The Camp

Auschwitz I
Auschwitz I served as the administrative centre 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. 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.

The SS selected some prisoners, often German criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of the other inmates (so-called: kapo). The various classes of prisoners were distinguishable by special marks on their clothes; Jews were generally treated the worst. All inmates had to work in the associated arms factories, except on Sundays, which were reserved for cleaning and showering and upon which there were no work assignments.

The harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the prisoners. Block 11 of Auschwitz (the original standing cells and such were block 13) was the "prison within the prison", where 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. Also in the basement were the "dark cells"; these cells had only a very tiny window, and a solid door. Prisoners placed in these cells would gradually suffocate as they used up all of the oxygen in the air; sometimes the SS would light a candle in the cell to use up the oxygen more quickly. Many were subjected to hanging with their hands behind their backs, thus dislocating their shoulder joints for hours, even days.

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 still exists; others suffered a more lingering death by being suspended from hooks set in two wooden posts, which also still exist.

In September 1941, the SS conducted poison gas tests in block 11, killing 850 Poles and Soviets using cyanide. The first experiment took place on 3 September 1941, and killed 600[citation needed] Soviet POWs. The substance producing the highly lethal cyanide gas was sold under the trade name Zyklon B, originally for use as a pesticide used to kill lice. The tests were deemed successful, and a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942, during which time some 60,000 people were killed therein; it was then converted into an air-raid shelter for the use of the SS. This gas chamber still exists, together with the associated crematorium, which was reconstructed after the war using the original components, which remained on-site.

The first women arrived in the camp on March 26, 1942. From April 1943 to May 1944, the gynecologist Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in block 10 of Auschwitz I, with the aim of developing a simple injection method to be used on the Slavic people. These experiments consisted largely of determining the effects of the injection of caustic chemicals into the uterus. This was extremely painful and many died during and shortly after. Dr. Josef Mengele, who is well known for his experiments on twins and dwarfs in the same complex, was the camp "doctor". He regularly performed gruesome experiments such as castration without anesthetics. Prisoners in the camp hospital who were not quick to recover were regularly killed by a lethal injection of phenol.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
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.[5]

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.

Birkenau had four gas chambers, designed to resemble showers, and four crematoria, used to incinerate bodies. Approximately 40 more satellite camps were established around Auschwitz. These were forced labor camps and were known collectively as Auschwitz III. The first one was built at Monowitz and held Poles who had been forcibly evacuated from their hometowns by the Nazis. The inmates of Monowitz were forced to work in the chemical works of IG Farben.

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 four groups:

One group, about three-quarters of the total, went to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau within a few hours; they included all children, all women with children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fully fit. In the Auschwitz Birkenau camp more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day. At Birkenau, the Nazis used a cyanide gas 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 Nuremburg.[6]

A second group of prisoners 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. Of these about 340,000 perished through executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness. Some prisoners survived through the help of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,100 Polish Jews by diverting them from Auschwitz to work for him, first in his factory near Kraków and later at a factory in what is now the Czech Republic.

A third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the hands of doctors such as Josef Mengele, who was also known as the “Angel of Death.”

The fourth group was composed of women who were selected to work in "Canada", the part of Birkenau where prisoners' belongings were sorted for use by Germans. The name "Canada" was very cynically chosen. In Poland it was - and is still - used as an expression used when viewing, for example, a valuable and fine gift. The expression comes from the time when Polish emigrants were sending gifts home from Canada.

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

By 1943 resistance organizations had developed in the camp. These organizations helped a few prisoners escape; these escapees took with them news of exterminations, such as the killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews transported from Hungary between May and July 1944. In October 1944 a group of sonderkommandos destroyed one of the crematoria at Birkenau. They and their accomplices, a group of women from the Monowitz labor camp, were all put to death. It was also not uncommon that if one prisoner escaped, selected persons in the escapee's block were killed.

When the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found about 7,600 survivors abandoned there. More than 58,000 prisoners had already been evacuated by the Nazis and sent on a final death march to Germany. In 1947, in remembrance of the victims, Poland founded a museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. By 1994, some 22 million visitors — 700,000 annually — had passed through the iron gate crowned with the cynical motto, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work will set you free").

Auschwitz III and satellite camps
The surrounding work camps 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 I. G. Farben. In regular intervals, doctors from Auschwitz II would visit the work camps and select the weak and sick for the gas chambers of Birkenau. The largest subcamps were built at Trzebinia, Blechhammer and Althammer. Female subcamps were constructed at Budy, Plawy, Zabrze, Gleiwitz I, II, III, Rajsko and at Lichtenwerden (now Světlá).

The whole Auschwitz complex of camps was liberated in early 1945 by the advancing Russian army.

Allies's knowledge of the camp
Some information regarding Auschwitz reached the Allies during 1941–1944, such as the reports of Witold Pilecki and Jerzy Tabeau, but the claims of mass killings were generally dismissed as exaggerations. This changed with receipt of the very detailed report of two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which finally convinced most Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz in the middle of 1944.

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 analyse them. (In fact, it was not until the 1970s that these photographs of Auschwitz were looked at carefully.)

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. 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

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. The girls from the munitions factory were brutally tortured, but refused to name any of their co-conspirators. Destroyed crematoria were never rebuilt.

There were also international plans for a general uprising in Auschwitz, coordinated with an Allied air raid and a Polish resistance attack from the outside.

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. 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 kill ten random people from the prisoner's block.

Since the Nazi regime was designed to degrade prisoners to the standards of animals, maintaining the will to survive was seen in itself as an act of rebellion. Primo Levi was given this very teaching from 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.[7]".

In 1943 the 'Kampf Gruppe 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.

Evacuation and liberation
The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; most of the prisoners were forced on a death march West. 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.

Death toll
The exact number of victims at Auschwitz is impossible to fix with certainty. Since Germans 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,[8] said that two and a half million Jews had been killed in gas chambers and about half a million died "naturally".[9] Later he wrote "I regard two and a half million far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities",[10]. The Auschwitz Death Book, recently uncovered in Soviet archives, is an example of logged records (pertaining only to registered inmates), but other examples of collected figures are scarce.[citation needed]

Communist Soviet and Polish authorities maintained a figure "between 2.5 and 4 million",[11]. 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. A larger study started around the same time by Franciszek Piper used time tables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate 1.1 million Jewish deaths and 140,000-150,000 ethnic Polish victims, along with 23,000 Roma & Sinti (Gypsies). This number has met with "significant, though not complete" agreement among scholars.

According to Harmon and Drobnicki,[11] relevant estimates are in range between 800,000 and five million people. List of estimates in millions: 0.8-0.9,[12] 1,[13] 1-2.5,[14] 1.1[15][16][17] 1.1-1.5,[18] 1.13,[19] 1.2-2.5,[20] 1.5-3.5,[21] 1.6,[22][23] 2,[24] 2.3,[25] 2.5,[26][27] 2.5-4,[28][29][30][31] 2.8-4,[32] 3 (only Polish victims),[33] over 3,[34] 3.5,[35] 3.5-4.5,[36] 4-5.[37]
 

1. Count Andreas Pius Cyrill of Zoltowski-Romanus, Polish noble, died September 4, 1941, age 59.
2. Władysław Bartoszewski, member of Armia Krajowa, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland (twice) after 1989, imprisoned at Auschwitz 22 September 1940 – 8 April 1941.
3. Count Bernhard of Lubienski, Polish noble, died 1942.
4. René Blum, French-Jewish choreographer, founder of the Ballet de l'Opera; killed at Auschwitz on April 30, 1943.
5. Tadeusz Borowski, Polish writer, later transferred to Dachau.
6. George Brady, sent on the death march; escaped when a Soviet tank blew a hole in the building he was in.
7. Hana Brady, died in gas chamber at 13.
8. Leo Bretholz, escaped from train en route, author of Leap into Darkness.
9. Yehiel De-Nur, Polish-Jewish writer, in Auschwitz for two years, survived, died 17 July 2001.
10. Robert Desnos, French poet.
11. Laure Diebold, French resistant, Compagnon de la Libération
12. Władysław Fejkiel, Auschwitz Polish prisoner and chief physician for prisoner infirmary, Block 20 in the main camp in 1944.
13. Anne Frank, teenage diarist from Amsterdam, held 7 weeks at Auschwitz, transferred to Bergen-Belsen where she died of Typhus.
14. Hans Frankenthal, German-Jewish author, survived.
15. Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, survived.
16. Franciszek Gajowniczek‎, Polish Army Sergeant whose life was spared when Maximilian Kolbe took his place. Survived and died in 1995.
17. Józef Garliński, Polish best selling writer who wrote numerous books in both English and Polish on Auschwitz and World War II, including the best selling 'Fighting Auschwitz'. Survived and died in 2005.
18. Kurt Gerron, German-Jewish actor and film director, died November 15, 1944.
19. Dora Gerson, German-Jewish cabaret singer and silent-film actress, died February 14, 1943.
20. Pavel Haas, Czech composer, died October 17, 1944
21. Regina Jonas, born 1902, first ordained female rabbi in Germany, rabbi at Neue Synagoge in Berlin, died October 12, 1944.
22. Yitzhak Katzenelson, Polish-Jewish poet, died 1 May 1944.
23. Imre Kertesz, Hungarian writer, Nobel Laureate in Literature for 2002.
24. Peter Kien, Czech artist, poet and librettist active in Terezin, died from infectious disease soon after arrival in October 1944, age 25.
25. Maximilian Kolbe, Catholic Saint, died 14 August 1941
26. Hans Krása, Czech composer, murdered 17 October 1944, age 44.
27. Rutka Laskier, Polish teenager who wrote a diary. Dubbed the "Polish Anne Frank".
28. Primo Levi, Italian-Jewish chemist and author, survived
29. Arnošt Lustig, Czech-Jewish writer and novelist, the Holocaust is his lifelong theme, survived.
30. Count Mauritz of Potocki, Polish noble, died 1942
31. Irène Némirovsky, French/Russian writer, died August 1942 , age 39.
32. Felix Nussbaum, German-Jewish painter, died 1944.
33. Bernard Offen, documentary filmmaker working in Poland and the United States to create Second Generation Witnesses.
34. Witold Pilecki,Polish soldier, the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp.
35. Samuel Pisar, International lawyer, writer, survived.
36. Erich Salomon, German photographer, died 1944.
37. Otto Selz, German-Jewish Psychologist, died 1943.
38. Vladek Spiegelman (and wife Anja), parents of Art Spiegelman, author of Maus.
39. Vladek Spiegelmann was the central character in Maus.
40. Edith Stein, Catholic Saint, died 9 August 1942.
41. Prince Ludwik Swiatopelk-Czetwertynski, Polish noble, died May 3, 1941, age 64.
42. Jack Tramiel, born 1928. Polish-born businessman. Rescued by the U.S. Army in April 1945. Currently living in Monte Sereno, California, USA.
43. Viktor Ullmann, Austrian Composer active in Prague, murdered 18 October 1944, age 46.
44. Simone Veil, nee Simone Annie Jacob (July 13 1927-), French politician, survived.
45. Rudolf Vrba, scientist, escaped to inform the world about Auschwitz.
46. Elie Wiesel, Romanian-born American novelist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, survived.
47. Andriy Andriyovych Yushchenko, father of Viktor Yushchenko (third president of Ukraine).

1. Gutman, Yisrael. "Auschwitz—An Overview" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, p. 17.
2. ^ Piper, Franciszek; review of Meyer, Fritjof. "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkentnisse durch neue Archivfunde", Osteuropa, 52, Jg., 5/2002, pp. 631-641.
3. ^ Piper, Franciszek Piper. "The Number of Victims" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, p. 62.
4. ^ http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/home_auschwitz_album.html
5. ^ Gutman, Yisrael. "Auschwitz — An Overview in Gutman, Yisrael and Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press 1998, p. 16.
6. ^ Nuremburg Trial Documentation
7. ^ Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, 1947
8. ^ Wikipedia:Rudolf Hoess
9. ^ Commandant of Auschwitz:Rudolf Höß. ISBN 1 84212 024 7, Appendix One, page 193
10. ^ Commandant of Auschwitz:Rudolf Höß. ISBN 1 84212 024 7, Appendix One, page 194
11. ^ a b c Brian Harmon, John Drobnicki, Historical sources and the Auschwitz death toll estimates
12. ^ Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. South Brunswick: T. Yoseloff, 1968, p. 500.
13. ^ Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961, p. 572.
14. ^ Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1974. p. 855.
15. ^ Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews. New York: Bantam Books, 1979, p. 191.
16. ^ Piper, Franciszek. "The Number of Victims" in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Washington D.C and Bloomington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 68-72.
17. ^ Sofsky, Wolfgang. The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp. Trans. William Templer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 43 in Galleys.
18. ^ Sweibocka, Teresa. Auschwitz: A History in Photographs. Bloomington and Warsaw: Indiana University Press and Ksiazka I Wiedza, 1993, pp. 287-288.
19. ^ Höss, Rudolf. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant of Auschwitz. ed. by Steven J. Palusky, trans. by Andrew Pollinger. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992, p. 391.
20. ^ Weiss, A. "Categories of Camps, Their character and Role in the Execution of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question," in The Nazi Concentration Camps, Jerusalem: Yad Veshem, 1984, pp. 132.
    ^ Bauer, Yehuda. A History of the Holocaust. New York: F. Watts. 1982. p. 215.
21. ^ ______. "Danger of Distortion, Poles and Jews alike are supplying those who deny the Holocaust with the best possible arguments," Jerusalem Post, 30 September 1989.
22. ^ Wellers, Georges. "Essai de determination du nombre de morts au camp d'Auschwitz" Le Monde Juif, Oct-December 1983, pp. 127-159.
23. ^ Billig, Joseph. Les camps de concentration dans l'economie du Reich hitlerien. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1973. pp. 101-102.
24. ^ Polaikov, Leon. Harvest of Hate Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1956, p. 202.
25. ^ "Auschwitz." The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book, 1980.
26. ^ Kamenetksy, Ihor. Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe. New Haven: College and University Press, 1961, p. 174.
27. ^ "Brestrafung der Verbrecher von Auschwitz," in Auschwitz: Geschichte und Wirklichkeit des Vernichtungslagers. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolt, 1980, p. 211.
28. ^ Czech, D. "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz: Abriss der Geschichte," in Auschwitz: Geschichte und Wirklichkeit des Konzentrationslagers. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolt, 1980, p. 42.
29. ^ Dunin-Wasowicz, Krzysztof. Resistance in the Nazi concentration camps, 1933-1945. Warsaw: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1982, p. 44.
30. ^ Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939-1945: informator encyklopedyczny. Warsaw: Panst. Wydaw. Naukowe DSP, 1979, p. 369.
31. ^ Madajczyk, Czeslaw. Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce; okupacja Polski, 1939-1945. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawn Naukowe, 1970, pp. 293-94.
32. ^ Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: Pergamon Press, 1988.
33. ^ Lane, Arthur Bliss. Saw Poland Betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948, p. 39
34. ^ ______. "Foreword," in Müller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz. New York: Stein and Day, 1979, p. xi.
35. ^ Kogon, Eugen. Der SS Staat. Berlin, 1974, p. 157.
36. ^ Friedman, Filip. This Was Oswiecim: The Story of a Murder Camp. Translated from the Yiddish original by Joseph Leftwich. London: The United Jewish Relief Appeal, 1946, p. 14.

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