Auschwitz concentration camp - Grahams Nazi Germany Third

Create account
Article Talk
Log in
Read View source View history
Auschwitz concentration camp
Coordinates: 50°02′09″N 19°10′42″E
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
"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
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
What links here
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
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Print/export
free").[3]
Location of Auschwitz in contemporary Poland
Create a book
Contents
Download as PDF
Printable version
1 Camps
1.1 Main camps
1.2 Auschwitz I
Languages
1.3 Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Беларуская
Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Deutsch
Eesti
May 1940 – January 1945
Inmates
mainly Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet
3 Selection and extermination process
3.3 Jewish skeleton collection
4 Escapes, resistance, and the Allies' knowledge of the camps
4.1 Underground media
4.3 Individual escape attempts
5 Evacuation, death marches, and liberation
6 Death toll
Español
7 Timeline of Auschwitz
Esperanto
8 After the war
Føroyskt
soldiers
Killed
1.1 million (estimated)
Liberated by Soviet Union, January 27, 1945
Notable
Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi, Witold
inmates
Pilecki, Rudolf Vrba, Elie Wiesel,
Maximillian Kolbe
4.2 Birkenau revolt
Ελληνικά
Euskara
‫ﻓﺎﺭﺳﯽ‬
NKVD (after World War II)
Operational
3.2 Medical experiments
Dansk
Auschwitz, Nazi Germany
Operated by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), the
1.5 Subcamps
2 Command and control
Bosanski
Cymraeg
Location
Original use Army barracks
3.1 Life in the camps
Česky
Other names Birkenau
1.4 Auschwitz III
Български
Català
Coordinates 50°02′09″N 19°10′42″E
1.3.1 The Gypsy camp
‫ﺍﻟﻌﺭﺑﻳﺔ‬
Azәrbaycanca
extermination camp
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]
Data item
The main entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau
[2]
German-occupied Europe. 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 Upload file
camp (1940-1945).
Buna–Monowitz (a labor camp); and 45 satellite camps.[1]
Toolbox
Related changes
Auschwitz
German Nazi Concentration and Extermination
Notable
If This Is a Man, Night, Man's
books
Search for Meaning
Website
Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Museum
8.1 Creation of the museum
8.2 "Arbeit macht frei" sign theft
8.3 Israeli Air Force historic flight
Français
9 Gallery
Frysk
10 See also
Furlan
11 Notes
Gaelg
12 References
한국어
13 Further reading
Hrvatski
14 External links
Bahasa Indonesia
Íslenska
Camps
Italiano
Page 1 / 19
‫עברית‬
ქართული
Ladino
Latviešu
Lietuvių
Lumbaart
Magyar
Македонски
മലയാളം
मराठ
Bahasa Melayu
Nederlands
日本語
Norsk bokmål
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
‫ﭘﻧﺟﺎﺑﯽ‬
Polski
Português
Română
Русский
Sardu
Simple English
Slovenčina
Main camps
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
Surveillance photo showing location of
ethnic Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Auschwitz II
three main camps
was an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager, the site
Map showing the originating locations in
Europe for deportations to Auschwitz
of the deaths of at least 960,000 Jews, 75,000 Poles, and
concentration camp
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:
Slovenščina
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski /
српскохрватски
[N]ever has there existed a state that was really "totalitarian." ... Never has some form of reaction, a corrective of the total tyranny, Suomi
the churches, the feeling for justice and humanity that ten or twenty years of tyranny were not enough to eradicate, have to a greater
Svenska
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
Tagalog
தமி
satraps absolute.
been lacking, not even in the Third Reich or Stalin's Soviet Union: in both cases, public opinion, the magistrature, the foreign press,
[9]
ţğĂ
Українська
Auschwitz I
Vèneto
Tiếng Việt
Winaray
‫ייִדיש‬
粵語
中文
Edit links
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.
Auschwitz I entrance
50.027606°N 19.203088°E
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
Map of Auschwitz I, shows Polish
Tobacco Monopoly building; 1940
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.
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
Block 11
crematorium, which was reconstructed after the war using the original components, which remained on-site.[17][18]
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
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:
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
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
Picture of Birkenau taken by an
American surveillance plane, August 25,
1944
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.
The Gypsy camp
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
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]
Auschwitz III
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]
Buna Werke, Monowitz and subcamps
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]
Subcamps
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]
Prisoners building airplane parts at
Siemens-Schuckert factory at Bobrek subcamp
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]
Command and control
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.
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.
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 SSSturmbannführer Richard Baer, commandant of Auschwitz,
and his adjutant SS-Obersturmführer Karl-Friedrich Höcker
(left to right)
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).
Furthermore, the camp fell under the subordinate command of the SS and Police Leader of the region and was often issued orders from the SSReichssicherheitshauptamt 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.
Selection and extermination process
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
[43]
Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) Hungarian Jewish mothers, children, elderly and
infirm sent to the left after 'selection" They would be
after disembarking from the transport trains, to be
sent rechts! – to the right – meant labor; links! – to murdered in the gas chamber soon after (May
Sonderkommandos.
The group selected to
die, about three-quarters of the total, included
[41]
the left – the gas chambers[clarification needed] . Photo 1944)
almost all children, women with children, all the
from the Auschwitz Album (May 1944)
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.
Page 5 / 19
A Deutsche Reichsbahn
"Güterwagen" (goods wagon), one of the types used for
deportations
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]
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."
Franz Hoessler
"Would diabetics who are not allowed sugar report to staff on duty after their baths".
Life in the camps
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
A 14-year-old Polish girl in Auschwitz
1942/43. Prisoner identity photographs,
taken by Wilhelm Brasse.
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]
Medical experiments
Main article: Nazi human experimentation
German doctors performed a wide variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors
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,
Block 10, the medical experimentation
block
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.
Jewish skeleton collection
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.
The cadaver of Berlin dairy merchant Menachem
Taffel. Deported to Auschwitz in March 1943 along
Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof. The deaths of 86 of these
with his wife and child who were gassed upon
inmates were, in the words of Hirt, "induced" at a jury rigged gassing facility over the course of
arrival. He was chosen to be an anatomical
a few days in August 1943. One of the victims was shot by the SS when he fought entering
specimen, shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and
murdered in the gas chamber in August 1943
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]
Escapes, resistance, and the Allies' knowledge of the camps
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,
Witold Pilecki, the only known person to
volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz
concentration camp (1941)
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 VrbaWetzler 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.
Underground media
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]
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]
Ruins of Crematorium IV, blown up in the
revolt
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.
Individual escape attempts
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
Twenty-two-year-old Mala
Zimetbaum briefly escaped
Auschwitz
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]
Evacuation, death marches, and liberation
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
A Death march in the final days of the
w a r[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.
Death toll
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, 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]
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]
Timeline of Auschwitz
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.
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
March 1,
1941
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]
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,
1943
Crematorium 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.
April 4, 1943
Crematorium V is ready for use.[102]
April 22, 1943
[103]
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
May 30, 1943
and spend the remainder of the war in P.O.W. camps.
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
July 19, 1943
Crematorium III is ready for use.[106]
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,
1944
Primo 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 VrbaWetzler 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 elevenyear-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
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
November
27, 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.
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
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.
Ruins of inmates' barracks at Birkenau
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
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.
Creation of the museum
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.
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.
"Arbeit macht frei" sign theft
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]
Arbeit macht frei sign, Auschwitz I
50.027606°N 19.203088°E
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]
Israeli Air Force historic flight
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]
Gallery
Page 13 / 19
Auschwitz I in winter
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
ruins in 2009
Eyeglasses of victims
Auschwitz II-Birkenau in
2009
Interior of the gas
Interior of the crematorium
Surreptitious photo taken
chamber of Auschwitz I
of Auschwitz I. This facility
was much smaller than
by a member of the
Sonderkommando,
those of Auschwitz II.
women undressed and
sent to gas chamber
Rudolf Höss (1900–
Josef Kramer (1906–
1947), the first
commandant of Auschwitz
1945), Höss's first deputy
Block 11, execution wall
seen in courtyard, through
Execution wall in
Auschwitz I, between
archway
blocks 10 and 11
Exhibit of shoes from the
victims of Auschwitz
Gas chamber in
Auschwitz I
Jews from Carpathian
Bunk beds in Auschwitz II.
There were as many as
Ruthenia arriving at
Auschwitz-Birkenau
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
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
Notes
1.
^ Krakowski 1994, p. 50.
2.
^ Gutman 1992, p. 6.
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."
5.
6.
^ Piper 1994, pp. 68–70.
^ Swiebocka, Teresa. Report from Workshop 1 on Remembrance and Representation: Presentation by Teresa Swiebocka
International Forum on the Holocaust, 2000. Retrieved December 22, 2009.
7.
^ "Auschwitz-Birkenau:Imprisoned for Their Faith: Jehovah's Witnesses in Auschwitz"
8.
^ Piper 1994, p. 62.
9.
^ Primo Levi quoted in Gutman 1994, p. 5.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
, Stockholm
. En.auschwitz.org.pl. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
10.
^ Rees 2009, BBC.
11.
12.
^
Gutman 1994, pp. 10, 16.
^ Article about expulsions from Oświęcim in Polish (archived link)
13.
^ Wittmann 2003.
14.
^ "Maximilian Kolbe"
15.
^ Rees 2005, p. 26.
16.
17.
^ (English) Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu
^ 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.
22.
^ 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.
^ 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
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.
26.
^ Rees 2005, pp. 168–169.
^ 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.
^ Toby F. Sonneman (2002). Shared Sorrows: A Gypsy Family Remembers the Holocaust. Pp.73–74. University Of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 1902806-10-7.
30.
ab
. Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
, Yad Vashem.
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.
38.
^
Gutman 1994, p. 17.
^ 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.
43.
^ Rees 2005, p. 100.
^ 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.
45.
^ a b BBC History of World War II. Auschwitz; Inside the Nazi State. Part 2, Orders and Initiatives.
^ Rees 2005, pp. 172–175.
46.
^ Kárný 1994, p. 556.
47.
48.
^ Dwork and van Pelt 1997, pp. 337–343.
^ Peter Hellman, Lili Meier, Beate Klarsfeld. The Auschwitz Album, p. 166. Random House, Inc. New York, NY, 1981. ISBN 394-51932-9 .
49.
50.
^ a b Gilbert, S. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 184
^ 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.
54.
^ Nyiszli, Miklos (2011). "3". Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 34.
^ 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.
60.
^ Rees 2005, pp. 178–179.
^ 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 978-0-25315481-1, p. 117.
^ Doctors from Hell: the Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. By Vivien Spitz Publisher: Sentient Publications (May 25, 2005) ISBN 159181-032-9 ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2 Pages 232–234
62.
ab
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
65.
ISBN 3-455-09464-3 ISBN 978-3-455-09464-0
^ 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.
68.
^ a b c Adam Cyra, Ochotnik do Auschwitz – Witold Pilecki 1901–1948, Oświęcim 2000. ISBN 83-912000-3-5
^ Karny 1994, p. 556.
69.
70.
^ Heinz Galinski, "Jüdische Widerstandsgruppen". Unser Appell (journal of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime), no. 3/4 (September 10,
1947)
^ 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"
74.
^ (English) Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu
75.
76.
^ Rees 2005, pp. 141.
^ "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"
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.
83.
^ Rees 2005, pp. 260–265.
^ Alan L. Berger, "Auschwitz", in Israel W. Charny (translator). Encyclopedia of Genocide A–H, volume 1. ABC-CLIO. 2000. p. 300. ISBN 978-087436-928-1
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
87.
88.
^
Nizkor, The Auschwitz Gambit: The Four Million Variant
^ 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"
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 978-0674-01694-1
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.
97.
^ Serge Klarsfeld (1996). French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial, pp. 418–419. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-2662-3.
^ Auschwitz chronicle 1939–1945 By Danuta Czech Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd (November 1990) ISBN 1-85043-291-0 ISBN 978-1-85043-2913
98.
^ "Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum: The Film about the Amazing Escape from Auschwitz"
2012.
. //www.HolocaustResearchProject.org. Retrieved 2013-03-25.
. Auschwitz-Birkenau
, The Nizkor Project
abc
. CBS News. Retrieved 22 October 2012.
. En.auschwitz.org.pl. Retrieved January 16,
99.
100.
^ Friedländer, Saul. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (2007). Pp. 422–423.
^ 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.
^ Morris, Errol. "Mr. Death: Transcript" . Archived from the original on May 05 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2008.
103.
104.
^ The Twentieth Train: The True Story of the Ambush of the Death Train to Auschwitz by Marion Schreiber Publisher: Grove Press (February 5,
2004) ISBN 0-8021-1766-X ISBN 978-0-8021-1766-3
105.
^ Children of the Flames; Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz by Lucette Matalon and Sheila Cohen Dekel Publisher:
Penguin (Non-Classics) (May 1, 1992) ISBN 0-14-016931-8 ISBN 978-0-14-016931-7
^ 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. 236.
106.
107.
^ From the history of KL-Auschwitz, Volume 1 – Page 73 Kazimierz Smoleń – History – 1967
108.
^ Testimony from the Nazi camps: French women's voices By Margaret-Anne Hutton pages 34–36 Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 29,
2004) ISBN 0-415-34933-8 ISBN 978-0-415-34933-8
109.
^ Rena's Promise By Rena Kornreich Gelissen, Heather Dune Macadam pages 230–34 Publisher: Beacon Press (October 30, 1996) ISBN 08070-7071-8 ISBN 978-0-8070-7071-0
110.
^ Müller, Melissa. Anne Frank: The Biography Macmillan, 1998. ISBN 0-8050-5996-2 pp. 119–120
111.
^ Karny, Miroslav. "The Vrba and Wetzler Report" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana
University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, pp. 563–564.
112.
^ The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm: The SS Doctor and the Children Günther Schwarberg Publisher: Indiana University Press; First Edition
(April 1984) ISBN 0-253-15481-2 ISBN 978-0-253-15481-1
113.
^ "Auschwitz.org.pl"
114.
^ Oliver Lustig. "Concentration Camp Dictionary "F-G"]"
115.
^ Auschwitz Birkenau, German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945).
116.
117.
^ "Auschwitz death camp sign stolen" . BBC News. December 18, 2009. Archived from the original on December 24, 2009. Retrieved
December 18, 2009.
^ Connolly, Kate. Poland declares state of emergency after 'Arbeit Macht Frei' stolen from Auschwitz , The Guardian, December 18, 2009.
118.
^ Poland: Foreigner Is Suspected in Theft of Auschwitz Sign
119.
120.
^ News.Yahoo.com [dead link]
^ Police in Poland find sign stolen from Auschwitz gate
. En.auschwitz.org.pl. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
. Isurvived.org. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
UNESCO World Heritage List.
, Associated Press, December 22, 2009.
, BBC News, December 21, 2009.
Page 16 / 19
121.
^ Easton, Adam (May 18, 2011). "Auschwitz museum unveils restored stolen sign"
Retrieved May 19, 2011.
122.
123.
^ SLtrib.com
^ Gera, Vanessa (December 21, 2009). "Damaged Auschwitz sign to go back up at main gate"
124.
Retrieved December 23, 2009.[dead link]
^ "Telegraph.co.uk" . The Daily Telegraph (UK). December 21, 2009. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
125.
^ Fish, Sandra. "Politicsdaily.com"
126.
127.
^ "DigitalJournal.com" . DigitalJournal.com. Archived from the original on August 15, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
^ "Aftonbladet.se" . Aftonbladet.se. March 11, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
128.
^ Daily Telegraph, page 20, issue of Friday March 19, 2010.
129.
^ Associated, The. "Auschwitz sign thieves fail to show up for prison terms – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News"
Archived from the original on June 20, 2010. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
130.
^ Associated, The (April 21, 2010). "Auschwitz Thieves Fail to Report to Jail" . The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 26,
2010. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
^ "Men jailed for stealing Auschwitz camp sign failed to return after compassionate leave" . Daily Mirror. UK. Archived from the original on May
27, 2010. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
131.
. BBC News. Archived
from the original on May 19, 2011.
[dead link]
. The Salt Lake Tribune. The Associated Press.
. Politicsdaily.com. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
. Haaretz. Israel.
132.
^ "Poland: Auschwitz Sign to Hang Indoors"
133.
134.
^ "Israeli Air Force pilots flying over Auschwitz-Birkenau" . Retrieved 3 September 2003.
^ "IAF jets flew over Auschwitz: A symbol of national strength" . Retrieved 19 April 2012.
. The New York Times. June 2, 2011.
135.
^ Katz, Yaakov. "Planning ahead"
136.
137.
^ Valdan, Asaf (April 2004). "Years Later and Nothing’s Been Erased" . Israeli Air Force Magazine. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
^ Harel, Amos (February 3, 2012). "Feet on the ground, head in the sky" . Ha'aretz. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
138.
^ Shreeve, Mike (2003). "Pole Position"
. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
. www.airsceneuk.org.uk. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
References
Cesarani, David and Kavanaugh, Sarah (2004). Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27512-1, ISBN 978-0-41527512-5
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'
November 23, 2011.
. Taylor & Francis US. ISBN 978-0-415-45449-0. Retrieved
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
Further reading
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 978-160772-009-6
Druhasvetovavalka.cz
, – Pages show pictures and videos of the day taken at places connected with World War II
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
A Virtual Tour of Auschwitz/Birkenau
Interactive image map of Birkenau
Auschwitz Jewish Center
(English), (German), (Polish) – Official website
Annotated images of the camp (accessed February 14, 2008)
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
Cybrary of the Holocaust
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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
Auschwitz, Then and Now Photo/Art Exhibit
Interactive Virtual Reality panoramas of Auschwitz and Birkenau
Paintings by survivor Jan Komski – click and see an actual photo taken in the same place depicted in
Page 17 / 19
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
External links
Auschwitz Memorial
Wikiquote has a collection of
quotations related to: Auschwitz
concentration camp
– Online exhibition from Yad Vashem
The Auschwitz Album
– Online exhibition from Yad
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints- Architecture of Murder
Vashem
Escape From Auschwitz
Documentary produced by the PBS Series Secrets of the Dead
Wikimedia Commons has media
related to: Auschwitz
concentration camp
World Heritage Sites in Poland
V TE
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
Wooden tserkvas of Carpathian region in Poland and Ukraine
The Holocaust in Poland
V TE
Main article The Holocaust Related articles by country Belarus Croatia Denmark Estonia France Latvia Lithuania Norway Russia Ukraine
Camps, ghettos and operations
V TE
Extermination
Operation Reinhard Bełżec Chełmno Sobibor Treblinka Majdanek Auschwitz-Birkenau
Concentration
Kraków-Płaszów Soldau Trawniki Warsaw
Camps
Mass shootings
AB Action Erntefest Jedwabne Kielce cemetery Aktion Krakau Lviv pogroms Lviv professors Palmiry Sonderaktion Krakau Tannenberg Tykocin
Bydgoszcz Wąsosz
List of 267 Jewish ghettos set up in German-occupied Poland (1939–1942) Będzin Białystok Brest Częstochowa Grodno Kraków L w ó w Łódź
Ghettos
Other atrocities
Lubartów Lublin Międzyrzec Podlaski Radom Sosnowiec Wilno Warsaw
Action T4 Grossaktion Warsaw Human medical experimentation
Perpetrators, participants, organizations, and collaborators
V TE
Josef Bühler Eichmann Eicke Ludwig Fischer Hans Frank Globocnik Glücks Greiser Himmler Hermann Höfle
Organizers
Fritz Katzmann Wilhelm Koppe Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger Kutschera Erwin Lambert Ernst Lerch Oswald Pohl
Reinefarth Scherner Seyss-Inquart · Sporrenberg Streckenbach Thomalla Otto Wächter Wisliceny
Aumeier Baer Boger Braunsteiner Eberl Kurt Franz Karl Frenzel Karl Fritzsch Göth Grabner Hartjenstein
Camp command
Hering Höss Hössler Josef Kramer Liebehenschel Mandel Matthes Michel Möckel Mulka Johann Niemann
Oberhauser Reichleitner Heinrich Schwarz Stangl Gustav Wagner Christian Wirth
Major perpetrators
Gas chamber executioners
Physicians
Ghetto command
Einsatzgruppen
Camp guards
Erich Bauer Bolender Hackenholt Klehr Hans Koch Herbert Lange Theuer
von Bodmann Clauberg Gebhardt Fritz Klein Mengele Horst Schumann Trzebinski Eduard Wirths
Auerswald Biebow Blösche Bürkl Konrad Palfinger von Sammern-Frankenegg Stroop
Wolfgang Birkner Blobel Felix Landau Schaper Schöngarth von Woyrsch
Juana Bormann Danz Demjanjuk Margot Dreschel Kurt Gerstein Grese Höcker Kaduk Kollmer Muhsfeldt Orlowski Volkenrath
Personnel
By camp
Organizations
Sobibor Treblinka
Einsatzgruppen General Government Hotel Polski WVHA RKFDV VOMI
Jewish
Group 13 Kapo Żagiew
Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Belarusian
Collaborators
Schutzmannschaft
and Ukrainian
Other nationalities
Arajs Kommando Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Ukrainian collaboration Lithuanian Security Police Trawniki
Ypatingasis būrys Pieter Menten
Resistance: Judenrat, victims, documentation and technical
V TE
Organizations
Uprisings
Leaders
Judenrat
AK AOB Bund GL PKB ŻOB ŻZA
Ghetto uprisings Białystok Częstochowa Sobibor Treblinka Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Mordechai 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
Jewish Ghetto Police Adam Czerniaków Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski
Ghettos
Kraków Łódź Lvov (Lwów) Warsaw
Victim lists
Camps
Auschwitz Bełżec Chełmno Gross-Rosen Izbica Kraków-Płaszów Majdanek Sobibor Soldau Stutthof Trawniki Treblinka
Nazi sources
Documentation
Witness accounts
Concealment
Technical and logistics
Auschwitz Album Frank Memorandum Höcker Album Höfle Telegram Katzmann Report Korherr Report Nisko Plan
Posen speeches Special Prosecution Book-Poland Stroop Report Wannsee Conference
Graebe affidavit Gerstein Report Vrba-Wetzler report Witold's report
Sonderaktion 1005
Identification in camps Gas chamber Gas van Holocaust train Human medical experimentation Zyklon B
Aftermath, trials and commemoration
V TE
Aftermath
Kielce pogrom Anti-Jewish violence, 1944–1946
Page 18 / 19
West German trials
Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials Treblinka trials
Trials
Polish, East German, and Soviet trials
Memorials
Righteous among the Nations
Auschwitz Trial (Poland) Extraordinary (Soviet) State Commission
Museum of the History of Polish Jews March of the Living
Polish Righteous among the Nations Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust Albert Battel Hermann Friedrich Graebe
Andrey Sheptytsky Oskar Schindler
The Holocaust
V TE
Related articles by country: Albania Belarus Belgium Croatia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland Norway Russia Ukraine
Early elements
Racial policy Nazi eugenics Nuremberg Laws Haavara Agreement Madagascar Plan Forced euthanasia
Belgium: Breendonk Mechelen
Transit and collection
France: Gurs Drancy
Italy: Bolzano Risiera di San Sabba
Netherlands: Amersfoort Westerbork
Bergen-Belsen Bogdanovka Buchenwald Dachau Esterwegen Flossenbürg Gonars (Italy) Gross-Rosen
Camps
Concentration
Herzogenbusch Janowska Kaiserwald Mauthausen-Gusen Neuengamme Rab Ravensbrück Sachsenhausen
Sajmište Salaspils Stutthof Theresienstadt Uckermark Warsaw
Extermination
Auschwitz-Birkenau Bełżec Chełmno Jasenovac Majdanek Maly Trostenets Sobibor Treblinka
Inmate identification Gas van Gas chamber Extermination through labor Human medical experimentation
Methods
Inmate disposal of victims
Divisions: SS-Totenkopfverbände Concentration Camps Inspectorate Politische Abteilung Sanitätswesen
Pogroms
Ghettos
History of the Jews
during World War II
Final Solution
Einsatzgruppen
Resistance
End of World War II
Other victims
Lists
Resources
Remembrance
List of Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland with number of prisoners and deportation route
Wannsee Conference Operation Reinhard Holocaust trains Extermination camps
Babi Yar Bydgoszcz Kamianets-Podilskyi Ninth Fort Piaśnica Ponary Rumbula Erntefest
Jewish partisans Ghetto uprisings (Warsaw · Białystok · Częstochowa)
Death marches Wola Bricha Displaced persons Holocaust denial
Jehovah's Witnesses
Individuals
Collaborators
Aftermath
Białystok Budapest Kovno Kraków Łódź Lublin L w ó w Minsk Riga Vilna Warsaw
Romani people (Gypsies) Poles Soviet POWs Slavs in Eastern Europe Homosexuals People with disabilities Serbs Freemasons
Organizations
Responsibility
Kristallnacht Bucharest Dorohoi Iaşi Jedwabne Kaunas Lviv Odessa Tykocin Vel' d'Hiv Wąsosz
Nazi Party Sturmabteilung (SA) Schutzstaffel (SS) Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Verfügungstruppe (VT) Wehrmacht
Major perpetrators Nazi ideologues
Ypatingasis būrys Lithuanian Security Police Rollkommando Hamann Arajs Kommando Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Trawnikis
Nederlandsche SS Special Brigades
Nuremberg Trials Denazification Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany
Holocaust survivors Deportations of French Jews to death camps Victims and survivors of Auschwitz Survivors of Sobibor
Timeline of Treblinka Victims of Nazism Rescuers of Jews
The Destruction of the European Jews Functionalism versus intentionalism
Days of remembrance Memorials and museums
Categories: 1940 establishments Auschwitz concentration camp Human rights abuses Registered museums in Poland
Tourism in Eastern Europe World Heritage Sites in Poland World War II sites in Poland World War II sites of Nazi Germany
This page was last modified on 12 July 2013 at 23:11.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view
Page 19 / 19