AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU LOCATION

• Auschwitz is located in the southern part of Poland, in Lesser Poland province. The nearest tourist city is Krakow, located about 70 km away.

WHO WAS SENT TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMP?

• Although the camp was founded for Poles and had a Polish majority among its prisoners for the first two years it was in operation, there were also Jews among the deportees to Auschwitz from the very start.

• The name "Auschwitz" was a symbol of the Holocaust. Of the more than 5.6 million victims of the Holocaust about 1.1 million people, including one million Jews were murdered in Birkenau. About 900,000 of those deported were murdered immediately after arrival in the gas chambers or shot. Other 200 000 people were murdered by the SS through disease, malnutrition, abuse, medical examinations or subsequent gasification. The countries of origin of most of the victims were Belgium, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. And were sent to there all the people who were considered sub race to Nazism and those who went against it.

FOR WHAT AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU WAS USED?• The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that mass arrests of Poles were

increasing beyond the capacity of existing "local" prisons. Initially, Auschwitz was to be one more concentration camp of the type that the Nazis had been setting up since the early 1930s.

• It functioned in this role throughout its existence, even when, beginning in 1942, it also became the largest of the death camps.

• Auschwitz (1940-1945), one of four Nazi concentration camps founded in occupied territory that was part of the prewar Polish state (the other three were at Majdanek, Warsaw, and Płaszów), was the largest Nazi concentration camp'a place for the gradual annihilation of prisoners and, at the same time, the largest center for the immediate, direct extermination of Jews.

HOW WERE THE CONDITIONS IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP?

• Auschwitz Concentration Camp opened in former Polish army barracks in June 1940. Twenty brick buildings were adapted, of which 6 were two-story and 14 were single-story. At the end of 1940, prisoners began adding second stories to the single-story blocks.

• The following spring, they started erecting 8 new blocks. This work reached completion in the first half of 1942. The result was a complex of 28 two-story blocks, the overwhelming majority of which were used to house prisoners. As a rule, there were two large rooms upstairs and a number of smaller rooms downstairs.

• The blocks were designed to hold about 700 prisoners each after the second stories were added, but in practice they housed up to 1,200.

HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE SENT FOR THIS CONCENTRATION CAMP?

• Were registered around 405.000 prisoners in the concentration camp, but it is known that there were many more sent than this number.

HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED AT THIS CONCENTRATION CAMP?

• Of the 405,000 registered prisoners, 65,000 survived.

• But in total The number of those so executed - also declared irrefutable - was 4.1 million. Then came the Leuchter Report in 1988. This was followed by a "re-evaluation" of the total deaths at Auschwitz (down to 1.1 million).

• Previous to 1992, anyone who publicly doubted the 4.1 million "gassing" deaths at Auschwitz was labeled an anti-Semite, neo-nazi skinhead (at the very least). Quietly, because of revisionist findings, the official figure was lowered to 1.1 million. No mention of that missing 3 million.

WHAT PEOPLE DID TO SURVIVE IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP

• The people had to keep hiding out all time to survive.

• “So I was hiding out in the heap of dead bodies because in the last week when the crematoria didn’t function at all, the bodies were just building up higher and higher. So there I was at nighttime, in the daytime I was roaming around in the camp, and this is where I actually survived, January 27, I was one of the very first, Birkenau was one of the very first camps being liberated. This was my, my survival chance.” —Bart Stern

DATE OF OPENING

• Established: May 26th 1940.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE WAR?

• In October 1944, the 'Sonderkommando' crew crematoria IV revolted and destroyed the crematories. In November Himmler ordered gassings to stop, and a 'cleanup' operation was inaugurated to conceal traces of the mass murder. In January 1945, the Germans evacuated 58,000 prisoners who could walk. They left behind in the main camp, Birkenau and in Monowitz about 7,000 sick or incapacitated who they did not expect would live for long.

WHEN WAS THE CONCENTRATION CAMP LIBERATED, BY WHICH COUNTRY?

• January 27th, 1945, by the Soviet Army.

MOVIES AND IMAGES.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMSzbkYgx4