Auschwitz concentration camp

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"Auschwitz" redirects here. For the town, see Oświęcim. Distinguish from Austerlitz.

Coordinates: 50°02′09″N 19°10′42″E / 50.03583°N 19.17833°E / 50.03583; 19.17833

Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
The main gate of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 2006
Type	Cultural
Criteria	vi
Reference	31
Region**	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	1979  (3rd Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland (marked with black and white skulls)

Auschwitz-Birkenau ( Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (help·info)) was the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration and extermination camps. Its remains are located in Poland approximately 50 kilometers west of Kraków and 286 kilometers south of Warsaw. The camp took its name from the nearby town of Oświęcim. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka, refers to the many birch trees surrounding the complex.

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was annexed by Nazi Germany and renamed Auschwitz, the town's German name. Up to then, there had been no special significance attached to the name; for example, "Duke of Auschwitz" was for centuries one of the minor titles held by the Habsburg Emperors (see Francis II), which at the time was completly innocuous and unimportant.

The camp commandant, Rudolf Höß, testified at the Nuremberg Trials that up to 3 million people had died at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has revised this figure to 1.1 million,^[1][2] about 90 percent of whom were Jews from almost every country in Europe.^[3] Most victims were killed in Auschwitz II's gas chambers using Zyklon B; other deaths were caused by systematic starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and purported "medical experiments".

In 1947, in remembrance of the victims, Poland founded a museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. By 1994, some 22 million visitors — 700,000 annually—had passed through the iron gate crowned with the motto "Arbeit macht frei". The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945 is celebrated on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom, and other similar memorial days in various countries.

Camps

Auschwitz I barracks

The three main camps were Auschwitz I, II, and III. Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp, served as the administrative center for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people, mostly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager, and was the site of the deaths of at least 960,000 Jews, 75,000 Poles, and some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies). Birkenau was the largest of all the Nazi extermination camps. Auschwitz III (Monowitz) served as a labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory of the IG Farben concern.

In November 2008, blueprints were discovered in a Berlin apartment that suggest a major expansion of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was planned, although the authenticity of the documents has not been independently confirmed.^[4] There were also around 40 satellite camps, some of them tens of kilometers from the main camps, with prisoner populations ranging from several dozen to several thousand.^[5] See list of subcamps of Auschwitz for others.

Like all German concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by the Nazi party's paramilitary arm, the SS. The commandants of the camp were the SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Höß until the summer of 1943, and later Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. Höß provided a detailed description of the camp's workings during his interrogations after the war and in his autobiography. He was hanged on April 16, 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium of Auschwitz I.

Auschwitz I

The gates to Auschwitz I

Auschwitz I patch with the letter "P": required wear for Polish inmates

Auschwitz I was the original camp, and it served as the administrative center for the whole complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940, on the basis of an old Polish brick army barracks (originally built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire). A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów became the first residents of Auschwitz on June 14 that year.

The camp was initially used for interning Polish intellectuals and resistance movement members, then also for Soviet Prisoners of War. Common German criminals, "anti-social elements" and 48 German homosexuals were also imprisoned there. Jews were sent to the camp as well, beginning with the very first shipment (from Tarnów). At any time, the camp held between 13,000 and 16,000 inmates; in 1942 the number reached 20,000.^{[citation needed]} The entrance to Auschwitz I was—and still is—marked with the sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “work makes (one) free”. The camp's prisoners who left the camp during the day for construction or farm labor were made to march through the gate to the sounds of an orchestra. Contrary to what is depicted in several films, the majority of the Jews were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II camp, and did not pass under this sign.

Map in the Auschwitz Museum detailing catchment area for Auschwitz across Europe

The double fences, each with two layers of barbed wire, separating the administration part of the camp (on the left) with the prison camp (on the right)

The SS selected some prisoners, often German criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of the other inmates (so-called: kapo). Although involved in numerous atrocities, only two were ever prosecuted for their individual behavior; many had "little choice about their actions".^[6] 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 and upon which there were no work assignments.

Interior of the gas chamber of Auschwitz I

A Stop sign in Auschwitz I

The harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the prisoners. Block 11 of Auschwitz (the original standing cells and such were block 13) was the "prison within the prison", where violators of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners were made to spend the nights in "standing-cells". These cells were about 1.5 metres square, and four men would be placed in them; they could do nothing but stand, and were forced during the day to work with the other prisoners. In the basement were located the "starvation cells"; prisoners incarcerated here were given neither food nor water until they were dead.^[7]

Interior of the crematorium of Auschwitz I. This facility was much smaller than those of Auschwitz II.

Gallows in Auschwitz I where camp commandant Rudolf Höß was executed on April 16, 1947

In the basement were the "dark cells"; these cells had only a very tiny window, and a solid door. Prisoners placed in these cells would gradually suffocate as they used up all of the oxygen in the 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, thus dislocating their shoulder joints for hours, even days.^[8]

The execution yard is between blocks 10 and 11. In this area, prisoners who were thought to merit individual execution received it. Some were shot against a reinforced wall which was reconstructed after the war^[9]; others suffered a more lingering death by being suspended from hooks set in two wooden posts, which also still exist.^{[citation needed]} On September 3, 1941, deputy camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch experimented on 600 Russian POWs and 250 ill Polish inmates by cramming them into the basement of Block 11 and gassing them with Zyklon B, a highly lethal cyanide based pesticide.^[10] This paved the way for the use of Zyklon B as an instrument for extermination at Auschwitz, and a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942, during which time some 60,000 people were killed therein; it was then converted into an air-raid shelter for the use of the SS. This gas chamber still exists, together with the associated crematorium, which was reconstructed after the war using the original components, which remained on-site.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau)

Roll call in front of the camp kitchen; SS photograph, 1944

"Selection" on the unloading ramp at Birkenau, May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant assignment to a work detail; to the left, the gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the Berehov ghetto; the image was taken by Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS. The main entrance is visible in the background. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.^[11]

Construction on Auschwitz II (Birkenau) began in October 1941 to ease congestion at the main camp. It was designed to hold several categories of prisoners, and to function as an extermination camp in the context of Himmler's preparations for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, the extermination of the Jews.^[12] The Nazis had committed themselves to the Final Solution no later than January 1942, the date of the Wannsee Conference.

The first gas chamber at Birkenau was "The Little Red House", a brick cottage that was 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.^[13] By July 1942, the SS were conducting the infamous "selections", in which incoming Jews were divided into those deemed able to work, who were then admitted to the camp, and those who weren't, who were immediately gassed.^[14]

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. It came online 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 up. Most victims were killed during a period afterwards.^[15]

The camp was staffed partly by prisoners, some of whom were selected to be kapos (orderlies) and sonderkommandos (workers at the crematoria). The kapos were responsible for keeping order in the barrack huts; the sonderkommando prepared new arrivals for gassing (ordering them to remove their clothing and surrender their personal possessions) and transferred corpses from the gas chambers to the furnaces, having first pulled out any gold that the victims might have had in their teeth. Members of these groups were killed periodically. The kapos and sonderkommandos were supervised by members of the SS; altogether 6,000 SS members worked at Auschwitz.

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.

Many people know the Birkenau camp simply as "Auschwitz"; it was larger than Auschwitz I, and more people passed through its gates than did those of Auschwitz I. It was the site of imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and of the killing of over one million people, mainly Jews but also large numbers of Poles, and Gypsies, mostly through gassing.

Selection process

The warehouse(s) in Auschwitz nicknamed "Canada," where goods stolen from Jewish deportees were stored before being sent to Germany or used by the SS

Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in daily convoys. Arrivals at the complex were separated into two main groups - those marked for immediate extermination, and those to be registered as prisoners. The first group, about three-quarters of the total, went to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau within a few hours; they included all children, all women with children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fully fit. SS personnel told the victims that 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 (depending on which crematorium) holes in the roof or windows on the side. In the Auschwitz Birkenau camp more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day. At Birkenau, the Nazis used a cyanide gas produced from Zyklon B pellets, which were manufactured by two companies who had acquired licensing rights to the patent held by IG Farben. The two companies were Tesch & Stabenow, of Hamburg, who supplied two tons of the crystals each month, and Degesch, of Dessau, who produced three-quarters of a ton. The bills of lading were produced at Nuremberg.^[16]

Those deemed fit to work were used as slave labor at industrial factories for such companies as IG Farben and Krupp. At the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were recorded as slaves between 1940 and 1945.^{[citation needed]} Of these about 340,000 perished through executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness.^{[citation needed]}

Sonderkommandos yanked gold teeth from the corpses of gas chamber victims; the gold was melted down and sent back to the Third Reich. The belongings of the arrivals, both those gassed and those admitted to the camp, were seized by the SS. They were sorted in an area of the camp called "Canada". Many of the SS at the camp enriched themselves by pilfering the confiscated property of the Jews.^[17] The name "Canada" was very cynically chosen. In Poland it was used as an expression used when viewing, for example, a valuable and fine gift. The expression came from the time when Polish emigrants were sending gifts home from Canada.^{[citation needed]}

Timeline of genocide

View of the railway sidings inside Auschwitz II-Birkenau, from the tower of the main guardhouse

Bunk beds in the Auschwitz II. There were as many as four inmates per bunk. There could be as many as a thousand inmates per barrack like the one pictured.

Auschwitz-Birkenau claimed more victims than any other German Nazi extermination camp despite coming into use after all the others. In 1941, 1.1 million Jews were murdered, largely by mass shootings in the occupied territories. In 1942, 2.7 million Jews were murdered, many in Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka, the extermination camps built in occupied Poland specifically to destroy Poland's three million Jews. Only 200,000 were killed at Auschwitz. In 1943, some 500,000 Jews were killed, half of which were killed in Auschwitz. With the destruction of Poland's Jews mostly complete, the other four camps were closed by the end of 1943. Auschwitz alone would continue to operate, both as a giant slave labor complex and an extermination facility dedicated to the genocide of Jews from the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe.^[18]

A can of Zyklon B gas granules and original signed documents detailing ordering of such gas as "materials for Jewish resettlement" on display at Auschwitz I

The busiest time for Auschwitz as an extermination camp was April through June 1944, when it was the center for the massacre of Hungary's Jews. Hungary was an ally of Germany during the war but had resisted turning over its Jews to the Germans until Germany sent troops to occupy Hungary in March 1944. In 56 days from April until the end of June 1944, 436,000 Hungarian Jews, half of the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz and to their deaths.^{[citation needed]} Jews continued to arrive from other parts of Nazi Europe as well. The incoming volume was so great that the SS at Auschwitz resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as the crematoria. The total of over 400,000 Jews gassed during the Hungarian Action in the spring of 1944 represented some two-thirds of all the 600,000 Jews exterminated in that year and a third of all the Jews killed at Auschwitz in the two and a half years that it operated as an extermination camp.^[19]

Auschwitz III

The surrounding work camps, of which there were approximately forty, were closely connected to German industry and were associated with arms factories, foundries and mines. The largest work camp was Auschwitz III Monowitz, named after the Polish village of Monowice. Starting operations in May 1942, it was associated with the synthetic rubber and liquid fuel plant Buna-Werke owned by IG Farben. 11,000 slave laborers worked at Monowitz. Seven thousand inmates worked at various chemical plants. Eight thousand worked in mines. Approximately 40,000 prisoners worked in slave labor camps at Auschwitz or nearby,^[20] under appalling conditions. In regular intervals, doctors from Auschwitz II would visit the work camps and select the weak and sick for the gas chambers of Birkenau.^{[citation needed]} The largest subcamps were built at Trzebinia, Blechhammer and Althammer. Female subcamps were constructed at Budy, Pławy, Zabrze, Gleiwitz I, II, III, Rajsko and at Lichtenwerden (now Světlá).

Medical experiments at Auschwitz

Block 10 - Medical experimentation block in Auschwitz

Nazi doctors at Auschwitz performed a wide variety of "experiments" on helpless prisoners. SS doctors 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.^[21]

The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, who was also 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 of a pair and killing the other when the first died to perform comparative autopsies. He also took a special interest in dwarves, injecting twins, dwarves and other prisoners with gangrene to "study" the effects.^[22]

Allies' knowledge of the camp

Picture of Birkenau taken by an American surveillance plane, 25 Aug. 1944.

Information regarding Auschwitz was available to the Allies during years 1940–1943 by accurate and frequent reports of Polish Army Captain Witold Pilecki. Pilecki was the only known person to volunteer^[23] to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp, spending 945 days at Auschwitz not only actively gathering evidence of genocide and supplying it to the British in London by Polish resistance movement but also organizing resistance structures at the camp.

Auschwitz camp photos of Pilecki (1941)

His first report was smuggled outside in November 1940. He eventually escaped on April 27, 1943, but even his personal report of mass killings was dismissed as exaggeration by the Allies, as were his previous ones.^[24] This changed with receipt of the very detailed report of two prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler who escaped on April 7, 1944 which finally convinced most Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz in the middle of 1944. ^[25]

Detailed air reconnaissance photographs of the camp were taken accidentally during 1944 by aircraft seeking to photograph nearby military-industrial targets, but no effort was made to analyze them. In fact, it was not until the 1970s that these photographs of Auschwitz were looked at carefully.^[26]

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.^{[citation needed]} Later several nearby military targets were bombed. One bomb accidentally fell into the camp and killed some prisoners. The debate over what could have been done, or what should have been attempted even if success was unlikely, has continued heatedly ever since.

Resistance

Birkenau revolt

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.^[27]

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.^{[citation needed]} 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–April 27, 1943 but his plan was not accepted by the Home Army as the Allies considered his reports about the Holocaust exaggerated.^[24]

Individual escape attempts

About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, of which about 300 were successful.^{[citation needed]} 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 ten random people from the prisoner's block and starve them to death.^[28]

Since the Nazi regime was designed to degrade prisoners to the standards of animals^{[citation needed]} , maintaining the will to survive was seen in itself as an act of rebellion. Primo Levi was taught this lesson by his fellow prisoner and friend Steinlauf: "[that] precisely because the camp was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that, if we want to survive, then it's important that we strive to preserve at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the external shape of civilization."^[29]

In 1943, the 'Kampfgruppe Auschwitz' was organised with the aim to send out as much information about what was happening in Auschwitz as possible. They buried notes in the ground in the hope a liberator would find them and smuggled out photos of the crematoria and gas chambers.^{[citation needed]}

In June 1944, Mala Zimetbaum tried to escape together with her Polish lover, 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".^{[citation needed]} They both were arrested on July 6 near the Slovakian frontier and sentenced to death; Galinski managed to kill himself before being executed, while Zimetbaum, having failed to commit suicide, died finally after being tortured by the SS.^{[citation needed]}

Evacuation and liberation

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. On January 20 the SS command sent orders to murder all the prisoners remaining in the camp, but in the chaos of the Nazi retreat the order was never carried out.^[30] On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; nearly 60,000 prisoners, most of those remaining, were forced on a death march to the camp toward Wodzisław Śląski (German: Loslau). Some 20,000 Auschwitz prisoners made it to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the British in April 1945.^[31] Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind; about 7,500 prisoners were liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Among the artifacts of automated murder found by the Russians were 348,820 men's suits and 836,255 women's garments.^[20]

Death toll

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Crematoria II and III are visible in the background.

Woman and children marching to the gas chambers

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 Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1943,^[32] said that Adolf Eichmann told him that two and a half million Jews had been killed in gas chambers and about half a million died "naturally".^[33] Later he wrote "I regard two and a half million far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities".^[34]

Communist Polish and Soviet authorities maintained a figure "between 2.5 and 4 million".^[1] The figure "4,000,000" was used on the original Auschwitz memorial plaques. The plaques did not specify the ethnicities of victims.

In 1983 French scholar George Wellers was one of the first to use German data on deportations to estimate the number killed at Auschwitz, arriving at 1.613 million dead, including 1.44 million Jews and 146,000 Catholic Poles.^[35] 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 (Gypsies).^[36] This number has met with "significant, though not complete" agreement among scholars.^[37]

According to Harmon and Drobnicki,^[1] estimates range from 800,000 to five million people. More recent and better researched estimates are on the lower end. List of estimates in millions: 0.8-0.9,^[38] 1,^[39] 1-2.5,^[40] 1.1^[41][42][43] 1.1-1.5,^[44] 1.13,^[45] 1.2-2.5,^[46] 1.5-3.5,^[47] 1.6,^[48][49] 2,^[50] 2.3,^[51] 2.5,^[52][53] 2.5-4,^{[54][55][56][57]} 2.8-4,^[58] 3 (only Polish victims),^[59] over 3,^[60] 3.5,^[61] 3.5-4.5,^[62] 4-5.^[63]

For many years, a memorial plaque placed at the camp by the Soviet authorities stated that 4 million people had been murdered at Auschwitz. The government of the People's Republic of Poland also supported this figure. In the west, this figure was accepted, but some historians had their doubts.^[1] After the collapse of the Communist government in 1989, the plaque 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. In short, all of the denier's blustering about the 'Four Million Variant' is a specious attempt to envelope the reader into their web of deceit, and it can be discarded after the most rudimentary examination of published histories.^[64]

After the war

Ruins at Birkenau, with brick chimneys belonging to wooden barracks being prominent, 2002

After the war the camp served until 1947 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.

The Polish government then 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 being done after the war but before the establishment of the museum). However, in most cases the departure from the historical truth is minor, and is clearly labelled. The museum contains very large numbers of 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 long, is wholly filled with human hair which the Nazis gathered from the people before and after they were killed.

A recent view of the Birkenau camp

Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are also open to the public. The Auschwitz concentration camp is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The ashes of the victims of the SS were scattered between the huts, and the entire area is seen as a grave site.

Most of the buildings of Auschwitz I are still standing. Many of them are now used as museums. The public entrance area (with bookshop, etc.) is outside the perimeter fence in what was the camp admission building, where new prisoners were registered and given their uniforms, etc.

Entrance to French section of Birkenau, in 2006. A guard tower and two information boards for visitors can be seen on the left.

Most of the buildings of Birkenau were burnt down by the Germans as the Russians came near, and much of the resulting brick rubble was removed in 1945 by the area's returning Polish population to restore damaged farm buildings. By the site of its gas chambers and incinerators are piles of broken bricks which were thrown aside in the search for re-usable intact ones. Today, the entrance building and some of the southern brick-built barracks survive; but of the almost three hundred wooden barracks, only nineteen remain: eighteen near the entrance building and one, on its own, further 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.

At the far end of Birkenau are memorial plaques in many languages including Romani.

The English language memorial plate at Birkenau camp

In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the grounds of Auschwitz II to some 500,000 people. After the pope had announced that Edith Stein would be beatified, some Catholics erected a cross near bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been gassed. A short while later, a Star of David appeared at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols there; eventually they were removed.

Carmelite nuns opened a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. After some Jewish groups called for the removal of the convent, representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987. One year later the Carmelites erected the 8 metre (26 ft) tall cross from the 1979 mass near their site, just outside block 11 and barely visible from within the camp. This led to protests by Jewish groups, who said that mostly Jews were killed at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be kept away from the site. Some Catholics^[who?] have argued that the people killed in Auschwitz I (as opposed to Auschwitz II) were mainly Polish Catholics (including at least one Catholic saint, Maximilian Kolbe). The Catholic Church told the Carmelites to move by 1989, but they stayed on until 1993, leaving the large cross behind. In 1998, after further calls to remove the cross, some 300 smaller crosses were erected by local activists near the large one, leading to further protests and heated exchanges. Following an agreement between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish government, the smaller crosses were removed in 1999 but the large papal one remains. See Auschwitz cross for more details.

Latrines for prisoners of Auschwitz

In 1999, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien caused controversy in relation to his arrangements to visit Auschwitz. He visited the camp with representatives of Canada's Jewish community, of Polish background and otherwise, but excluded non-Jewish members of a Polish-Canadian group that accompanied him on his visit to Poland. These persons were identified as "leaders of Canada's Polish community". Chretien justified the exclusion by saying that the non-Jewish Polish-Canadians were invited to join his business mission to Poland "because he normally includes ethnic groups on trade missions".^{[citation needed]} The business mission commenced one day after Chretien's visit to Auschwitz. The Canadian Polish Congress, which apparently has no Jewish members, said that it was offended and insulted by the refusal of Prime Minister Chretien to include it in the visit to Auschwitz. Approximately two weeks prior to the Auschwitz visit by the Prime Minister, The Canadian Polish Congress had requested to be included in the visit, after having learned that Chretien was inviting publicly identified "Canadian Jewish leaders", of Polish background and otherwise.^[65]

In 1996, Germany made 27 January, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the official day for the commemoration of the victims of 'National Socialism'. Countries who have also adopted similar memorial days include Denmark (Auschwitz Day), Italy (Memorial Day) and Poland ((Memorial Day for the Victims of Nazism).

The European Parliament marked the anniversary of the camp's liberation in 2005 with a minute of silence and the passage of this resolution:

27 January 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany's death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where a combined total of up to 1.5 million Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians and prisoners of various other nationalities, were murdered, is not only a major occasion for European citizens to remember and condemn the enormous horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, but also for addressing the disturbing rise in anti-semitism, and especially anti‑semitic incidents, in Europe, and for learning anew the wider lessons about the dangers of victimising people on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, social classification, politics or sexual orientation.

The site of Auschwitz-Birkenau has undergone a major change since the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the Communist era, "foreign visitors were often shocked by the presentations", which glorified the role of the Soviet Army, according to the European Jewish Congress.^[66]

Recently the Polish media, and the foreign ministry of Poland, have voiced objections to the use of the expression "Polish death camp" in relation to Auschwitz, as they feel that phrase might misleadingly suggest that Poles (rather than Germans) perpetrated the Holocaust. Most media outlets now show awareness of the offence this may cause, and try to avoid using such expressions (or issue an apology after using them).^[67] On 1 April 2006, a Polish Culture Ministry spokesman said that the government requested that UNESCO change the name from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau" to emphasize that the camp was run by German Nazis and not by Poles. On 28 June 2007 the United Nations World Heritage Committee officially announced that the new name is Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).^[68][69]

The Polish film directors Andrzej Munk and Andrzej Wajda were both given permission to film in Auschwitz for the films Pasażerka and Landscape After the Battle, respectively. The television miniseries War and Remembrance also shot the Holocaust scenes in Auschwitz. However, permission was denied to Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List. Subsequently, a "mirror" camp was constructed outside the infamous archway for the scene where the train arrives carrying the women Schindler was trying to save.

In February 2006, Poland refused to grant visas to Iranian researchers who were planning to visit Auschwitz.^[70] Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller said his country should stop Iran from investigating the scale of the Holocaust, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed as false.^[71] In Poland, denying the Holocaust by propagating "public and contradicting facts" is a crime punished by a sentence of up to 3 years in prison (article 55 of Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation^[72]

Auschwitz timeline

Electrified fencing around Auschwitz concentration camp. The double fence perimeter carried lethal voltages designed to kill escapees

Auschwitz I in winter, showing electrified perimeter fence

Eyeglasses of victims

• January 25, 1940 The Germans decide to construct a concentration camp near Oświęcim (Auschwitz).
• May 20, 1940 The first concentration camp prisoners – 30 recidivist criminals from Sachsenhausen – arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp.
• June 14, 1940. First mass transport, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnow.
• March 1, 1941 Reichsführer SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler inspects Oświęcim (Auschwitz). Because nearby factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the prisoner capacity of the camp. 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 will make additional visits to Auschwitz in 1942, when he will witness the killing of 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 will lead to the adoption of Zyklon B as the killing agent for the yet-to-be-constructed Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.
• January 25, 1942 SS chief Heinrich Himmler informs Richard Gluecks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, that 100,000 Jewish men and 50,000 Jewish women would be deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers.
• 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.
• December 31, 1942 German SS and police authorities deported approximately 175,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.
• 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 (Gypsies) residing in Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to be deported to Auschwitz.
• February 26, 1943 The first transport of Roma (Gypsies) from Germany arrives at Auschwitz. The SS authorities house them in Section B-IIe of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which becomes known as the "Gypsy family camp." By the end of 1943 more than 18,000 Roma (Gypsies) will have been incarcerated in the so-called family camp and as many as 23,000 Gypsies deported to the Auschwitz 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.^[73]
• March 22, 1943 Crematorium IV is handed over to the Auschwitz authorities.^[74]
• March 31, 1943 Crematorium II is handed over to the Auschwitz authorities.^[73]
• April 1, 1943 - March 1944 German SS and police authorities deport approximately 160,000 Jews to Auschwitz.
• April 4, 1943 Crematorium V is handed over to the Auschwitz authorities.^[74]
• June 24, 1943 Crematorium III is handed over to the Auschwitz authorities.^[75]
• May 2, 1944 The first two transports of Hungarian Jews arrive in Auschwitz.
• July 7, 1944 The deportation of Hungarian Jews is halted by order of Regent Miklos Horthy.
• August 2, 1944 SS camp authorities murder the last residents – just under 3,000 – of the so-called Gypsy family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The SS murders an estimated total of 20,000 Roma (Gypsies) in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.
• September 3, 1944 Anne Frank is transported to Auschwitz.
• April 1944 - November 1944 SS and Police authorities deport more than 585,000 Jews to Auschwitz.
• 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. On January 6, 1945, just weeks before Soviet forces liberate the camp, the SS will also hang four women who smuggled gunpowder into the camp.
• October 30, 1944 The last selections take place on the arrival ramp at Birkenau. 1,689 people from a transport from Terezin are sent to the gas chambers.^[76]
• November 25, 1944 As Soviet forces continue to approach, SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers and crematoria. During this SS attempt to destroy the evidence of mass killings, prisoners will be forced to dismantle and dynamite the structures.
• January 12, 1945 A Soviet offensive breaches the German defenses on the Vistula; Soviet troops take Warsaw and advance rapidly on Kraków and Oświęcim.
• January 18 - 27, 1945 As Soviet units approach, the SS evacuates to the west the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to the cities of Wodzisław and Gliwice in the western part of Upper Silesia. During the march, SS guards shoot anyone who cannot continue. In Wodzisław and Gliwice, the prisoners will be put on unheated freight trains and deported to concentration camps in Germany, particularly to Flossenburg, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Dachau, and to Mauthausen in Austria. In all, nearly 60,000 prisoners are forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system. As many as 15,000 die during the forced marches. Thousands more were killed in the days before the evacuation.
• January 27, 1945 Soviet troops enter the Auschwitz camp complex and liberate approximately 7,000 prisoners remaining in the camp. During the existence of Auschwitz, the SS camp authorities killed nearly one million Jews from across Europe. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, approximately 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and approximately 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
• April 17, 1946 The Polish government decides to close down and dismantle the prison camp and build a mausoleum for the German camp.
• April 16, 1947 Execution of Rudolf Höß. The next day a group of last 206 prisoners of Oświęcim transferred to Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, a former subcamp of Auschwitz.

See also

• Arbeitslager Neu-Dachs (Jaworzno)
• Auschwitz Album - a collection of pictures taken at Auschwitz during its operation.
• Auschwitz Trial
• Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
• Höcker Album
• International Auschwitz Committee
• List of inmates and victims of Auschwitz
• List of Nazi-German concentration camps
• Oświęcim Synagogue
• Przyszowice massacre
• Survivor syndrome

Notes

Further reading

• Dlugoborski, Waclaw, and Franciszek Piper, eds. Auschwitz, 1940-1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp Five Vols. Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000. ISBN 8-385047875
• Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994 ISBN 0253326842
• Rees, Laurence Auschwitz: A New History New York: Public Affairs, 2005 ISBN 1-58648-303-X
• Gilbert, Martin Auschwitz and the Allies New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981 Photographs, maps. ISBN 0-03-057058-1
• Boyne, John The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Great Britain: David Fickling Books, 2006 ISBN 0-385-75106-0
• 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
• Levi, Primo Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (1986) 1993 (current edition includes "A conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth" New York: Collier Books ISBN 0-020-2919222
• van Pelt, Robert Jan. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Indiana University Press, 2002. ISBN 0253340160
• Adam Cyra, Ochotnik do Auschwitz - Witold Pilecki 1901-1948, Oświęcim 2000. ISBN 83-912000-3-5

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (in English, Polish, and German) – Official website
• Auschwitz: The Final Stop Categorized material on the camp from Yad VaShem] (accessed 02/03/08)
• A Virtual Tour of Auschwitz/Birkenau Annotated images of the camp (accessed 02/14/08)
• Interactive image map of Birkenau
• Auschwitz Jewish Center situated in the town of Oświęcim
• Auschwitz-Birkenau and city Oswiecim (in Polish)
• Data and summary facts
• Video footage from a 2003 visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Selected Photos from the Auschwitz Album with commentary by Oliver Lustig
• Liberation of Auschwitz - 60th Anniversary United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Holocaust Encyclopedia - Auschwitz United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Cybrary of the Holocaust Holocaust education site
• Anna Heilman Anna Heilman is the last living survivor of the plot to blow up Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her Holocaust experiences are discussed in her novel Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicle of Anna Heilman
• Auschwitz-Birkenau 2005 Photographs and commentary marking the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation
• Photos From Auschwitz and Birkenau Detailed Photos From Auschwitz and Birkenau by Alan Jacobs
• Virtual Reality panoramas of Auschwitz and Birkenau Interactive Virtual Reality panoramas of Auschwitz and Birkenau
• Auschwitz, Then and Now Photo/Art Exhibit Paintings by survivor Jan Komski – click and see an actual photo taken in the same place depicted in the painting
• Auschwitz: A Visitor's Introduction
• Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' A comprehensive BBC documentary about the creation, evolution and aftermath of the Auschwitz camp
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center An international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust
• Photos of Auschwitz 2003 Photos taken by Laura Carboni while participating in the annual multi-faith Bearing Witness retreat.
• Auschwitz and Birkenau at Google Maps
• CBC Digital Archives - Life after Auschwitz
• Panoramic photo gallery of Auschwitz-Birkenau
• C.A.N.D.L.E.S museum (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) Terre Haute, IN. Founded by Mengele Twin, Eva Korr
• D. A. Brugiono and R. G. Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex. CIA report on WWII aerial photographs (1978, declassified in 2000), [1]
• The Holocaust: Crimes, Heros, and Villains
• Photos of Auschwitz - Birkenau
• JewishKrakow.net A guide to Kazimierz, Krakow's Jewish Quarter. Also includes a section on Auschwitz complete with picture gallery and travel information.
• Life at Auschwitz

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