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Entrance to Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the main extermination camp.

Auschwitz grew to become the largest group of Nazi concentration camps that were built around the town of Oświęcim in Southern Poland, roughly 60 kilometres west of the city of Kraków.

Though initially it consisted of a single camp at Auschwitz, with time it was expanded to become the largest concentration camp complexes in German-controlled Europe.^[1] The complex consisted of three main camps:

• Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp, which served as the administrative center for the entire complex.
• Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, which contained the largest total prisoner population.
• Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory operated by IG Farben.

Apart from the three main camps, SS authorities established 39 sub-camps, which used the inmates as slave labour. Several subordinate camps of the Auschwitz complex included large farms, stone quarries, coal mines, and SS-owned armament factories.

Between June 1940 and January 1945, Auschwitz and its sub-camps, had contained approximately 400,000 inmates.^[2] The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it at 1.1 million for the entire complex.^[3] More inmates escaped from Auschwitz than any other camp, with 144 successful attempts.^[4] On January 27, 1945, 700,000 inmates were liberated by the Soviet Union, after many of the camps' prisoners had died during forced death marches ordered by SS officers earlier in the month.^[5]

[edit] History

[edit] Auschwitz I

A barbered wire fence near the entrance to Auschwitz I.

Construction began on Auschwitz I in May 1940 in an abandoned Polish army artillery barracks, located in a western suburb of the city. The location was chosen due to its proximity to transportation connections and a railway junction, and because it could easily be closed off from the outside world.^[6] The camp was initially constructed as a prison for German and Polish political prisoners and was one of the first institutions for the isolation and 'disciplining' of opponents.^[7]

On June 14, 1940, a group of 728 Polish prisoners, including schoolchildren, students and soldiers, became the first inmates at the camp. They were followed by German prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany and Polish political prisoners from Dachau concentration camp.^[8] The majority of the first inmates were not Jewish, and those that were had been arrested for political reasons.

Upon arrival each inmate was registered and given a number, which replaced his or her name. They were then forced to undress, have their heads and bodies shaved, and to shower. The inmates were then given stiped suites and heavy wooden shoes. Initially all incoming prisoners had their photograph taken by the SS, but due to the lack of film this was soon only reserved for German prisoners.^[9] The inmates were housed in multi-storey brick barracks, which had been used as horse stables by the Polish Army. At first the inmates slept on the floor, but later as the population of the camp increased, two to three tier bunkbeds were installed.

[edit] Auschwitz II (Birkenau)

Jewish prisoners face selection at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) ramp in 1944. The main entertance of the camp is visible in the background.

At the end of 1940, Heinrich Himmler, Commander of the SS, visited Auschwitz and issued an order to expand the camp capacity from 10,000 to 30,000 prisoners.^[10] Auschwitz, with its ever-increasing flow of prisoners, became overcrowded. It could not expand any further and in October 1941, construction on Auschwitz II (also refered to as Auschwitz-Birkenau) began in Brzezinka, a town two kilometres from the main camp. The camp was designed to hold 100,000 prisoners and was built in an area that lacked adequate water or waste disposal, resulting in disease. It was originally constructed to hold Soviet prisoners of war, who would provide slave labour for SS building projects. The first Soviet prisoners arrived in late 1941, and of the first 10,000 Soviet prisoners sent to the camp, almost all died within the first five months due to poor conditions.^[11]

Following the successful Zyklon B experiments at Auschwitz I and the Wannsee Conference, the plan to house Russian prisoners of war at Birkenau changed. In January 1942, the SS coverted two farmhouses into make shift gas chambers.^[1] The first house, known as the Little Red House or Bunker 1, had its doors and windows bricked up and was divided into two seperate gasing chambers. A few weeks later the second farmhouse, known as the Little White House or Bunker 2, was converted into two chambers as well.^[12] The first Jews to be gassed in the houses arrived from Slovakia in March 1942, and were followed by prisoners selected by doctors in the camp hospital.^[1][13]

Prisoners arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau by train, stopping 2.5 kilometers away from the two farm houses, by a goods station located near an open field. Here the prisoners were unloaded and seperated into groups according to their sex. They were then forced to march past SS officers and doctors, who split the prisoners into groups of people fit to work and people who could not. People unable to work had to walk to the bunkers and strip naked, believing that they were to be showered. Together the bunkers had the capacity to gas 2000 people in one session. When all the prisoners had been loaded into the rooms, the airtight doors were shut, and Zyklon B was poured into openings in the side of the rooms. Corpses were taken to the crematorium in the parent camp or were thrown into mass graves near by, where they were covered in lime or burned. Operations in the bunkers ceased in the spring of 1943, as they could not keep up with the demands of the Final Solution.

Between March and June 1943, four large crematorium buildings were constructed at Birkenau. Together they had the capacity of 2,000 corpses each day, and consisted of a changing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens.^[14] The prisoners were first escorted to the changing area, which contained benches and numbered hooks that suggested the prisoners would be returning to their personal items. The gas chamber, which included seives mounted to pieces of wood to resemble shower heads, emitted Zyklon B through special pillar-like installations. The corpses were then taken to the crematorium ovens, where as many as five bodies were incinerated every half an hour.^[15]

The removal of corpses was carried out by the Sonderkommando (special squad), which consisted predominatly of Jewish inmates and Soviet prisoners of war. The Sonderkommando prepared new arrivals for gassing (ordering them to remove their clothing and surrender their personal possessions) and transferred corpses from the gas chambers to the furnaces, removing gold teeth, rings and hair from the dead.^[16]

[edit] Auschwitz III (Monowitz)

[edit] Auschwitz camp system

See also: List of subcamps of Auschwitz

[edit] Auschwitz as a business enterprise

[edit] Inmates

See also: List of notable Auschwitz inmates

[edit] The treatment of inmates

[edit] Women in Auschwitz

In March 1942, the first women's section at Auschwitz was established at the main camp, with the first transport of female prisoners from Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany and Jewish woman from Slovakia. The section was created by dividing the former mens's camp with a two metres high brick wall. On August 16, 1942, the camp at Auschwitz I was closed and its inmates were transferred to Auschwitz II.

[edit] Uprising

By the summer or autumn of 1943, prisoners in the Sonderkommando had formed a resistance group and included many people who had fought with the French Resistance and the communist underground in Poland.

[edit] Death toll

Because the Germans destroyed much of the camp's files and evidence, the exact death toll of the Auschwitz complex is impossible to calculate. In May 1945, after the complex had been examined, the gas chambers had been studied and over 200 statements from survivors had been collected, the Soviet governemnt announced that 4 million people had been murdered at Auschwitz. The Soviet total was based on the estimated incineration capacity of the crematoria. During the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946, former camp commandant Rudolf Höss testified that 3 million people had been murdered at Auschwitz. He estimated that 2.5 million had been killed with gas and half a million of people had died of hunger and disease.^[17][18]

Because of that the exact death toll of the entire Auschwitz camp system varies considerably from source to source. Various scholars place it at between 1.1 million and 1.5 million. An estimated 90 percent of the people murdered at the camp, a total of 960,000, were Jewish. The total coresponds to around 20-25 percent of all the Jews killed during the Second World War.^[19] Others killed include 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 10,000-15,000 members of occupied countries.

Current calculations are based on sources that have been discovered since the Soviet investigations after the war. These sources include parts of copies of the accessions lists of deported Jews, forms from the company Tesch und Stabenow concerning the delivery of Zyklon B, and Lager-SS reports to Berlin authorities indicating the number of people sent to the gas chambers from daily transports. Official documents from the prisoners' countries of origin are also of importance as they include detailed train timetables with figures and lists of names.

[edit] Liberation and post-war heritage

[edit] Allied knowledge

A photograph of Birkenau, taken May 31, 1944 by a Mosquito plane from the South African Air Force, sent to take photographs of the fuel factory at nearby Monowitz. The photographic analysts missed the significance of the photograph, it was identified in the late 1970s and analyzed by the CIA in 1978. Smoke can been seen coming from Crematoria V, indicating that a group of prisoners was recently gassed.

The first news of the crimes at Auschwitz reached the international public in the autumn of 1942 via the BBC in London.^[20] By then the Allies, the Vatican and some neutral states had been informed about the crimes. Through Gerhart Riegner, a representative from the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, the American and British governments had already been informed about the camp by telegram in August 1942. Riegner had recieved his information from a local who had heard people from the camp speaking openly about the mass murder.^[21] The telegram warned about the mass deportation of all Jews to the east for eradication, but the telegram was dismissed authorities.^[22]

News of the crimes also reached the public through accounts by Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two Jewish prisoners from Slovakia who had managed to escape from Birkenau on April 7, 1944 with help from the reisistance movement within the camp. Vrba and Wetzler had held important positions at the camp, which allowed them to gather exact information on the camp's activities.^[23]

A detailed report compiled in Slovak and German, describing the exterimation process, organization of the camp, numbers of prisoners and number of deaths, was published and sent to the World Jewish Congress. A abbreviated version reached the Allies in mid-June 1944. The BBC broadcasted some detailed and the American and Swiss press published some articles. Despite the public interest, the Allies did not take action against the mass extermination. Appeals for the camp to be bombed by the Polish government and Jewish orgnaizations failed to create political interest.

Detailed air reconnaissance photographs were taken by American planes between April and June 1944. The pictures were so detailed that extermination sites could be seen clearly. After the creation of an air force base in Foggia, Italy in early 1944, the camp was no longer out of Allied bomber range, but the idea of bombing Auschwitz was rejected by the American War Department because the camp was not seen as a military installation and air support was needed elsewhere.^[24] Allied planes did fly over Auschwitz and bombed nearby oil refineries between July and November 1944. The IG Farben plant was bombed on five seperate occasions in 1944 and a stray bomb damaging the siding of a building at the main camp, killing forty prisoners and fifteen SS men.^[25]

[edit] Auschwitz in the courts

[edit] Polish trials

After the war ended, more than several hundred members of the Auschwitz SS were brought to trial in Poland. Between 1946 and 1949, about 1,000 of the SS members had been tracked down, most of them from the American zone of occupied Germany.

[edit] Notes and references

References:

• Auchwitz: A History, Sybille Steinbacher, HaperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-082582-0. Translation by Shaun Whiteside. Paperback version.

[edit] See also

• List of subcamps of Auschwitz
• List of German concentration camps
• Auschwitz Album – a collection of photographs from inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.