Auschwitz concentration campFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Auschwitz" and "Auschwitz-Birkenau" redirect here. For the town, see Oświęcim. Distinguish from Austerlitz. Or see Auschwitz

(disambiguation)

Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz [ˈaʊʃvɪts] ( listen)) was

a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in

Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the largest of the Nazi

concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or base camp); Auschwitz II–

Birkenau (the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp); Auschwitz III–Monowitz, also known as

Buna–Monowitz (a labor camp); and 45 satellite camps.[1]

Auschwitz had for a long time been a German name for Oświęcim, the town by and around which

the camps were located; the name "Auschwitz" was made the official name again by the Nazis

after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka

("birch forest"), referred originally to a small Polish village that was destroyed by the Nazis to make

way for the camp.

Auschwitz II–Birkenau was designated by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the Third Reich's

Minister of the Interior, as the place of the "final solution of the Jewish question in Europe". From

early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over

German-occupied Europe.[2] The camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified after the war at

the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there (2.5 million gassed, and

500,000 from disease and starvation).[3] Today the accepted figure is 1.3 million, around 90 percent

of them Jewish.[4][5] Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and

Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, some 400 Jehovah's Witnesses and tens of thousands of

people of diverse nationalities.[6][7] Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced

labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.[8]

On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the

world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the

site of Auschwitz I and II, which by 2010 had seen 29 million visitors—1,300,000 annually—pass

through the iron gates crowned with the infamous motto, Arbeit macht frei ("work makes [you]

free").[3]

Auschwitz

German Nazi Concentration and Extermination

camp (1940-1945).

The main entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau

extermination camp

Location of Auschwitz in contemporary Poland

Coordinates 50°02′09″N 19°10′42″E

Other names Birkenau

Location Auschwitz, Nazi Germany

Operated by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), the

NKVD (after World War II)

Original use Army barracks

Operational May 1940 – January 1945

Inmates mainly Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet

soldiers

Killed 1.1 million (estimated)

Liberated by Soviet Union, January 27, 1945

Notable

inmates

Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi, Witold

Pilecki, Rudolf Vrba, Elie Wiesel,

Maximillian Kolbe

Notable

books

If This Is a Man, Night, Man's

Search for Meaning

Website Auschwitz-Birkenau State

Museum

Contents

1 Camps

1.1 Main camps

1.2 Auschwitz I

1.3 Auschwitz II-Birkenau

1.3.1 The Gypsy camp

1.4 Auschwitz III

1.5 Subcamps

2 Command and control

3 Selection and extermination process

3.1 Life in the camps

3.2 Medical experiments

3.3 Jewish skeleton collection

4 Escapes, resistance, and the Allies' knowledge of the camps

4.1 Underground media

4.2 Birkenau revolt

4.3 Individual escape attempts

5 Evacuation, death marches, and liberation

6 Death toll

7 Timeline of Auschwitz

8 After the war

8.1 Creation of the museum

8.2 "Arbeit macht frei" sign theft

8.3 Israeli Air Force historic flight

9 Gallery

10 See also

11 Notes

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

Camps

Coordinates: 50°02′09″N 19°10′42″E

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Page 1 / 19

The Auschwitz complex of camps was located

administratively in Provinz Oberschlesien of the Third

Reich, Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz, Landkreis Bielitz,

approximately 30 km south of Katowice and 50 km west

of Kraków, as part of the Polish areas annexed by the

Nazis, encompassing a large industrial area rich in natural

resources. There were 48 camps in all. The three main

camps were Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and a

work camp called Auschwitz III-Monowitz, or the Buna.

Auschwitz I served as the administrative center, and was

the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people, mostly

ethnic Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Auschwitz II

was an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager, the site

of the deaths of at least 960,000 Jews, 75,000 Poles, and

some 19,000 Roma. Auschwitz III-Monowitz served as a labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory of

the IG Farben concern. The SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) was the SS organization responsible for

administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich. The SS-TV was an independent unit

within the SS with its own ranks and command structure. Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss was overall commandant of the Auschwitz complex

from May 1940 – November 1943; Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel from November 1943 – May 1944; and Sturmbannführer Richard

Baer from May 1944 – January 1945.

Yisrael Gutman writes that it was in the concentration camps that Hitler's concept of absolute power came to fruition. Primo Levi, who described

his year in Auschwitz in If This Is a Man, wrote:

[N]ever has there existed a state that was really "totalitarian." ... Never has some form of reaction, a corrective of the total tyranny,

been lacking, not even in the Third Reich or Stalin's Soviet Union: in both cases, public opinion, the magistrature, the foreign press,

the churches, the feeling for justice and humanity that ten or twenty years of tyranny were not enough to eradicate, have to a greater

or lesser extent acted as a brake. Only in the Lager [camp] was the restraint from below non-existent, and the power of these small

satraps absolute.[9]

Auschwitz I was the original camp, serving as the administrative center for the whole complex. The site for the

camp (16 one-story buildings) had earlier served as Austrian army and later Polish army artillery barracks. It

was first suggested as a site for a concentration camp for Polish prisoners by SS-Oberführer Arpad Wigand,

an aide to Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Bach-Zelewski had been

searching for a site to house prisoners in the Silesia region as the local prisons were filled to capacity.

Richard Glücks, head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, sent former Sachsenhausen concentration

camp commandant, Walter Eisfeld, to inspect the site. Glücks informed SS- Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler

that a camp would be built on the site on February 21, 1940.[10] Rudolf Höss would oversee the development

of the camp and serve as the first commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Josef Kramer was appointed Höss's

deputy.[11]

Local residents were evicted, including 1,200 people who lived in shacks around the barracks, creating an

empty area of 40 km2, which the Germans called the "interest area of the camp". 300 Jewish residents of

Oświęcim were brought in to lay foundations. From 1940 to 1941 17,000 Polish and Jewish residents of the

western districts of Oświęcim town, from places adjacent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, were expelled.

Germans ordered also expulsions from the villages of Broszkowice, Babice, Brzezinka, Rajsko, Pławy,

Harmęże, Bór, and Budy.[12] The expulsion of Polish civilians was a step towards establishing the Camp

Interest Zone, which was set up to isolate the camp from the outside world and to carry out business activity

to meet the needs of the SS. German and Volksdeutsche settlers moved into some buildings whose Jewish

population had been deported to the ghetto.

Main article: First mass transport to Auschwitz concentration camp

The first prisoners (30 German criminal prisoners from the Sachsenhausen camp) arrived in May

1940, intended to act as functionaries within the prison system. The first transport of 728 Polish

prisoners, which included 20 Jews, arrived on June 14, 1940 from the prison in Tarnów, Poland. They

were interned in the former building of the Polish Tobacco Monopoly adjacent to the site, until the

camp was ready. The inmate population grew quickly, as the camp absorbed Poland's intelligentsia

and dissidents, including the Polish underground resistance. By March 1941, 10,900 were

imprisoned there, most of them Poles.[11]

The SS selected some prisoners, often German criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of the

other inmates (so-called kapos). Although involved in numerous atrocities, only two Kapos were ever

prosecuted for their individual behavior; many were deemed to have had little choice but to act as

they did.[13] The various classes of prisoners were distinguishable by special marks on their clothes; Jews and Soviet prisoners of war were

generally treated the worst. All inmates had to work in the associated arms factories, except on Sundays, which were reserved for cleaning and

showering. The harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the prisoners.

Block 11 of Auschwitz was the "prison within the prison", where violators of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners were made to

spend the nights in "standing cells". These cells were about 1.5 m2 (16 sq ft), and four men would be placed in them; they could do nothing but stand, and were forced during the day to work with the other prisoners. In the basement were located the "starvation cells"; prisoners

incarcerated here were given neither food nor water until they were dead.[14]

In the basement were the "dark cells"; these cells had only a very tiny window, and a solid door.

Main camps

Surveillance photo showing location of

three main camps

Map showing the originating locations in

Europe for deportations to Auschwitz

concentration camp

Auschwitz I

Auschwitz I entrance

50.027606°N 19.203088°E

Map of Auschwitz I, shows Polish

Tobacco Monopoly building; 1940

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Page 2 / 19

Prisoners placed in these cells would gradually suffocate as they used up all of the oxygen in the

cell; sometimes the SS would light a candle in the cell to use up the oxygen more quickly. Many

were subjected to hanging with their hands behind their backs for hours, even days, thus dislocating

their shoulder joints.[15]

On September 3, 1941, deputy camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch experimented on

600 Russian POWs and 250 Polish inmates by gathering them in the basement of Block 11 and

gassing them with Zyklon B, a highly lethal cyanide-based pesticide.[16] This paved the way for the

use of Zyklon B as an instrument for extermination at Auschwitz, and a gas chamber and

crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to

1942, during which time some 60,000 people were killed therein; it was then converted into an air-raid

shelter for the use of the SS. This gas chamber still exists, together with the associated

crematorium, which was reconstructed after the war using the original components, which remained on-site.[17][18]

Construction on Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the extermination camp, began in October 1941 to ease

congestion at the main camp. It was larger than Auschwitz I, and more people passed through its

gates than through Auschwitz I. It was designed to hold several categories of prisoners, and to

function as an extermination camp in the context of Heinrich Himmler's preparations for the Final

Solution of the Jewish Question, the extermination of the Jews.[19] The first gas chamber at Birkenau

was "The Little Red House", a brick cottage converted into a gassing facility by tearing out the inside

and bricking up the walls. It was operational by March 1942. A second brick cottage, "The Little

White House", was similarly converted some weeks later.[20]

The Nazis had committed themselves to the final solution no later than January 20, 1942, the date of

the Wannsee Conference. In his Nuremberg testimony on April 15, 1946, Rudolf Höss, the

commandant of Auschwitz, testified that Heinrich Himmler personally ordered him to prepare

Auschwitz for that purpose:

In the summer of 1941 I was summoned to Berlin to Reichsführer-SS Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to

the effect—I do not remember the exact words—that the Führer had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question. We,

the SS, must carry out that order. If it is not carried out now then the Jews will later on destroy the German people. He had chosen

Auschwitz on account of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site offered space for measures ensuring isolation.[21]

British historian Laurence Rees writes, that Höss may have misremembered the year Himmler said

this. Himmler did indeed visit Höss in the summer of 1941, but there is no evidence that the final

solution had been planned at this stage. Rees writes that the meeting predates the killings of Jewish

men by the Einsatzgruppen in the East and the expansion of the killings in July 1941. It also

predates the Wannsee Conference. Rees speculates that the conversation with Himmler was most

likely in the summer of 1942.[22] The first gassings, using an industrial gas derived from prussic acid

and known by the brand name Zyklon-B, were carried out at Auschwitz in September 1941.[23]

In early 1943, the Nazis decided to increase greatly the gassing capacity of Birkenau. Crematorium

II, originally designed as a mortuary, with morgues in the basement and ground-level furnaces, was

converted into a killing factory by placing a gas-tight door on the morgues and adding vents for

Zyklon-B and ventilation equipment to remove the gas.[24] It went into operation in March.

Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the start as

gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943 all four crematoria were

operational. Most of the victims were killed during the period afterwards.[25]

The camp was staffed partly by prisoners, some of whom were selected to be kapos (orderlies, most of whom were convicts) and

sonderkommandos (workers at the crematoria). The kapos were responsible for keeping order in the barrack huts; the sonderkommandos

prepared new arrivals for gassing (ordering them to remove their clothing and surrender their personal possessions) and transferred corpses from

the gas chambers to the furnaces, having first pulled out any gold that the victims might have had in their teeth. Members of these groups were

killed periodically. The kapos and sonderkommandos were supervised by members of the SS; altogether 6,000 SS members worked at

Auschwitz.

Command of the women's camp, which was separated from the men's area by the incoming railway line, was held in turn by Johanna Langefeld,

Maria Mandel, and Elisabeth Volkenrath.

In December 1942, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to send all Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) to

concentration camps with Auschwitz being one of the main camps; they had been previously sent

to internment camps and ghettos such as the Łódź ghetto, to which 5,000 Ungrika (Hungarian)

Roma from Burgenland, Austria were sent.[26] A separate camp for the Roma was set up at

Auschwitz II-Birkenau known as the Zigeunerfamilienlager ("Gypsy Family Camp"). The first

transport of German Gypsies arrived on February 26, 1943, and housed in Section B-IIe of

Auschwitz II. The "Gypsy Family Camp", which was still under construction at the time, was to

become a separate subcamp within Auschwitz II. The camp would eventually contain 32

residential and six sanitation barracks and house a total of 20,967 Romani men, women, and

children. This does not include a transport of approximately 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma men,

women, and children, previously mentioned, which arrived from Białystok on March 23, 1943.

Some of the people on the transport had typhus; to avoid an outbreak in the camp they were all

murdered in the gas chamber.

Amongst the victims who were killed after being shipped to the "Gypsy camp" was nine-year-old

Block 11

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

Picture of Birkenau taken by an

American surveillance plane, August 25,

1944

The Gypsy camp

Zigeunermischlinge "Gypsy half-breeds"

used in an anthropological study by German

psychologist Eva Justin. They were sent to the

"Gypsy camp" and murdered when the camp

was liquidated

Page 3 / 19

Dutch girl Anna Maria ("Settela") Steinbach, who appears in an iconic, haunting, still image from

a film peering out from a transport train that would take her from the Westerbork detention camp

in the Netherlands to her eventual death in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Steinbach was believed to be Jewish until research uncovered her

Sinti heritage in 1994.[27]

German psychologist Eva Justin did a pseudo-scientific study for her doctoral dissertation, titled "Lebensschicksale artfremd erzogener

Zigeunerkinder und ihrer Nachkommen " (English: "The life history of alien-raised Gypsy children and their descendants"). The objective of the

study was to ascertain the prevalence of "Gypsy traits" in "Zigeunermischlinge ", (Gypsy half-breed) half-Romani children, many half-German,

who were taken from their parents and raised in orphanages and foster homes without any contact with Romani culture.[28]

Of the 41 children in the study at St. Josefspflege orphanage in Mulfingen, Germany, 39 of them (20 boys and 19 girls) were shipped to

Auschwitz on May 6, 1944. Of the 39 children, two survived Auschwitz; all the others were killed, most during the final liquidation of the camp on

the night of August 2–3, 1944.[29]

During the final liquidation of the Gypsy camp, the remaining 2,897 Romani in the camp were sent to the gas chambers.[30] The murder of the

Romani people by the Nazis during World War II is known in the Romani language as "The Porajmos" ("The Devouring").[31]

Main article: Monowitz concentration camp

Monowitz (also called Monowitz-Buna or Auschwitz III), initially established as a subcamp of

Auschwitz concentration camp, became one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration

camp system, with an additional 45 subcamps in the surrounding area. It was named after the town

of Monowice (German, Monowitz) upon which it was built which was located in the annexed portion

of Poland. The camp was established in October 1942 by the SS at the behest of IG Farben

executives to provide slave labor for their Buna Werke (Buna Works) industrial complex. The name

Buna was derived from the butadiene-based synthetic rubber and the chemical symbol for sodium,

Na, utilized in the process of synthetic rubber production developed in Germany. Various other

German industrial enterprises built factories with their own subcamps, such as Siemens-Schuckert's

Bobrek subcamp, close to Monowitz in order to profit from the use of slave labor. The German

armaments manufacturer Krupp, headed by SS member Alfried Krupp, also built their own

manufacturing facilities near Monowitz.[32]

Monowitz was built as an Arbeitslager (work camp), it also contained an

"ArbeitsausbildungLager" ("Labor Education Camp") for non-Jewish prisoners perceived not up to par with German work standards. It held

approximately 12,000 prisoners, the great majority of whom were Jewish, but also contained non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners.

Monowitz prisoners were leased out by the SS to IG Farben to labor at the Buna Werke, a collection of chemical factories including those used

to manufacture Buna (synthetic rubber) and synthetic oil. The SS charged IG Farben three reichsmarks (RM) per hour for unskilled workers,

RM4 per hour for skilled workers and RM1½ for children. Elie Wiesel, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Night, was a teenage inmate at

Monowitz along with his father. The life expectancy of Jewish workers at Buna Werke was three to four months; for those working in the outlying

mines, only one month. Those deemed unfit for work were gassed at Birkenau or sent "to Birkenau" (nach Birkenau), according to a euphemism

used in IG Farben record books.[33][34][35]

Fritz Löhner-Beda (prisoner number 68561) was a popular song lyricist who was murdered in Monowitz-Buna at the behest of an IG Farben

executive, as his friend Raymond van den Straaten testified at the Nuremberg trial of 24 IG Farben executives:

One day, two Buna inmates, Dr. Raymond van den Straaten and Dr. Fritz Löhner-Beda, were going about their work when a party of

visiting I.G. Farben dignitaries passed by. One of the directors pointed to Dr. Löhner-Beda and said to his SS companion, "This

Jewish swine could work a little faster." Another director then chanced the remark, "If they can't work, let them perish in the gas

chamber." After the inspection was over, Dr. Löhner-Beda was pulled out of the work party and was beaten and kicked until, a dying

man, he was left in the arms of his inmate friend, to end his life in I.G. Auschwitz.[36]

Further information: List of subcamps of Auschwitz

There were 45 smaller satellite camps, some of them tens of kilometers from the main camps, with

prisoner populations ranging from several dozen to several thousand.[37] The largest were built at

Trzebinia, Blechhammer and Althammer. Women's subcamps were constructed at Budy, Pławy,

Zabrze, Gleiwitz I, II, III, Rajsko, and Lichtenwerden (now Světlá). The satellite camps were named

Aussenlager (external camp), Nebenlager (extension or subcamp), and Arbeitslager (labor camp).[37]

Danuta Czech of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum writes that most of the satellite camps were

pressed into service on behalf of German industry. Inmates of 28 of them worked for the German

armaments industry. Nine camps were set up near foundries and other metal works, six near coal

mines, six supplied prisoners to work in chemical plants, and three to light industry. One was built

next to a plant making construction materials and another near a food processing plant. Apart from

the weapons and construction industries, prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming.[38]

Main article: SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp

Due to its large size and key role in the Nazi genocide program, the Auschwitz

Concentration Camp encompassed personnel from several different branches of the

SS, some of which held overlapping and shared areas of responsibility. In all, there

were over 7000 members of the SS assigned to Auschwitz during the entirety of the

camp's existence.

Auschwitz III

Buna Werke, Monowitz and subcamps

Subcamps

Prisoners building airplane parts at

Siemens-Schuckert factory at Bobrek sub-

camp

Command and control

Page 4 / 19

The overall command authority for the entire camp was the SS-Economics Main Office,

known as the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt or SS-WVHA. Within the WVHA,

it was Department D (the Concentration Camps Inspectorate) which commanded

directly the activities at Auschwitz.

The command personnel of Auschwitz, who lived on site and ran the camp complex,

were all members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, or the SS-TV. Due to a 1941

personnel directive from the SS Personalhauptamt, members of the SS-TV were also

considered full members of the Waffen-SS. Such personnel were further authorized to

display the Death's Head Collar Patch, indicating full membership in both the SS-TV

and Waffen-SS.

The Gestapo also maintained a large office at Auschwitz, staffed by uniformed Gestapo

officers and personnel. Auschwitz also maintained a medical corps, led by Eduard

Wirths, whose doctors and medical personnel were from various backgrounds in the

SS. The infamous Joseph Mengele, for example, was a combat field doctor in the Waffen-SS before transferring to Auschwitz after being

wounded in combat.

Internal camp order was under the authority of another SS group, answering directly to the Camp Commander through officers known by the title

Lagerführer. Each of the three main camps at Auschwitz was assigned a Lagerführer to which answered several SS-non-commissioned officers

known as Rapportführers. The Rapportführer commanded several Blockführer who oversaw order within individual prisoner barracks. Assisting

the SS with this task was a large collection of Kapos, who were trustee prisoners. SS personnel assigned to the gas chambers were technically

under the same chain of command as other internal camp SS personnel, but in practice were segregated and worked and lived locally on site at

the crematorium. In all, there were usually four SS personnel per gas chamber, led by a non-commissioned officer, who oversaw around one

hundred Jewish prisoners (known as the Sonderkommando) forced to assist in the extermination process. The actual delivery of the gas to the

victims was always handled by the SS, this was accomplished by a special SS unit known as the "Hygiene Division" which would drive Zyklon

B to the crematorium in an ambulance and then empty the canister into the gas chamber. The Hygiene Division was under the control of the

Auschwitz Medical Corps, with the Zyklon B ordered and delivered through the camp supply system.[39]

External camp security was under the authority of an SS unit known as the "Guard Battalion", or Wachbattalion. These guards manned

watchtowers and patrolled the perimeter fences of the camp. During an emergency, such as a prisoner uprising, the Guard Battalion could be

deployed within the camp as the need arose; a scene in the film The Grey Zone depicts the Guard Battalion entering and machine gunning a

crematorium after the Jewish Sonderkommando rose up against the normal contingent of SS guards.

Various administrative and supply SS personnel were also assigned to Auschwitz, usually "out of the way" of the more horrific activities of the

camp, based out of command administrative offices in the main camp of Auschwitz I. Oskar Gröning is one such well known Auschwitz clerk,

who has appeared on several documentaries speaking about life in Auschwitz for the SS, and how living in the camp was in fact an enjoyable

experience.[40] Auschwitz also maintained a motor pool as well as an arsenal from which all the SS personnel would draw weapons and

ammunition, although several of the SS were known to purchase their own handguns and pistols.

In addition to the command and control proper of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the camp further frequently received orders and directives from

other organs of the SS and the Nazi state. The camp itself was located in the Nazi Region of Upper Silesia and therefore under the geographical

control of the corresponding Gauleiter (prior to 1942, the camp had been under geographical jurisdiction of the General Government).

SS-Standartenführer Dr. Enno Lolling, the director of the

Office for Sanitation and Hygiene in the Inspectorate of

Concentration Camps looks over a document with SS-

Sturmbannführer Richard Baer, commandant of Auschwitz,

and his adjutant SS-Obersturmführer Karl-Friedrich Höcker

(left to right)

Furthermore, the camp fell under the subordinate command of the SS and Police Leader of the region and was often issued orders from the SS-

Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA, which was a key SS organization involved in the genocide program. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler

was known to issue orders to the camp commander, bypassing all other chains of command, in response to his own directives. Himmler would

also occasionally receive broad instructions from Adolf Hitler or Hermann Göring, which he would interpret as he saw fit and transmit to the

Auschwitz Camp Commander.

By July 1942, the SS were conducting the

infamous "selections," in which incoming Jews

were divided into those deemed able to work, who

were sent to the right and admitted into the

camp, and those who were sent to the left and

immediately gassed.[42] Prisoners were

transported from all over German-occupied

Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. The SS

forced an orchestra to play as new inmates

walked towards their "selection" and possible

extermination; the musicians had the highest

suicide rate of anyone in the camps, besides

Sonderkommandos.[43] The group selected to

die, about three-quarters of the total, included

almost all children, women with children, all the

elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and

superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be

completely fit. Auschwitz II-Birkenau claimed more victims than any other German extermination camp, despite coming into use after all the

others.

SS officers told the victims they were to take a shower and undergo delousing. The victims would undress in

an outer chamber and walk into the gas chamber, which was disguised as a shower facility, complete with

dummy shower heads. After the doors were shut, SS men would dump in the cyanide pellets via holes in the

roof or windows on the side. In Auschwitz II-Birkenau, more than 20,000 people could be gassed and

cremated each day. The Nazis used a cyanide gas produced from Zyklon B pellets, manufactured by two

companies who had acquired licensing rights to the patent held by IG Farben. Despite the thick concrete

walls of the gas chambers, screaming and moaning from within could be heard outside for 15 to 20 minutes.

Selection and extermination process

Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp)

after disembarking from the transport trains, to be

sent rechts! – to the right – meant labor; links! – to

the left – the gas chambers[clarification needed]. Photo

from the Auschwitz Album (May 1944)

Hungarian Jewish mothers, children, elderly and

infirm sent to the left after 'selection" They would be

murdered in the gas chamber soon after (May

1944)[41]

Page 5 / 19

In one failed attempt to muffle the noise, two motorcycle engines were revved up to full throttle nearby, but the

sound of yelling could be heard over the engines.[44]

Sonderkommandos removed gold teeth from the corpses of gas chamber victims; the gold was melted down

and collected by the SS. The belongings of the arrivals were seized by the SS and sorted in an area of the

camp called "Canada," so-called because Canada was seen as a land of plenty. Many of the SS at the camp

enriched themselves by pilfering the confiscated property.[45]

The gas chambers worked to their fullest capacity from April–July 1944, during the massacre of Hungary's Jews. Hungary was an ally of

Germany during the war, but it had resisted turning over its Jews to the Germans until Germany invaded in March 1944. From April until July 9,

1944, 475,000 Hungarian Jews, half of the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of

that period.[46] The incoming volume was so great that the SS resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.[47]

For most prisoners, the day began before dawn (at 4:30 am according to one report;[49] alternatively, at 3:00 am according to Dr. Miklos Nyiszli,

who entered the camp in May, 1944[50]) with reveille or roll call, with 30 minutes allowed for morning ablutions.

Dr. Nyiszli describes roll call as lasting four hours, beginning 3:00 am, at which time, "guards, armed with rubber clubs, drove the prisoners from

their 'beds.' The prisoners were then ordered to line up outside in rows of five, and "then began the most inhumane part of roll call", during which

the guards and barracks leader swung at the prisoners with closed fists, arranged and rearranged them without a reasonable explanation, and

invented reasons to do such things as order the entire barracks to remain squatting for an hour, their hands raised above their heads, their legs

trembling with fatigue and cold. For even in summer the Auschwitz dawns were cold, and the prisoners' light burlap served as scant protection

against the rain and cold." Nyiszli continues: "This sport continued for several hours", until 7:00 am, when the SS officers arrived. The SS

officers re-inspected and re-counted the ranks, inscribed the numbers in their notebooks, and "If there were any dead in the barracks - and there

were generally five or six a day, sometimes as many as ten - they too had to be present for the inspection. And not only present in name, but

physically present, standing, stark naked, supported by two living prisoners until the muster was over. For, living or dead, the prescribed number

of prisoners had to be present and accounted for."[51]

The prisoners chosen to work as Dr. Josef Mengele's senior medical staff, however, were given civilian clothes, slept in the medical room of the

twelfth "hospital" barracks, and rose to reveille at 7 am for a roll call that took "two or three minutes". The bed-ridden were also counted, "as well

as the previous night's dead. Here too the dead were stretched out beside the living." These prisoners took breakfast in their rooms.[52]

Nyiszli described the diet of the subaltern medical corps ("For three years they had been eating the

KZ bread made from wild chestnuts sprinkled with sawdust"[53]) and of typical prisoners ("a ration of

mouldy bread made from wild chestnuts, a sort of margarine of which the basic ingredient is lignite,

thirty grams of sausage made from the flesh of mangy horses, the whole not to exceed 700 calories.

To wash this ration down a half liter of soup made from nettles and weeds, containing nothing fatty,

no flour, no salt."[54] Certain prisoners selected for in vivo or live medical experimentation (such as

twins and dwarfs) were better fed and clothed (in civilian clothes). Also, "their bunks were comfortable

and possibilities for hygiene were provided."[55]

After roll call, the Kommando, or work details, would walk to their place of work, five abreast, wearing

striped camp fatigues, no underwear, and wooden shoes without socks, most of the time ill-fitting,

which caused great pain. A prisoner's orchestra (such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz) was

forced to play grotesquely cheerful music as the workers marched through the gates in step.[49]

Kapos—prisoners who had been promoted to foremen—were responsible for the prisoners' behavior

while they worked, as was an SS escort. The working day lasted 12 hours during the summer, and a little less in the winter. No rest periods

were allowed. One prisoner would be assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels.[56]

After work, there was a mandatory evening roll call. If a prisoner were missing, the others had to remain standing in place until he were either

found or the reason for his absence discovered, even if it took hours, regardless of the weather conditions. After roll call, there were individual

and collective punishments, depending on what had happened during the day, and after these, the prisoners were allowed to retire to their

blocks for the night to receive their bread rations and water. Curfew was two or three hours later. The prisoners slept in long rows of wooden

bunks, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen.[57]

According to Nyiszli, "Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to

stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all

human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little

more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep".[58]

Main article: Nazi human experimentation

German doctors performed a wide variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors

A Deutsche Reichsbahn

"Güterwagen" (goods wagon),

one of the types used for

deportations

Speech given to condemned Jews by Obersturmführer Franz Hössler

Speech (paraphrased) given by Obersturmführer Franz Hössler to a group of Greek Jews in the undressing

room shortly before the group was led into the gas chamber to be killed:[48]

"On behalf of the camp administration I bid you welcome. This is not a holiday resort but a labor camp. Just as

our soldiers risk their lives at the front to gain victory for the Third Reich, you will have to work here for the

welfare of a new Europe. How you tackle this task is entirely up to you. The chance is there for every one of

you. We shall look after your health, and we shall also offer you well-paid work. After the war we shall assess

everyone according to his merits and treat him accordingly."

"Now, would you please all get undressed. Hang your clothes on the hooks we have provided and please

remember your number [of the hook]. When you've had your bath there will be a bowl of soup and coffee or tea

for all. Oh yes, before I forget, after your bath, please have ready your certificates, diplomas, school reports and

any other documents so that we can employ everybody according to his or her training and ability."

"Would diabetics who are not allowed sugar report to staff on duty after their baths".

Franz Hoessler

Life in the camps

A 14-year-old Polish girl in Auschwitz

1942/43. Prisoner identity photographs,

taken by Wilhelm Brasse.

Medical experiments

Page 6 / 19

tested the efficacy of X-rays as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female

prisoners. Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an effort to glue them

shut. Bayer, then a subsidiary of IG Farben, bought prisoners to use as guinea pigs for testing new

drugs.[59]

The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death".

Particularly interested in research on identical twins, Mengele performed cruel experiments on them,

such as inducing diseases in one twin and killing the other when the first died to perform comparative

autopsies. He also took a special interest in dwarfs, and he deliberately induced gangrene in twins,

dwarfs and other prisoners to study the effects.[60]

Mengele, at the behest of fellow Nazi physician Kurt Heissmeyer, was responsible for picking the

twenty Jewish children to be used in Heissmeyers' pseudoscientific[61] medical experiments at the

Neuengamme concentration camp. These children, at the conclusion of the experiments, were infamously hanged from wall hooks in the

basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg.

Main article: Jewish skeleton collection

The Jewish skeleton collection was obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates at

Auschwitz, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. Rudolf Brandt and

Wolfram Sievers, general manager of the Ahnenerbe, were responsible for collecting the

skeletons for the collection of the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg in

the Alsace region of Occupied France. Due to a typhus epidemic, the candidates chosen for

the skeleton collection were quarantined in order to prevent them from becoming ill and ruining

their value as anatomical specimens; from a letter written by Sievers in June 1943: "Altogether

115 persons were worked on, 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were

Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under quarantine

in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz."

The collection was sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler and under the direction of August Hirt.

Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof. The deaths of 86 of these

inmates were, in the words of Hirt, "induced" at a jury rigged gassing facility over the course of

a few days in August 1943. One of the victims was shot by the SS when he fought entering

the gas chamber. The corpses of 57 men and 29 women were sent to Strasbourg. Josef

Kramer who would become the last commandant of Bergen Belsen personally carried out the

gassing of 80 of the victims. In 1944 with the approach of the Allies, there was concern over

the possibility of the corpses being discovered; at this point they had still not been defleshed. The first part of the process for this "collection"

was to make anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons. In September 1944 Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The

collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing – at least in

part – and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards."

Brandt and Sievers would be indicted, tried and convicted in the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg. Hirt committed suicide in Schonenbach, Austria, on

June 2, 1945 with a gunshot to the head.[62][63]

The names and biographical information of the murder victims were published in the book Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers)

by German historian Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang.[64]

Further information: Auschwitz bombing debate, Witold Pilecki, and Rudolf Vrba

Information regarding Auschwitz was available to the Allies during the years 1940–43 by the accurate

and frequent reports of Polish Army Captain Witold Pilecki. Pilecki was the only known person to

volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp, spending 945 days there, not only

actively gathering evidence of genocide and supplying it to the British in London by Polish resistance

movement organization Home Army but also organizing resistance structures at the camp known as

ZOW, Związek Organizacji Wojskowej.[65] His first report was smuggled to the outside world in

November 1940, through an inmate who was released from the camp.[66] He eventually escaped on

April 27, 1943, but his personal report of mass killings was dismissed as exaggeration by the Allies,

as were his previous ones.[67]

The attitude of the Allies changed with receipt of the very detailed Vrba–Wetzler report, compiled by two Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and

Alfréd Wetzler, who escaped on April 7, 1944, and which finally convinced Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz. Details from the Vrba-

Wetzler report were broadcast on June 15, 1944 by the BBC, and on June 20 by The New York Times, causing the Allies to put pressure on the

Hungarian government to stop the mass deportation of Jews to the camp.[68]

Starting with a plea from the Slovakian rabbi Weissmandl in May 1944, there was a growing campaign to persuade the Allies to bomb

Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it. At one point Winston Churchill ordered that such a plan be prepared, but he was told that bombing

the camp would most likely kill prisoners without disrupting the killing operation, and that bombing the railway lines was not technically feasible.

The debate over what could have been done, or what should have been attempted even if success was unlikely, has continued ever since.

Inmates were able to distribute information from the camp without escaping themselves. The Auschwitzer Echo was an underground newspaper

published by inmates and distributed as well to the resistance movement in Kraków.[69] Writers included the Communist Party member Bruno

Baum. A shortwave transmitter hidden in Block 11 sent information directly to the Polish government-in-exile in London.[70] These reports were

the first revelation about the Holocaust and were the principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Nonetheless, those

reports were for a long time discarded as "too extreme" by the Allies.[71]

Block 10, the medical experimentation

block

Jewish skeleton collection

The cadaver of Berlin dairy merchant Menachem

Taffel. Deported to Auschwitz in March 1943 along

with his wife and child who were gassed upon

arrival. He was chosen to be an anatomical

specimen, shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and

murdered in the gas chamber in August 1943

Escapes, resistance, and the Allies' knowledge of the camps

Witold Pilecki, the only known person to

volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz

concentration camp (1941)

Underground media

Birkenau revolt

Page 7 / 19

By 1943, resistance organizations had developed in the camp. These organizations helped a few

prisoners escape; these escapees took with them news of exterminations, such as the killing of

hundreds of thousands of Jews transported from Hungary between May and July 1944. On October 7,

1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (those inmates kept separate from the main camp and put to

work in the gas chambers and crematoria) of Birkenau Kommando III staged an uprising. They

attacked the SS with makeshift weapons: stones, axes, hammers, other work tools and homemade

grenades. They caught the SS guards by surprise, overpowered them and blew up the Crematorium

IV, using explosives smuggled in from a weapons factory by female inmates. At this stage they were

joined by the Birkenau Kommando I of the Crematorium II, which also overpowered their guards and

broke out of the compound. Hundreds of prisoners escaped, but were all soon captured and, along

with an additional group who participated in the revolt, executed.[72]

There were also plans for a general uprising in Auschwitz, coordinated with an Allied air raid and a

Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa, Home Army) attack from the outside.[67] That plan was authored

by Polish resistance fighter, Witold Pilecki, who organized in Auschwitz an underground Union of Military Organization – (Związek Organizacji

Wojskowej, ZOW). Pilecki and ZOW hoped that the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp (most likely the Polish 1st Independent

Parachute Brigade, based in Britain), and that the Home Army would organize an assault on the camp from outside. By 1943, however, he

realized that the Allies had no such plans. Meanwhile, the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many

of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid

option. He escaped on the night of April 26 – 27, 1943, but his plan was not accepted by the Home Army as the Allies considered his reports

about the Holocaust exaggerated.[67]

The post of Crematorium Chief was held consecutively by:

SS - Hauptscharführer Otto Moll

SS - Hauptscharführer Hirsch

SS - Unterscharführer Steinberg

SS - Scharführer Hubert Busch

SS - Oberscharführer Eric Muhsfeldt

SS - Oberscharführer Peter Voss

"In the last period of the camps existence the prisoners of the Sonderkommando were used to remove traces of the crime. In October 1944 they

were employed in pulling down the walls of the burnt out crematorium IV, and in November 1944 they dismantled the technical installations of

the gas chamber and ovens in crematoria II and III which were then blown up.

Lastly, a Polish report in 1946 by Dr. Filip Friedman and Tadeusz discovered the use of a gas van at Auschwitz, used to liquidate people

sentenced to death by the special police court, which convened throughout the war at Auschwitz."

On 19 January 1942 SS Sergeant Ulmer of the Central Construction Administration of Auschwitz completed the plans for the construction of

Crematoria II and III in Birkenau, which commenced in the summer of 1942.

[73] The driver was named Arndt, Oberwachtmeister der Polizei-Sonderkommando.

At least 802 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, of

which 144 were successful. The fates of 331 of the escapees are still unknown.[74] A common punishment

for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested

and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others. If someone did manage to escape, the

SS would pick 10 people at random from the prisoner's block and starve them to death.[75]

The most spectacular escape from Auschwitz took place on June 20, 1942, when Ukrainian Eugeniusz

Bendera and three Poles, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart made a daring

escape.[76] The escapees were dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed and in an

SS staff car. They drove out the main gate in a stolen automobile, a Steyr 220 belonging to Rudolf Höss.

Jaster carried with him a report about conditions in the camp, written by Witold Pilecki. The Germans never

recaptured any of them.[77]

In 1943, the "Kampfgruppe Auschwitz" was organized with the aim to send out as much information about

what was happening in Auschwitz as possible. They buried notes in the ground in the hope a liberator would

find them and smuggled out photos of the crematoria and gas chambers.[78]

June 24, 1944, Mala Zimetbaum escaped with her Polish boyfriend, Edek Galinski. They also wanted to

smuggle out deportation lists Zimetbaum had been able to copy due to her translator job in the office of the "Lagerleitung". They both were

arrested on July 6 near the Slovakian frontier and sentenced to be executed on September 15, 1944 in Birkenau; Galinski managed to kill

himself before being executed, while Zimetbaum, having failed to commit suicide, died finally after being tortured by the SS.[79]

Further information: Death marches (Holocaust)

The last selection took place on October 30, 1944. The next month,

Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoria destroyed before the Red

Army reached the camp. The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown

up by the SS in January 1945 in an attempt to hide the German

crimes from the advancing Soviet troops.[81] The SS command sent

orders on January 17, 1945 calling for the execution of all prisoners

remaining in the camp, but in the chaos of the Nazi retreat the order

was never carried out. On January 17, 1945, Nazi personnel started to

evacuate the facility. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced on a death

march toward a camp in Wodzisław Śląski (German: Loslau). Those

Ruins of Crematorium IV, blown up in the

revolt

Individual escape attempts

Twenty-two-year-old Mala

Zimetbaum briefly escaped

Auschwitz

Evacuation, death marches, and liberation

A Death march in the final days of the

war[80]

Survivors at the camp liberated by the

Red Army in January 1945

Page 8 / 19

too weak or sick to walk were left behind. These remaining 7,500

prisoners were liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Approximately 20,000 Auschwitz prisoners made it to

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the British in April 1945.[82] Among the artifacts of industrial-scale

mass murder found by the Russians were 348,820 men's suits and 836,255 women's garments.

The exact number of victims at Auschwitz is impossible to fix with certainty. Since the

Nazis destroyed a number of records, immediate efforts to count the dead depended on

the testimony of witnesses and the defendants on trial at Nuremberg. While under

interrogation Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to

1943, said that Adolf Eichmann told him that two and a half million Jews had been killed in

gas chambers and about half a million had died "naturally". Later he wrote "I regard two

and a half million far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities".[85]

Communist Polish and Soviet authorities maintained a figure "between 2.5 and 4 million",[86] and the Auschwitz State Museum itself displayed a figure of 4 million killed, but "[f]ew

(if any) historians ever believed the Museum's four million figure".[87] Raul Hilberg's 1961

work The Destruction of the European Jews estimated the number killed at 1,000,000, and

Gerald Reitlinger's 1968 book The Final Solution described the Soviet figures as

"ridiculous", and estimated the number killed at "800,000 to 900,000".[87]

In 1983, French scholar George Wellers was one of the first to use German data on

deportations to estimate the number killed at Auschwitz, arriving at 1.613 million dead,

including 1.44 million Jews and 146,000 Poles.[88] A larger study started later by

Franciszek Piper used timetables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate 960,000 Jewish deaths and 140,000–150,000

ethnic Polish victims, along with 23,000 Roma and Sinti,[89] a figure that has met with significant agreement from other scholars.[90]

After the collapse of the Communist government in 1989, the plaque at Auschwitz State Museum was removed and the official death toll given

as 1.1 million. Holocaust deniers have attempted to use this change as propaganda, in the words of the Nizkor Project:

Deniers often use the 'Four Million Variant' as a stepping stone to leap from an apparent contradiction to the idea that the

Holocaust was a hoax, again perpetrated by a conspiracy. They hope to discredit historians by making them seem inconsistent. If

they can't keep their numbers straight, their reasoning goes, how can we say that their evidence for the Holocaust is credible?

One must wonder which historians they speak of, as most have been remarkably consistent in their estimates of a million or so

dead ... Few (if any) historians ever believed the Museum's four million figure, having arrived at their own estimates independently.

The museum's inflated figures were never part of the estimated five to six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, so there is no need

to revise this figure.[87]

Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest known survivor of Auschwitz, passed away at the age of 108 on 21 October 2012. He died in the northwestern

Polish town of Dębno, according to Jarosław Mensfelt, a spokesman at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[91]

The timeline of events at the Auschwitz concentration camp began in January 1940 when the location was first visited by Arpad Wigand, an aide

to the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. The original intent of the camp was to intern Polish political

prisoners. The original uses of the camp were added to and the capacity expanded over the course of the next four years, which reflected the

political and economic decisions of the Third Reich, including the implementation of the Final Solution.

Death toll

Hungarian Jewish children and an elderly woman on

the way to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau

(1944). Many children and elderly were murdered

immediately after arrival and were never registered.[83]

[84]

Timeline of Auschwitz

Timeline of Auschwitz

February 21,

1940

In January Arpad Wigand, aide to Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer for Silesia Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski,

suggests the Polish military barracks at Oświęcim as a site for a concentration camp for Polish

prisoners. Inspector of concentration camps Richard Glücks sends Sachenhausen commandant Walter

Eisfeld to inspect the site. On February 21 Glücks informs Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that the

site will be developed into a concentration camp.[92]

May 20, 1940

The first prisoners, 30 German career criminals from Sachsenhausen, arrive. Most will be made kapos;

prisoner no. 1 is a German of Polish descent, Bruno Brodniewicz. Among this group is Kurt Pachala

from Breslau (prisoner no. 24) who was tortured and then sent to a "standing cell" in the basement of

Block 11 where he died of thirst and hunger on January 14, 1943 as punishment for the June 20, 1942

escape of four prisoners.[93]

[94]

June 14,

1940

First mass transport, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów. They are held in the

building which housed the Polish Tobacco Monopoly, until the camp is ready. Among the prisoners is

Edward Galinski who would later make an escape with his girlfriend.[95]

March 1,

1941

Reichsführer SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler inspects the camp. Because nearby

factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the camp's capacity. On this visit,

he orders both the expansion of Auschwitz I camp facilities to hold 30,000 prisoners and the building of a

camp near Birkenau for an expected influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Himmler also orders that

the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for forced labor to construct an IG Farben factory complex at Dwory,

about a mile away. Himmler made additional visits to Auschwitz in 1942, when he witnessed the killing of

Page 9 / 19

prisoners in the gas chambers.

September

3, 1941

The first gassings of prisoners occur in Auschwitz I. The SS tests Zyklon B gas by killing 600 Soviet

prisoners of war and 250 other ill or weak prisoners. Testing takes place in a makeshift gas chamber in

the cellar of Block 11 in Auschwitz I. The success of these experiments leads to the adoption of Zyklon

B as the killing agent for Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

January 25,

1942

Himmler informs Richard Glücks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, that 100,000 Jewish men and

50,000 Jewish women are to be deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers.

March 27,

1942

Deportations of Jews from France commence, primarily from Drancy internment camp. In total,

approximately 75,000 French Jews are transported to Auschwitz (see Timeline of deportations of French

Jews to death camps).[96]

February 15,

1942

The first transport of Jews from Bytom (Beuthen) in German-annexed Upper Silesia arrives in Auschwitz

I. The SS camp authorities kill all those on the transport immediately upon arrival with Zyklon B gas.

German SS and police authorities deport around 175,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.

April 29, 1942 First transport of Slovakian Jews arrives.[44]

June 20,

1942

Polish political prisoner Kazimierz Piechowski (prisoner 918), and three other prisoners, Stanisław

Gustaw Jaster, Józef Lempart, and Eugeniusz Bendera, escaped from Auschwitz I. They dressed as

members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed. They stole an SS staff car, a Steyr 220 belonging to

Rudolf Höss, from the motor pool and drove out the main gate. The escape was facilitated by

Piechowski's fluent command of German. As they drove toward the gate he told the guards to hurry up

and open it. None of the four were recaptured.[97][98]

August 4,

1942

First transport of Jews from Belgium are deported to Auschwitz. Due to rescue efforts by resistance

groups in Belgium, approximately 25,000 of the country's 57,000 registered Jews find hiding within the

country and survive the war.[99][100]

January 1,

1943 – March

31, 1943

German SS and police authorities deport approximately 105,000 Jews to Auschwitz.

January 29,

1943

The Reich Central Office for Security orders all designated Roma residing in Germany, Austria, and the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to be deported to Auschwitz.

February 26,

1943

The first transport of Roma from Germany arrives. The SS authorities house them in Section B-IIe of

Auschwitz-Birkenau, which becomes known as the "Zigeunerlager or the Roma family camp." By the end

of 1943 more than 18,000 Roma were incarcerated there, and 23,000 deported to other parts of the camp

complex.

March 13,

1943

Out of a transport of 2,000 Jews from the Kraków Ghetto, 1,492 are gassed in the basement gas

chamber of Crematorium II at Birkenau in the evening. This operation tests the gas chamber's ventilation

and air extraction equipment installed by J.A. Topf engineer Heinrich Messing, who declared it

operational earlier that day.[101]

March 22,

1943Crematorium IV is ready for use.[102]

March 31,

1943

Crematorium II is handed over to the Auschwitz authorities.[101] Holocaust scholar Robert Jan van Pelt

comments that more people lost their lives in this room than in any other room on Earth: 500,000 people.[103]

April 4, 1943 Crematorium V is ready for use.[102]

April 22, 1943

Transport 20 from the transit camp in Mechelen, Belgium arrives in Auschwitz. A Jewish doctor, Youra

Livschitz, and his two non-Jewish high school friends Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon, managed

to stop the train on the tracks with only a lantern and a handgun when it rounded a curve in

Boortmeerbeek, Belgium and open the doors on some of the rail cars. Some prisoners managed to

escape then, over 200 more jumped from the train en route.[104]

April 26–27, Witold Pilecki escapes during the night. He would later take part in the Warsaw Uprising, get captured

Page 10 / 19

1943 and spend the remainder of the war in P.O.W. camps.

May 30, 1943

Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz. He often took part in "selections" of incoming prisoners on the ramp

at Birkenau. During his time at Auschwitz he engaged in pseudoscientific experiments on camp inmates.

He had a special fascination with twins. Mengele was known as "the Angel of Death". He escaped to

South America after the war and was never brought to justice.[105]

June 24,

1943

Crematorium III is ready for use.[106]

July 19, 1943

Largest mass hanging at Auschwitz, public gallows constructed of train rails and railroad ties,

specifically constructed to simultaneously hang 12 Polish prisoners, part of the Survey Kommando, for

helping three prisoners escape. Two of the hanged are Boguslaw Ohrt: [no. 367] and Janusz

Pogonowskino [no. 253][107]

February 21,

1944Primo Levi arrives in the camp from Italy.

April 7, 1944

Two Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, escape and pass a 32-page report of what is

happening in the camp to Jewish officials in Slovakia. Their information becomes known as the Vrba-

Wetzler report.

May 2, 1944

The first two transports of Hungarian Jews arrive in Auschwitz. Throughout May and June 1944,

Hungarian Jews are deported to the camp at a rate of 12,000 a day.

May 16, 1944

Elie Wiesel arrives with his family on or around this date. His mother and youngest sister are

immediately sent to be gassed.

May 22, 1944

Romani-Sinti, deported from the Netherlands arrive in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Settela Steinbach, an eleven-

year-old Sinti girl is caught on film peering out from the transport on May 19, by Jewish prisoner Rudolf

Breslauer, who was ordered to film the deportation by the commandant of the Westerbork transit camp.

Settela would die in the gas chamber.

June 6, 1944 The Allies land in Normandy, France to begin the liberation of Western Europe.

June 15 and

20, 1944

The first reports regarded as credible that describe the mass murder taking place in the camp are

published by the BBC and The New York Times respectively, based on the Vrba-Wetzler report.

June 24,

1944

Polish born Jewish girl Mala Zimetbaum (prisoner no. 19880) and her Polish boyfriend Edward "Edek"

Galinski (prisoner no. 518) escape from Birkenau. Galinski, one of the first deportees to Auschwitz, was

wearing an SS uniform provided to him by SS-Rottenfuehrer Edward Lubusch, an ethnic German raised

in Poland. They were caught on July 6, 1944 and returned to Auschwitz. They were imprisoned in

separate cells in Block 11; both were sentenced to death. On September 15, 1944, Galinski was hung.

Mala slit her wrists with a razor blade interrupting her execution. She was, according to various accounts

taken to the crematorium to be burned alive. It is not known whether that occurred or she was shot in the

crematorium.[108][109]

July 7, 1944

In response to the publication of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, governments around the world put pressure on

Regent Miklós Horthy of Hungary to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, which he does

on July 7, 1944.

August 2–3,

1944

The Zigeunerlager family is liquidated during the night; 2,897 men, women, and children perish in the gas

chamber; 1,400 surviving men and women are transferred to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck for slave

labor. An estimated 20,000 Roma were killed there in Auschwitz. Among the murdered are Romani

mischlinge, used by Nazi race scientist Eva Justin in her pseudoscientific race research.

August 12–

13, 1944

Almost 6,000 residents of Warsaw are transported to Auschwitz in response to the Warsaw Uprising

(approximately twice as many females as males, including over a thousand children).

September

3, 1944

Anne Frank is transported to Auschwitz along with her mother Edith and sister Margot; on October 28,

1944 Anne and Margot were chosen in a selection to be transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Edith was left

behind where it was reported she died of starvation. Anne and Margot would both die in March 1945 in

the typhus epidemic at Bergen-Belsen only weeks before the camp's liberation by the British on April 15,

1945.[110]

Page 11 / 19

Main article: Auschwitz Trial

After the war, parts of Auschwitz 1 and/or its guards' quarters served first as a hospital for sick

liberated prisoners.[113] Until 1947 some of the facilities were used as an NKVD and MBP

prison camp. The Buna–Werke were taken over by the Polish government and became the

foundation for the region's chemical industry. At Auschwitz 1 the Gestapo building was

demolished and on its site was built a gallows on which Standartenführer SS Rudolf Höss was

hanged on April 17, 1947 for numerous war crimes.[114] On November 24, 1947, the

Auschwitz trial began in Kraków, when the Poland's Supreme National Tribunal tried 41 former

staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps complex. The trials ended on December 22, 1947,

with 23 death sentences issued, as well as 16 imprisonments ranging from life sentence to 3

years.

After liberation, local Polish farming population returning to the area searched the ruins of

Birkenau thoroughly for re-usable fallen bricks, so they could rebuild farm buildings for shelter

needed for the next winter. That explains the "missing rubble" argument brought up by

Holocaust deniers.[citation needed]

Today, at Birkenau the entrance building and some of the southern brick-built barracks survive; but of the almost 300 wooden barracks, only 19

September

4, 1944

A transport of 3,087 predominantly Polish men, women, and children from Warsaw arrive in Auschwitz in

retribution for the Warsaw uprising.

September

13 and 17,

1944

Another 4,000 predominantly Polish men and boys from Warsaw arrive in Auschwitz as retribution for the

uprising.

October 7,

1944

Members of the Jewish prisoner "special detachment" (Sonderkommando) that was forced to remove

bodies from the gas chambers and operate the crematoria stage an uprising. They successfully blow up

Crematorium IV and kill several guards. Women prisoners had smuggled gunpowder out of nearby

factories to members of the Sonderkommando. The SS quickly suppresses the revolt and kills all the

Sonderkommando members.

October 30,

1944

The last selections take place on the Jewish ramp at Birkenau; 1,689 people from a transport from

Theresienstadt concentration camp are sent to the gas chambers. After this, only individuals are gassed

after selection within the camp. The last 13 people to be killed this way were women, gassed or shot in

crematorium II on November 25.[111]

November

25, 1944

As Soviet forces approach, SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau

gas chambers and crematoria. During this attempt to destroy the evidence of mass killings, prisoners are

forced to dismantle and dynamite the structures.

November

27, 1944

Twenty Jewish children, 10 boys and 10 girls ages 5 to 12, are selected from Block 10, by Josef

Mengele at the behest of Kurt Heissmeyer. The children are sent to Neuengamme concentration camp.

There they are infected with tuberculosis and subjected to medical experimentation. They are ultimately

murdered by being hanged in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg.[112]

January 12,

1945

The Red Army launches the Vistula-Oder Offensive; Soviet troops liberate Łódź on January 17, only 877

Jews remain in the ghetto out of a high of 163,177 people in 1941; Warsaw and Kraków are both

liberated on January 19. The advance heads toward Oświęcim.

January 18–

27, 1945

As Soviet units approach the camp, the SS evacuates prisoners to the west. Tens of thousands, mostly

Jews, are forced to march to the cities of Loslau and Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia. During the march, SS

guards shoot anyone who cannot continue. In Loslau and Gleiwitz, the prisoners are placed on unheated

freight trains and deported to concentration camps in Germany, particularly to Flossenbürg,

Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Dachau, and to Mauthausen in Austria. Nearly 60,000

prisoners are forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system. As many as 15,000 die.

Thousands more are killed in the days before the evacuation.

January 27,

1945 Soviet troops enter the Auschwitz camp complex and liberate 7,000 prisoners, including children.

March 11,

1946

British troops capture the camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, who is living as a farmer called Franz

Lang.

April 16, 1947 Poland sentences Rudolf Höss to death on April 2, 1947 and he is hanged on April 16.

After the war

Ruins of inmates' barracks at Birkenau

Page 12 / 19

have been reconstructed from authentic materials: 18 near the entrance building and one, on its own, farther away. All that survives of the others

are chimneys, remnants of a largely ineffective means of heating. Many of these wooden buildings were constructed from prefabricated sections

made by a company that intended them to be used as stables; inside, numerous metal rings for the tethering of horses can still be seen.

Main article: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Polish government decided to restore Auschwitz I and turn it into a museum honouring the victims of

Nazism; Auschwitz II, where buildings (many of which were prefabricated wood structures) were prone to

decay, was preserved but not restored. Today, the Auschwitz I museum site combines elements from several

periods into a single complex: for example the gas chamber at Auschwitz I (which had been converted into an

air-raid shelter for the SS) was restored and the fence was moved (because of building work being done after

the war but before the museum was established). However, in most cases the departure from the historical

truth is minor, and is clearly labelled. The museum contains many men's, women's and children's shoes

taken from their victims; also suitcases, which the deportees were encouraged to bring with them, and many

household utensils. One display case, some 30 metres (98 ft) long, is wholly filled with human hair which the

Nazis gathered from people before they were sent to labor or before and after they were killed.

Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are open to the public. The camp is on the list of

UNESCO World Heritage Sites.[115] The ashes of the victims were scattered between the huts, and the entire

area is regarded as a grave site. Most of the buildings of Auschwitz I are still standing. The public entrance

area is outside the perimeter fence in what was the camp admission building, where new prisoners were

registered and given their uniforms. At the far end of Birkenau are memorial plaques in many languages,

including Romani.

Creation of the museum

Gallows in Auschwitz I where

Rudolf Höss was executed on

April 16, 1947

50.027683°N 19.206267°E

The museum has allowed scenes for three films to be filmed on the site: Pasażerka (1963) by Polish director Andrzej Munk, Landscape After

the Battle (1970) by Polish director Andrzej Wajda, and a television miniseries War and Remembrance (1978). Permission was denied to

Steven Spielberg to film scenes for Schindler's List (1993). A "mirror" camp was constructed outside the infamous archway for the scene where

the train arrives carrying the women who were saved by Oskar Schindler.

The 5-metre (16 ft), 41-kilogram (90 lb) wrought-iron "Arbeit macht frei" sign over the entrance to

Auschwitz I was stolen in the early morning of December 18, 2009. The thieves unscrewed the sign

at one end and broke it off its mountings at the other end, then carried the sign 300 metres to a hole

in the concrete wall, where they cut four metal bars blocking the opening. After the theft, authorities

replaced the stolen sign with a replica, which was originally made to replace the original sign while it

was being restored some years earlier.[116] Shortly afterward, border control security was increased,

and random police checks occurred.[117]

Police found the sign, cut into three parts, in northern Poland two days later in the home of one of five

men who were arrested. An unnamed overseas buyer is believed to have been involved.[118] Polish

police said that the five were common thieves, not neo-Nazis.[119][120] The original sign was welded

back together on site and will probably form part of a new exhibition.[121] An improved security

system will be put in place.[122][123]

The sign was made by Polish workers on Nazi orders after the Auschwitz barracks were converted into a labor camp to house captured Polish

resistance fighters in 1940.[124]

The Aftonbladet newspaper reported that the sign had been stolen by Polish thieves paid by and working on behalf of a Swedish right-wing

extremist group hoping to use proceeds from the proposed sale of the sign to a collector of Nazi memorabilia, to finance a series of terror

attacks aimed at influencing voters in upcoming Swedish parliamentary elections.[125][126] The theft was organised by the Swedish former Nazi,

Anders Högström.[127]

On March 18, 2010, a Polish court sentenced three men to prison for stealing the sign. They pleaded guilty. The sentences were from 18

months to 30 months. They were fined £2,300 each.[128] Two of them were granted compassionate leave, but in April the three did not report to

the prison to serve their sentences, and police were trying to find them.[129][130][131]

It has been announced that the sign will not be returned to its old location, but rather will only be shown in an enclosed room of the museum.[132]

On 4 September 2003 a formation of three Israel Air Force F-15 Eagles performed on a fly-over of Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the same time a

ceremony took place at the camp below, where the names of victims of the transport that arrived at Auschwitz on 4 September 1943 were read.

At the request of the Israeli Defence Forces delegation to Poland, Yad Vashem employees had searched the Hall of Names for individuals who

were murdered on the same day.[133][134] The flight was lead by Major-General Amir Eshel, the son of Holocaust survivors. As he flew above the

camp, Eshel broadcast a message to the IDF ceremony taking place below:

We pilots of the Air Force, flying in the skies above the camp of horrors, arose from the ashes of the millions of victims and

shoulder their silent cries, salute their courage and promise to be the shield of the Jewish people and its nation Israel.[135]

Eshel later explained that "We're talking about a personal dream of 15 years ... This is the most significant expression of the rebirth of this

nation. As the IAF, we are the most concrete expression of the might of the Jewish people and there's no one better than us to express it".[136]

The Israeli delegation had been in Poland on the occasion of the Polish Air Force's 85th anniversary and had participated in the Radom Air

Show.[137][138]

"Arbeit macht frei" sign theft

Arbeit macht frei sign, Auschwitz I

50.027606°N 19.203088°E

Israeli Air Force historic flight

Gallery

Page 13 / 19

Auschwitz Album – a collection of pictures taken at Auschwitz during its operation.

Auschwitz Trial

Central Labour Camp Jaworzno Arbeitslager Neu-Dachs (Jaworzno)

Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials

Höcker Album

International Auschwitz Committee

International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

List of Nazi concentration camps

List of victims and survivors of Auschwitz

Oświęcim synagogue

Przyszowice massacre

Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive

Shark Island Extermination Camp

SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp

Survivor syndrome

Timeline of deportations of French Jews to death camps

Tourism in Poland

1. ^ Krakowski 1994, p. 50.

2. ^ Gutman 1992, p. 6.

Auschwitz I in winter

Interior of the gas

chamber of Auschwitz I

Interior of the crematorium

of Auschwitz I. This facility

was much smaller than

those of Auschwitz II.

Surreptitious photo taken

by a member of the

Sonderkommando,

women undressed and

sent to gas chamber

Auschwitz II-Birkenau in

2009

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

ruins in 2009

Rudolf Höss (1900–

1947), the first

commandant of Auschwitz

Josef Kramer (1906–

1945), Höss's first deputy

Block 11, execution wall

seen in courtyard, through

archway

Execution wall in

Auschwitz I, between

blocks 10 and 11

Eyeglasses of victims

Exhibit of shoes from the

victims of Auschwitz

Gas chamber in

Auschwitz I

Jews from Carpathian

Ruthenia arriving at

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Bunk beds in Auschwitz II.

There were as many as

four inmates per bunk,

and as many as a

thousand inmates per

barrack.

Elisabeth Klein; one of the

86 victims in the "Jewish

skeleton collection"

See also

Notes

Page 14 / 19

3. a b Trials of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg November 14, 1945 – October 1, 1946, Volume 1, Page 251

4. ^ Dr. Franciszek Piper, "Auschwitz and Shoah. The number of victims." Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

5. ^ Piper 1994, pp. 68–70.

6. ^ Swiebocka, Teresa. Report from Workshop 1 on Remembrance and Representation: Presentation by Teresa Swiebocka , Stockholm

International Forum on the Holocaust, 2000. Retrieved December 22, 2009.

7. ^ "Auschwitz-Birkenau:Imprisoned for Their Faith: Jehovah's Witnesses in Auschwitz" . En.auschwitz.org.pl. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

8. ^ Piper 1994, p. 62.

9. ^ Primo Levi quoted in Gutman 1994, p. 5.

10. ^ Rees 2009, BBC.

11. a b Gutman 1994, pp. 10, 16.

12. ^ Article about expulsions from Oświęcim in Polish (archived link)

13. ^ Wittmann 2003.

14. ^ "Maximilian Kolbe" . Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved August 23, 2010.

15. ^ Rees 2005, p. 26.

16. ^ (English) Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu

17. ^ Dwork and van Pelt 1997, p. 364.

18. ^ Reeves 2009, p. 56.

19. ^ Gutman 1994, p. 16.

20. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 96–97, 101.

21. ^ Testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz , University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law; Hoess, Rudolf (1900–1947), camp

commandant of Auschwitz , Yad Vashem. Retrieved December 22, 2009.

22. ^ Gustave Gilbert witness statement cited in Dwork and Van Pelt 2002, p. 278, cited in Rees 2005, p. 53.

23. ^ September 3: First experimental gassings at Auschwitz , Yad Vashem.

24. ^ Pressac: Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers Holocaust-History.org p. 100 reports that the timesheets of a civilian

worker from the company building the crematorium furnaces prove that the installed ventilation system for removing the hydrocyan acid gas from

Zyklon B application in the morgues worked well.

25. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 168–169.

26. ^ Lucjan Dobroszycki (1987)., The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, 1941–1944. P. 82, Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03924-7.

27. ^ Simone Gigliotti (2010). The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust. P. 13. Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-84545-785-4.

28. ^ Nicholas Stargardt (2005). Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis. P.ii. ISBN 1-4000-4088-4.

29. ^ Fredrik Barth (2005). One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. P. 122. University Of Chicago Press.

ISBN 0-226-03829-7.

30. ^ Toby F. Sonneman (2002). Shared Sorrows: A Gypsy Family Remembers the Holocaust. Pp.73–74. University Of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 1-

902806-10-7.

31. ^ Levon Chorbajian. George Shirinian: Studies in Comparative Genocide. P. 223.

32. ^ Synthetic Rubber: A Project That Had to Succeed (Contributions in Economics and Economic History) by Vernon Herbert & Attilio Bisio.Publisher:

Greenwood Press (December 11, 1985) Language: English ISBN 0-313-24634-3 ISBN 978-0-313-24634-0

33. ^ Anatomy of the Auschwitz death camp By Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum Publisher: Indiana University Press (April 1, 1998) Language:

English ISBN 0-253-20884-X ISBN 978-0-253-20884-2

34. ^ Night by Elie Wiesel Publisher: Bantam (March 1, 1982) Language: English ISBN 0-553-27253-5 ISBN 978-0-553-27253-6

35. ^ The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton Publisher: Basic Books (August 2000) Language: English

ISBN 0-465-04905-2 ISBN 978-0-465-04905-9

36. ^ Dein ist mein ganzes Herz (Fritz Löhner-Beda) by Günther Schwarberg (2000) ISBN 3-88243-715-4

37. a b Gutman 1994, p. 17.

38. ^ Danuta Czech in Gutman 1994, p. 18.

39. ^ "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account" (Dr. Miklos Nyiszli)

40. ^ "Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State", PBS (2004–2005)

41. ^ Gabor Kadar and Zoltan Vagi: Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train – The Becher Case – The Wealth of Jews p.125, Hungary; Central

European Univ Pr; ISBN 963-9241-53-9 (Sep 2004)

42. ^ Rees 2005, p. 100.

43. ^ Gilbert, S. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. The compositions

were written by musicians in the camps and included "Arbeitslager-March" (Work camp march) and "Arbeit macht frei".

44. a b BBC History of World War II. Auschwitz; Inside the Nazi State. Part 2, Orders and Initiatives.

45. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 172–175.

46. ^ Kárný 1994, p. 556.

47. ^ Dwork and van Pelt 1997, pp. 337–343.

48. ^ Peter Hellman, Lili Meier, Beate Klarsfeld. The Auschwitz Album, p. 166. Random House, Inc. New York, NY, 1981. ISBN 394-51932-9 .

49. a b Gilbert, S. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 184

50. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 31.

51. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing.

52. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 33.

53. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 34.

54. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 92.

55. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 57.

56. ^ Gutman 1994, pp. 20–21.

57. ^ Gutman 1994, p. 21.

58. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 31.

59. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 178–179.

60. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 180–182.

61. ^ For "pseudo-scientific", see: * Kater, Michael H. Doctors Under Hitler, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8078-4858-6, pp.

124–125. * Lukas, Richard C. Did the Children Cry?: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939–1945, Hippocrene Books, 1994, ISBN

978-0-7818-0242-0, pp. 88–89. * Schwarberg, Günther. The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm, Indiana University Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-253-

15481-1, p. 117.

62. ^ Doctors from Hell: the Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. By Vivien Spitz Publisher: Sentient Publications (May 25, 2005) ISBN 1-

59181-032-9 ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2 Pages 232–234

63. ^ Substantive and Procedural Aspects of International Criminal Law : The Experience of International and National Courts: Materials by Gabrielle Kirk McDonald Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (March 1, 2000) ISBN 90-411-1134-4 ISBN 978-90-411-1134-0

64. ^ Die Namen der Nummern (Gebundene Ausgabe) von Hans-Joachim Lang (Author)Publisher: Hoffmann + Campe Vlg GmbH (August 31, 2004)

Page 15 / 19

ISBN 3-455-09464-3 ISBN 978-3-455-09464-0

65. ^ Garlinski 1975; IPN.gov.pl

66. ^ Lewis, Jon E. (1999), The Mammoth Book of True War Stories, Carroll & Graf Publishers, ISBN 0-7867-0629-5. p. 391.

67. a b c Adam Cyra, Ochotnik do Auschwitz – Witold Pilecki 1901–1948, Oświęcim 2000. ISBN 83-912000-3-5

68. ^ Karny 1994, p. 556.

69. ^ Heinz Galinski, "Jüdische Widerstandsgruppen". Unser Appell (journal of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime), no. 3/4 (September 10,

1947)

70. ^ Rubeigh James Minney. I shall fear no evil: the story of Dr. Alina Brewda. Kimber, 1966. p. 152.

71. ^ Norman Davies, Europe: A History, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-820171-0., Google Print, p. 1023

72. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 256–257.

73. ^ "Auschwitz Concentration Camp The Gas Chambers http" . //www.HolocaustResearchProject.org. Retrieved 2013-03-25.

74. ^ (English) Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu

75. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 141.

76. ^ "Byłem Numerem: swiadectwa Z Auschwitz" by Kazimierz Piechowski, Eugenia Bozena Kodecka-Kaczynska, Michal Ziokowski, Hardcover,

Wydawn. Siostr Loretanek, ISBN 83-7257-122-8

77. ^ Gabriela Nikliborc (January 13, 2009). "The Film about the Amazing Escape from Auschwitz—Now Available on DVD" . Auschwitz-Birkenau

State Museum. Retrieved January 5, 2011.

78. ^ Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust Publisher: Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (April 1, 2007)

ISBN 0-9716859-2-4 ISBN 978-0-9716859-2-5

79. ^ The Holocaust: a history of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War By Martin Gilbert Pages 683–697; Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (May

15, 1987) ISBN 0-8050-0348-7 ISBN 978-0-8050-0348-2

80. ^ Death march image

81. ^ Rees, Laurence (2005). Auschwitz: The Nazis & the Final Solution. Random House. p. 326. ISBN 978-0-563-52296-6.

82. ^ Rees 2005, pp. 260–265.

83. ^ Alan L. Berger, "Auschwitz", in Israel W. Charny (translator). Encyclopedia of Genocide A–H, volume 1. ABC-CLIO. 2000. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-

87436-928-1

84. ^ Adam Bujak, Teresa Świebocka, Henryk Świebocki: Auschwitz: the residence of death p.1938 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2003

85. ^ Commandant of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höß. Appendix one, pp. 193–194. ISBN 1-84212-024-7

86. ^ Brian Harmon, John Drobnicki, Historical sources and the Auschwitz death toll estimates , The Nizkor Project

87. a b c Nizkor, The Auschwitz Gambit: The Four Million Variant

88. ^ Wellers, Georges. Essai de determination du nombre de morts au camp d'Auschwitz (attempt to determine the number of dead at the Auschwitz

camp), Le Monde Juif, Oct–Dec 1983, pp. 127–159.

89. ^ Piper 1994, pp. 68–72.

90. ^ Cesarani and Kavanaugh 2004, p. 357.

91. ^ "Oldest survivor of Auschwitz dies at age 108" . CBS News. Retrieved 22 October 2012.

92. ^ Auschwitz by Debórah Dwork , Robert Jan van Pelt. page 166 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 2002) ISBN 0-393-32291-2 ISBN

978-0-393-32291-0

93. ^ Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial by Rebecca Wittmann Publisher: Harvard University Press (May 30, 2005) ISBN 0-674-01694-7 ISBN 978-0-

674-01694-1

94. ^ Auschwitz, 1940–1945: Mass murder By Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper

95. ^ Last Traces: The Lost Art of Auschwitz by Joseph Czarnecki Publisher: Macmillan Publishers ISBN 0-689-12022-2 ISBN 978-0-689-12022-0

96. ^ Serge Klarsfeld (1996). French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial, pp. 418–419. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-2662-3.

97. ^ Auschwitz chronicle 1939–1945 By Danuta Czech Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd (November 1990) ISBN 1-85043-291-0 ISBN 978-1-85043-291-

3

98. ^ "Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum: The Film about the Amazing Escape from Auschwitz" . En.auschwitz.org.pl. Retrieved January 16,

2012.

99. ^ Friedländer, Saul. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (2007). Pp. 422–423.

100. ^ Griffioen and Zeller, "A Comparative Analysis of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Second World War," p.

21.

101. a b Pressac, Jean-Claude and Van Pelt, Robert-Jan "The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, p. 232.

102. a b Pressac, Jean-Claude and Van Pelt, Robert-Jan "The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, p. 234.

103. ^ Morris, Errol. "Mr. Death: Transcript" . Archived from the original on May 05 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2008.

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Cesarani, David and Kavanaugh, Sarah (2004). Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27512-1, ISBN 978-0-415-

27512-5

Czech, Danuta (ed.) (1989). Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg.

Dawidowicz, Lucy (1979). The War Against the Jews. New York: Bantam Books.

Dwork, Deborah and Robert Jan van Pelt. Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present. 1997, Norton Paperback edition, ISBN 0-393-31684-X

Garlinski, Josef (1975). Fighting Auschwitz: the Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp. Fawcett. ISBN 0-449-22599-2

Gutman, Yisrael and Berenbaum, Michael (eds.) (1998). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press; first published 1994.

Hilberg, Raul (1961). The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Levi, Primo (1947). If This Is a Man. First published in Italy in 1947, first translated into English 1958.

Kárný, Miroslav (1994). "The Vrba and Wetzler report," in Gutman and Berenbaum, 1998.

Krakowski, Shmuel (1994). "The Satellite Camps" in Gutman and Berenbaum, 1998.

Piper, Franciszek (1994). "The Number of Victims" in Gutman and Berenbaum, 1998.

Rees, Laurence (2005). Auschwitz: A New History. Public Affairs, 2005. ISBN 1-58648-303-X

Rees, Laurence (2009). Rudolf Höss – Commandant of Auschwitz , BBC, November 5, 2009.

Rees, Laurence (2005). Auschwitz: The Nazis & the Final Solution. Random House. ISBN 978-0-563-52296-6.

Reeves, Keir (2009). Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with 'Difficult Heritage' . Taylor & Francis US. ISBN 978-0-415-45449-0. Retrieved

November 23, 2011.

Wittmann, Rebecca Elizabeth. "Indicting Auschwitz? The Paradox of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial," German History, volume 21, issue 4, Oxford

University Press, October 2003, doi 10.1191/0266355403gh294oa

Memorial and museum website

Boyne, John (2006). The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Great Britain: David Fickling Books, 2006 ISBN 0-385-75106-0

Borowski, Tadeusz (1976). This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Penguin Classics) trans. from the Polish by Barbara Vedder. Penguin

Books, 1976 ISBN 0-14-018624-7

Cyra, Adam (2000). Ochotnik do Auschwitz – Witold Pilecki 1901–1948, Oświęcim 2000. ISBN 83-912000-3-5

Dlugoborski, Waclaw, and Franciszek Piper (eds.) (2000). Auschwitz, 1940–1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp Five Vols. Oświęcim:

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. ISBN 83-85047-87-5

Gilbert, Martin (1981). Auschwitz and the Allies New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981 Photographs, maps. ISBN 0-03-057058-1

Muller, Filip Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers Ivan R Dee Inc, 1999 ISBN 1-56663-271-4

Nyisli, Miklos Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eye-witness Account Mayflower, 1977 ASIN B000QIZILC

van Pelt, Robert Jan. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Indiana University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-253-34016-0

Pilecki, W. (Translated by Jarek Garlinski) The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, Aquila Polonica 2012, ISBN 978-1-60772-010-2, ISBN 978-1-

60772-009-6

Druhasvetovavalka.cz , – Pages show pictures and videos of the day taken at places connected with World War II

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (English), (German), (Polish) – Official website

A Virtual Tour of Auschwitz/Birkenau Annotated images of the camp (accessed February 14, 2008)

Interactive image map of Birkenau

Auschwitz Jewish Center situated in the town of Oświęcim

(Polish) Auschwitz-Birkenau and city Oświęcim

Data and summary facts

Video footage from a 2003 visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Selected Photos from the Auschwitz Album with commentary by Oliver Lustig

Liberation of Auschwitz – 60th Anniversary United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Holocaust Encyclopedia – Auschwitz United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Cybrary of the Holocaust Holocaust education site

Anna Heilman Anna Heilman is the last living survivor of the plot to blow up Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her Holocaust experiences are

discussed in her novel Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicle of Anna Heilman

Auschwitz-Birkenau 2005 Photographs and commentary marking the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation

Photos From Auschwitz and Birkenau Detailed Photos From Auschwitz and Birkenau by Alan Jacobs

Virtual Reality panoramas of Auschwitz and Birkenau Interactive Virtual Reality panoramas of Auschwitz and Birkenau

Auschwitz, Then and Now Photo/Art Exhibit Paintings by survivor Jan Komski – click and see an actual photo taken in the same place depicted in

References

Further reading

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the painting

Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' , BBC.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

Auschwitz and Birkenau at Google Maps

CBC Digital Archives – Life after Auschwitz

Auschwitz Memorial

The Auschwitz Album – Online exhibition from Yad Vashem

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints- Architecture of Murder – Online exhibition from Yad

Vashem

Escape From Auschwitz Documentary produced by the PBS Series Secrets of the Dead

External links

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World Heritage Sites in Poland V T E

Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945) Białowieża Forest / Belovezhskaya Pushcha (with Belarus)

Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork Centennial Hall, Wrocła w Churches of Peace in Jawor and Świdnica Cracow's Historic Centre

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Architectural and Park Landscape Complex and Pilgrimage Park Park Mużakowski / Muskauer Park (with Germany)

Medieval Town of Toruń Historic Centre of Warsaw Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines Wooden churches of Southern Lesser Poland Old City of Zamość

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Major perpetrators

Organizers

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Camp command

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Hering Höss Hössler Josef Kramer Liebehenschel Mandel Matthes Michel Möckel Mulka Johann Niemann

Oberhauser Reichleitner Heinrich Schwarz Stangl Gustav Wagner Christian Wirth

Gas chamber executioners Erich Bauer Bolender Hackenholt Klehr Hans Koch Herbert Lange Theuer

Physicians von Bodmann Clauberg Gebhardt Fritz Klein Mengele Horst Schumann Trzebinski Eduard Wirths

Ghetto command Auerswald Biebow Blösche Bürkl Konrad Palfinger von Sammern-Frankenegg Stroop

Einsatzgruppen Wolfgang Birkner Blobel Felix Landau Schaper Schöngarth von Woyrsch

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Uprisings Ghetto uprisings Białystok Częstochowa Sobibor Treblinka Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

LeadersMordechai Anielewicz Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum Thomas Blatt Icchak Cukierman Marek Edelman Leon Feldhendler Paweł Frenkiel

Henryk Iwański Itzhak Katzenelson Michał Klepfisz Miles Lerman Alexander Pechersky Witold Pilecki Roza Robota Szmul Zygielbojm

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Victim listsGhettos Kraków Łódź Lvov (Lwów) Warsaw

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Documentation

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Concealment Sonderaktion 1005

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Aftermath, trials and commemoration V T E

Aftermath Kielce pogrom Anti-Jewish violence, 1944–1946

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