoping they would be found by the camp's liberators. The group also smuggled out photographs; the Sonderkommando photographs, ''Sonderkommando'' photographs, of events around the gas chambers in Auschwitz II, were smuggled out of the camp in September 1944 in a toothpaste tube.
According to Fleming, the British press responded, in 1943 and the first half of 1944, either by not publishing reports about Auschwitz or by burying them on the inside pages. The exception was the ''Polish Jewish Observer'', a ''City and East London Observer'' supplement edited by Joel Cang, a former Warsaw correspondent for the ''Manchester Guardian''. 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.
Escapes, ''Auschwitz Protocols''
From the first escape on 6 July 1940 of
Tadeusz Wiejowski Tadeusz Wiejowski (died 1941) was a Polish shoemaker who was the first person to escape the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1941 he was recaptured and committed to the Jasło prison camp, where he was executed.
Auschwitz escape
Tadeusz Wiejowski ...
, at least 802 prisoners (757 men and 45 women) tried to escape from the camp, according to Polish historian Henryk Świebocki. He writes that most escapes were attempted from work sites outside the camp's perimeter fence. Of the 802 escapes, 144 were successful, 327 were caught, and the fate of 331 is unknown.
Four Polish prisoners— (serial number 8502), Kazimierz Piechowski (no. 918), (no. 6438), and Józef Lempart (no. 3419)—escaped successfully on 20 June 1942. 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. They wrote later to Rudolf Höss apologizing for the loss of the vehicle. On 21 July 1944, Polish inmate Jerzy Bielecki (Auschwitz survivor), Jerzy Bielecki dressed in an SS uniform and, using a faked pass, managed to cross the camp's gate with his Jewish girlfriend, Cyla Cybulska, pretending that she was wanted for questioning. Both survived the war. For having saved her, Bielecki was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Jerzy Tabeau (no. 27273, registered as Jerzy Wesołowski) and Roman Cieliczko (no. 27089), both Polish prisoners, escaped on 19 November 1943; Tabeau made contact with the Polish underground and, between December 1943 and early 1944, wrote what became known as the ''Polish Major's report'' about the situation in the camp. On 27 April 1944, Rudolf Vrba (no. 44070) and Alfréd Wetzler (no. 29162) escaped to Slovakia, carrying detailed information to the Slovak Jewish Council about the gas chambers. The distribution of the Vrba-Wetzler report, and Rudolf Vrba#News coverage, publication of parts of it in June 1944, helped to halt the Holocaust in Hungary, deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. On 27 May 1944, Arnost Rosin (no. 29858) and Czesław Mordowicz (no. 84216) also escaped to Slovakia; the Rosin-Mordowicz report was added to the Vrba-Wetzler and Tabeau reports to become what is known as the ''Auschwitz Protocols''. The reports were first published in their entirety in November 1944 by the United States War Refugee Board as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia''.
Bombing proposal
In January 1941 the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, Polish Army and prime minister-in-exile, Władysław Sikorski, arranged for a report to be forwarded to Air Marshal Richard Pierse, head of RAF Bomber Command. Written by Auschwitz prisoners in or around December 1940, the report described the camp's atrocious living conditions and asked the
Polish government-in-exile
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...
to bomb it:
Pierse replied that it was not technically feasible to bomb the camp without harming the prisoners. In May 1944 Slovak rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl suggested that the Allies bomb the rails leading to the camp. Historian David Wyman published an essay in ''Commentary (magazine), Commentary'' in 1978 entitled "Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed", arguing that the United States Army Air Forces could and should have attacked Auschwitz. In his book ''The Abandonment of the Jews, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945'' (1984), Wyman argued that, since the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz III had been bombed three times between August and December 1944 by the US Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, it would have been feasible for the other camps or railway lines to be bombed too. Bernard Wasserstein's ''Britain and the Jews of Europe'' (1979) and Martin Gilbert's ''Auschwitz and the Allies'' (1981) raised similar questions about British inaction. Since the 1990s, other historians have argued that Allied bombing accuracy was not sufficient for Wyman's proposed attack, and that counterfactual history is an inherently problematic endeavor.
''Sonderkommando'' revolt
The '' Sonderkommando'' who worked in the crematoria were witnesses to the mass murder and were therefore regularly murdered themselves. On 7 October 1944, following an announcement that 300 of them were to be sent to a nearby town to clear away rubble—"transfers" were a common ruse for the murder of prisoners—the group, mostly Jews from Greece and Hungary, staged an uprising. They attacked the SS with stones and hammers, killing three of them, and set crematorium IV on fire with rags soaked in oil that they had hidden. Hearing the commotion, the ''Sonderkommando'' at crematorium II believed that a camp uprising had begun and threw their ''Oberkapo'' into a furnace. 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, 212 members of the ''Sonderkommando'' were still alive and 451 had been killed. The dead included Zalman Gradowski, Zalmen Gradowski, who kept notes of his time in Auschwitz and buried them near crematorium III; after the war, another ''Sonderkommando'' member showed the prosecutors where to dig. The notes were published in several formats, including in 2017 as ''From the Heart of Hell''.
Evacuation and death marches
The last mass transports to arrive in Auschwitz were 60,000–70,000 Jews from the Łódź Ghetto, some 2,000 from Theresienstadt, and 8,000 from Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia. The last selection took place on 30 October 1944. On 1 or 2 November 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to halt the mass murder by gas. On 25 November, he ordered that Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria be destroyed. The ''Sonderkommando'' and other prisoners began the job of dismantling the buildings and cleaning up the site. On 18 January 1945, Engelbert Marketsch, a German criminal transferred from
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
, became the last prisoner to be assigned a serial number in Auschwitz, number 202499.
According to Polish historian Andrzej Strzelecki, the evacuation of the camp was one of its "most tragic chapters". Himmler ordered the evacuation of all camps in January 1945, telling camp commanders: "The Führer holds you personally responsible for ... making sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy." The plundered goods from the "Kanada" barracks, together with building supplies, were transported to the German interior. Between 1 December 1944 and 15 January 1945, over one million items of clothing were packed to be shipped out of Auschwitz; 95,000 such parcels were sent to concentration camps in Germany.
Beginning on 17 January, some 58,000 Auschwitz detainees (about two-thirds Jews)—over 20,000 from Auschwitz I and II and over 30,000 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 concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald, Dachau concentration camp, Dachau, Flossenbürg concentration camp, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen concentration camp, Gross-Rosen,
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regu ...
, Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, Dora-Mittelbau, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Ravensbruck, and Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. Fewer than 9,000 remained in the camps, deemed too sick to move. During the marches, the SS shot or otherwise dispatched anyone unable to continue; "execution details" followed the marchers, killing prisoners who lagged behind. Peter Longerich estimated that a quarter of the detainees were thus killed. By December 1944 some 15,000 Jewish prisoners had made it from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated by the British on 15 April 1945.
On 20 January, crematoria II and III were blown up, and on 23 January the "Kanada" warehouses were set on fire; they apparently burned for five days. 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 Red Army's arrival, crematorium V was blown up.
Liberation
The first in the camp complex to be liberated was Auschwitz III, the IG Farben camp at Monowitz; a soldier from the 100th Infantry Division of the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
entered the camp around 9 am on Saturday, 27 January 1945. The 60th Army (Soviet Union), 60th Army of the
1st Ukrainian Front
The 1st Ukrainian Front (Russian: Пéрвый Украи́нский фронт), previously the Voronezh Front (Russian: Воронежский Фронт) was a major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a ...
(also part of the Red Army) arrived in Auschwitz I and II around 3 pm. They found 7,000 prisoners alive in the three main camps, 500 in the other subcamps, and over 600 corpses. Items found included 837,000 women's garments, 370,000 men's suits, 44,000 pairs of shoes, and 7,000 kg of human hair, estimated by the Soviet war crimes commission to have come from 140,000 people. Some of the hair was examined by the Forensic Science Institute in
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
, where it was found to contain traces of hydrogen cyanide, the main ingredient of
Zyklon B
Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...
.
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
described seeing the first four soldiers on horseback approach Auschwitz III, where he had been in the sick bay. They threw "strangely embarrassed glances at the sprawling bodies, at the battered huts and at us few still alive ...":
Georgii Elisavetskii, a Soviet soldier who entered one of the barracks, said in 1980 that he could hear other soldiers telling the inmates: "You are free, comrades!" But they did not respond, so he tried in Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian. Then he used some Yiddish: "They think that I am provoking them. They begin to hide. And only when I said to them: 'Do not be afraid, I am a colonel of Soviet Army and a Jew. We have come to liberate you' ... Finally, as if the barrier collapsed ... they rushed toward us shouting, fell on their knees, kissed the flaps of our overcoats, and threw their arms around our legs."
The Soviet military medical service and Polish Red Cross (PCK) set up field hospitals that looked after 4,500 prisoners suffering from the effects of starvation (mostly diarrhea) and
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
. Local volunteers helped until the Red Cross team arrived from Kraków in early February. In Auschwitz II, the layers of excrement on the barracks floors had to be scraped off with shovels. Water was obtained from snow and from fire-fighting wells. Before more help arrived, 2,200 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 18-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 Polevoy, Boris Polevoi reported on the liberation in ''Pravda'' on 2 February 1945 but made no mention of Jews; inmates were described collectively as "victims of Fascism". It was when the Western Allies arrived in Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau concentration camp, Dachau in April 1945 that the liberation of the camps received extensive coverage.
After the war
Trials of war criminals
Only 789 Auschwitz staff, up to 15 percent, ever stood trial; most of the cases were pursued in Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany. According to Aleksander Lasik, female SS officers were treated more harshly than male; of the 17 women sentenced, four received the death penalty and the others longer prison terms than the men. He writes that this may have been because there were only 200 women overseers, and therefore they were more visible and memorable to the inmates.
Camp commandant
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
was arrested by the British on 11 March 1946 near Flensburg, northern Germany, where he had been working as a farmer under the pseudonym Franz Lang. He was imprisoned in Heide, then transferred to Minden for interrogation, part of the British occupation zone. From there he was taken to Nuremberg to testify for the defense in the trial of ''SS-Obergruppenführer'' Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Höss was straightforward about his own role in the mass murder and said he had followed the orders of
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
. Extradited to Poland on 25 May 1946, he wrote his memoirs in custody, first published in Polish in 1951 then in German in 1958 as ''Kommandant in Auschwitz''. His trial before the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw opened on 11 March 1947; he was sentenced to death on 2 April and hanged in Auschwitz I on 16 April, near crematorium I.
On 25 November 1947, the Auschwitz trial began in
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
, when Poland's Supreme National Tribunal brought to court 40 former Auschwitz staff, including commandant
Arthur Liebehenschel
Arthur Liebehenschel (; 25 November 1901 – 24 January 1948) was a commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government and executed in 1948.
...
, women's camp leader Maria Mandel, and camp leader Hans Aumeier. The trials ended on 22 December 1947, with 23 death sentences, seven life sentences, and nine prison sentences ranging from three to 15 years. Hans Münch, an SS doctor who had several former prisoners testify on his behalf, was the only person to be acquitted.
Other former staff were hanged for war crimes in the Dachau Trials and the Belsen Trial, including camp leaders
Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 Ap ...
,
Franz Hössler
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler (; 4 February 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a Nazi German SS-''Obersturmführer'' and ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World W ...
, and Vinzenz Schöttl; doctor
Friedrich Entress
Friedrich Karl Hermann Entress (8 December 1914 – 28 May 1947) was a German camp doctor in various concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War. He conducted human medical experimentation at Auschwitz and introduced the proce ...
; and guards Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath. Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher, the owner and chief executive officer of the firm Tesch & Stabenow, one of the suppliers of Zyklon B, were arrested by the British after the war and executed for knowingly supplying the chemical for use on humans. The 180-day Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, held in West Germany from 20 December 1963 to 20 August 1965, tried 22 defendants, including two dentists, a doctor, two camp adjudants and the camp's pharmacist. The 700-page indictment, presenting the testimony of 254 witnesses, was accompanied by a 300-page report about the camp, ''Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager'', written by historians from the ''Institute of Contemporary History (Munich), Institut für Zeitgeschichte'' in Germany, including Martin Broszat and Helmut Krausnick. The report became the basis of their book, ''Anatomy of the SS State'' (1968), 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. East Germany also held trials against several former staff members of Auschwitz. One of the defendants they tried was Horst Fischer. Fischer, one of the highest ranking SS physicians in the camp, had personally selected at least 75,000 men, women, and children to be gassed. He was arrested in 1965. The following year, he was convicted of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and guillotined. Fischer was the highest-ranking SS physician from Auschwitz to ever be tried by a German court.
Legacy
In the decades since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a primary symbol of the Holocaust. Historian Timothy D. Snyder attributes this to the camp's high death toll and "unusual combination of an industrial camp complex and a killing facility", which left behind far more witnesses than single-purpose killing facilities such as
Chełmno
Chełmno (; older en, Culm; formerly ) is a town in northern Poland near the Vistula river with 18,915 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of the Chełmno County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship.
Due to its regional importan ...
or
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
. In 2005 the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January, the date of the camp's liberation, as
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of on ...
. Helmut Schmidt visited the site in November 1977, the first West Germany, West German Chancellor of Germany (1949–present), chancellor to do so, followed by his successor, Helmut Kohl, in November 1989. In a statement on the 50th anniversary of the liberation, Kohl said that "[t]he darkest and most awful chapter in German history was written at Auschwitz." In January 2020, world leaders gathered at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to commemorate the 75th anniversary. It was the city's largest-ever political gathering, with over 45 heads of state and world leaders, including royalty. At Auschwitz itself, Reuven Rivlin and Andrzej Duda, the presidents of Israel and Poland, laid wreaths.
Notable memoirists of the camp include
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
,
Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel b ...
, and Tadeusz Borowski. Levi's ''If This is a Man'', first published in Italy in 1947 as ''Se questo è un uomo'', became a classic of Holocaust literature, an "imperishable masterpiece". Wiesel wrote about his imprisonment at Auschwitz in ''Night (memoir), Night'' (1960) and other works, and became a prominent spokesman against ethnic violence; in 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Camp survivor Simone Veil was elected President of the European Parliament, serving from 1979 to 1982. Two Auschwitz victims—Maximilian Kolbe, a priest who volunteered to die by starvation in place of a stranger, and Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism—were named saints of the Catholic Church.
In 2017, a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was. The following year a survey organized by the Claims Conference, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and others found that 41 percent of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66 percent of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was, while 22 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust. A CNN-ComRes poll in 2018 found a similar situation in Europe.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
On 2 July 1947, the Polish government passed a law establishing a state memorial to remember "the martyrdom of the Polish nation and other nations in Oswiecim". The museum established its exhibits at Auschwitz I; after the war, the barracks in Auschwitz II-Birkenau had been mostly dismantled and moved to Warsaw to be used on building sites. 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. An exhibition opened in Auschwitz I in 1955, displaying prisoner mug shots; hair, suitcases, and shoes taken from murdered prisoners; canisters of Zyklon B pellets; and other objects related to the killings.
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
added the camp to its list of
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...
s in 1979. All the museum's directors were, until 1990, former Auschwitz prisoners. Visitors to the site have increased from 492,500 in 2001, to over one million in 2009, to two million in 2016.
There have been protracted disputes over the perceived Christianization of the site. Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass (Roman Rite), mass over the train tracks leading to Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 7 June 1979 and called the camp "the Calvary, Golgotha of our age", referring to the crucifixion of Jesus. More controversy followed when Carmelite nuns founded a convent in 1984 in a former theater outside the camp's perimeter, near block 11 of Auschwitz I, after which a local priest and some survivors Auschwitz cross, erected a large cross—one that had been used during the pope's mass—behind block 11 to commemorate 152 Polish inmates shot by the Germans in 1941. After a long dispute, Pope John Paul II intervened and the nuns moved the convent elsewhere in 1993. The cross remained, triggering the "War of the Crosses", as more crosses were erected to commemorate Christian victims, despite international objections. The Polish government and Catholic Church eventually agreed to remove all but the original.
On 4 September 2003, despite a protest from the museum, three Israeli Air Force F-15 Eagles performed a fly-over of Auschwitz II-Birkenau during a ceremony at the camp below. All three pilots were descendants of Holocaust survivors, including the man who led the flight, Major-General Amir Eshel. On 27 January 2015, some 300 Auschwitz survivors gathered with world leaders under a giant tent at the entrance to Auschwitz II to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation.
Museum curators consider visitors who pick up items from the ground to be thieves, and local police will charge them as such; the maximum penalty is a 10-year prison sentence. In 2017 two British youths from the The Perse School, Perse School were fined in Poland after picking up buttons and shards of decorative glass in 2015 from the "Kanada" area of Auschwitz II, where camp victims' personal effects were stored. The ''Arbeit Macht Frei'' sign over the main camp's gate was stolen in December 2009 by a Swedish former neo-Nazi and two Polish men. The sign was later recovered.
In 2018 the Polish government passed an amendment to its Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it a criminal offence to violate the "good name" of Poland by accusing it of crimes committed by Germany in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, which would include referring to Auschwitz and other camps as "Polish death camp" controversy, "Polish death camps". Staff at the museum were accused by nationalist media in Poland of focusing too much on the fate of the Jews in Auschwitz at the expense of ethnic Poles. The brother of the museum's director, Piotr Cywiński, wrote that Cywiński had experienced "50 days of incessant hatred". After discussions with Israel's prime minister, amid international concern that the new law would stifle research, the Polish government adjusted the amendment so that anyone accusing Poland of complicity would be guilty only of a civil offence.
See also
* Auschwitz Album
* Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation
* Höcker Album
* List of Nazi concentration camps
* List of victims and survivors of Auschwitz
* "Polish death camp" controversy
* Borowski, Tadeusz (1992) [1976]. ''This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen''. Trans. from the Polish by Barbara Vedder. East Rutherford: Penguin Books.
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* Witold Pilecki, Pilecki, Witold (2012). ''The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery''. Trans. from the Polish by Jarek Garlinski. Los Angeles: Aquila Polonica.
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''Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal'' Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 – 1 October 1946.
"Auschwitz" United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
"The Auschwitz Album" Yad Vashem.
Auschwitz-Birkenau photographs by Bill Hunt.
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