Auschwitz

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Auschwitz

• Birkenau

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Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several
concentration camps and an extermination camp in
the area, which at the time was under German
occupation. The Auschwitz camps were a major
element in the perpetration of the Holocaust at
least 1.1 million people were killed there, of
whom over 90 were Jews.
The three main camps were - Auschwitz I, the
original concentration camp which served as the
administrative center for the whole complex, and
was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000
people, mostly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.
- Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination
camp, where at least 1.1 million Jewish people,
75,000 Polish people, and some 19,000 Roma
(gypsies) were killed. - Auschwitz III
(Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the
Buna-Werke factory of the IG Farben concern.
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Like all Nazi concentration camps, the Auschwitz
camps were operated by Heinrich Himmlers SS.
The commandants of the camp were the
SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Höß (often written
"Hoess") until the summer of 1943, and later
Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. Höß
provided a detailed description of the camp's
workings during his interrogations after the war
and also in his autobiography. He was hanged in
1947 in front of the entrance to the
crematorium of Auschwitz I. Chief of the women's
field was handled by Johanna Langefeld, Maria
Mandel, and Elisabeth Volkenrath.
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Auschwitz I
Auschwitz I served as the administrative center
for the whole complex. It was founded on May 20,
1940, on the basis of an old polish brick army
barracks. A group of 728 Polish political
prisoners from Tarnów became the first residents
of Auschwitz on June 14that year. The camp was
initially used for interning Polish intellectuals
and resistance movement members, then also for
Sovietprisoners of War. Common German criminals,
"anti-social elements" and 48 German homosexuals
were also imprisoned there. Jews were sent to
the camp as well, beginning with the very first
shipment (from Tarnów). At any time, the camp
held between13,000 and 16,000 inmates in 1942
the number reached 20,000. The entrance to
Auschwitz I was - and still is - marked with the
sign Arbeit Macht Frei, or "work (will) make
(you) free." The camp's prisoners who left the
camp during the day for construction or farm
labour were made to march through the gate to the
sounds of an orchestra. Contrary to what is
depicted in several films, the majority of the
Jews were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II camp,
and did not pass under this sign.
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The SS selected some prisoners, often German
criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of
the other inmates (so-called kapo). The various
classes of prisoners were distinguishable by
special marks on their clothes Jews were
generally treated the worst. All inmates had to
work in the associated arms factories except
Sundays, which were reserved for cleaning and
showering and there were no work assignments.
The harsh work requirements, combined with poor
nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates
among the prisoners. Block 11 of Auschwitz (the
original standing cells and such were block 13)
was the "prison within the prison", where
violaters of the numerous rules were punished.
Some prisoners were made to spend the nights in
"standing-cells". These cells were about 1.5
metres square, 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. Also in the basement were the "dark cells"
these cells had only a very tiny window, and a
solid door. Prisoners placed in these cells would
gradually suffocate as they used up all of the
oxygen in the air 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, thus dislocating
their shoulder joints for hours, even days.
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The execution yard is between block 10 and 11. In
this area prisoners who were thought to merit
individual treatment received it. Some were
shot, against a reinforced wall which still
exists others suffered a more lingering death
by being suspended from hooks set in 2 wooden
posts, which also still exist.
In September 1941, the SS conducted poison gas
tests in block 11, killing 850 Poles and Russians
using cyanide. The first experiment took place
on 3 September 1941,, and killed 600 Soviet POWs.
The substance producing the highly lethal
cyanide gas was sold under the trade name Zyklon
B, originally for use as a pesticide used to kill
lice. The tests were deemed successful, 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.
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The first women arrived in the camp on March 26,
1942. From April 1943 to May 1944, the
gynecologist Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg conducted
sterilization experiments on Jewish women in
block 10 of Auschwitz I, with the aim of
developing a simple injection method to be used
on the Slavic people. These experiments consisted
largely of determining the effects of the
injection of caustic chemicals into the uterus.
This was extremely painful and many died during
and shortly after. Dr. Josef Mengele, who is
well known for his experiments on twins and
dwarfs in the same complex, was the camp
"doctor". He regularly performed gruesome
experiments such as castration without
anesthetics. Prisoners in the camp hospital who
were not quick to recover were regularly killed
by a lethal injection of phenol.
The camp brothel, established in the summer of
1943 on Himmlers order, was located in block 24
and was used to reward privileged prisoners.
(The existence of a brothel has not been
confirmed by female survivors of the camp.) It
was staffed by women specifically selected for
the purpose, and by some volunteers from the
female prisoners, most of whom were raped by the
Nazis.
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Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is the camp that many
people know simply as "Auschwitz". It was the
site of imprisonment of hundreds of thousands,
and of the killing of over one million people,
mainly Jews, but also large numbers of Poles,
and Gypsies.
The Nazis established Auschwitz in April 1940
under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, chief of
the SS (Schutzstaffel, armed forces of the Nazi
Party NSDAP) and German police and Reich Minister
of the Interior. The camp at Auschwitz
originally housed political prisoners from
occupied Poland and from concentration camps
within Germany. Construction of nearby Birkenau
(in Polish, Brzezinka), also known as Auschwitz
II, began in October 1941. Birkenau had four gas
chambers, designed to resemble showers, and four
crematoria, used to incinerate bodies.
Approximately 40 more satellite camps were
established around Auschwitz. These were forced
labor camps and were known collectively as
Auschwitz III. The first one was built at
Monowitz and held Poles who had been forcibly
evacuated from their hometowns by the Nazis. The
inmates of Monowitz were forced to work in the
chemical works of I G Farben.
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Prisoners were transported from all over
Nazi-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at
Auschwitz-Birkenau in daily convoys. Arrivals at
the complex were separated into four groups. One
group, about three-quarters of the total, went to
the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau within a
few hours they included all children, all women
with children, all the elderly, and all those
who appeared on brief and superficial inspection
by an SS doctor not to be fully fit. In the
Auschwitz Birkenau camp more than 20,000 people
could be gassed and cremated each day. At
Birkenau, the Nazis used a cyanide gas called
Zyklon-B, which was manufactured by a
pest-control company. A second group of prisoners
were used as slave labor at industrial factories
for such companies as I. G. Farben and Krupp. At
the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were
recorded as slaves between 1940 and 1945. Of
these about 340,000 perished through executions,
beatings, starvation, and sickness. Some
prisoners survived through the help of German
industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved about
1,000 Polish Jews by diverting them from
Auschwitz to work for him, first in his factory
near Kraków and later at a factory in what is now
the Czech Republic. A third group, mostly twins
and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the
hands of doctors such as Josef Mengele, who was
also known as the Angel of Death. The fourth
group was composed of women who were selected to
work in "Canada", the part of Birkenau where
prisoners' belongings were sorted for use by
Germans. The name "Canada" was very cynically
chosen. In Poland it was - and is still - used as
an expression used when viewing, for example, a
valuable and fine gift. The expression comes from
the time when Polish emigrants were sending gifts
home from Canada.
The camp was staffed partly by prisoners, some of
whom were selected to be kapos (orderlies) and
sonderkommandos (workers at the crematoria). The
kapos were responsible for keeping order in the
barrack huts the sonderkommando 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.
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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. In October
1944 a group of sonderkommandos destroyed one of
the crematoria at Birkenau. They and their
accomplices, a group of women from the Monowitz
labor camp, were all put to death. It was also
not uncommon if one prisoner escaped, selected
persons in the escapee's block were killed.
When the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on
January 27, 1945, they found about 7,600
survivors abandoned there. More than 58,000
prisoners had already been evacuated by the Nazis
and sent on a final death march to Germany. In
1947, in remembrance of the victims, Poland
founded a museum at the site of the Auschwitz
concentration camp. By 1994, some 22 million
visitors700,000 annuallyhad passed through the
iron gate crowned with the cynical motto,
Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes one free").
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