AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP

The former concentration camp Auschwitz is located in a swampy area, about 60 kilometres from Cracow. The location - favourably situated as regards transport facilities - seemed adequate to the SS, and so they chose former Austrian imperial barracks for the site of a concentration camp.

The complex included an area of 40 square kilomteres and also an extensive prohibited area. The construction of the camp began under the first commander, Rudolf Höss, in May 1940, which was later called Auschwitz I or "Stammlager" (original camp). The first enlargement was planned for 7.000 prisoners and consisted of 28 two-storied brick buildings and wooden side-barracks. The average occupancy was 18.000 prisoners. The whole camp was surrounded by an electrically charged barbed wire fence. Above the entrance gate, the watchword "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work liberates") was written.

In October 1941, the building of Auschwitz II Birkenau started according to an order of Heinrich Himmler. This much bigger camp included 250 wooden and stone barracks. The highest occupancy of Birkenau was about 100.000 inmates in 1943. In contrast to the Stammlager, Birkenau was always planned as an extermination camp. Here the "Rampe" was located, where the selections of people who had just been deported, took place. Birkenau was divided into the following protective custody camps:

• The camp for men
• The camp for women (since March 26, 1942),
• The quarantine camp,
• The family camp Theresienstadt (since autumn 1943),
• The camp for Hungarian Jews (since May 1944),
• The Gypsy camp (since spring 1943),
• The prisoners sanitary block,
• The camp "Mexico",
• The stockcamp "Canada".

   

In Birkenau stood the crematories II to V ( completed between March 22 until June 25, 1943), which were each equipped with a gas chamber and - according to SS notes - could burn 4.756 bodies every day. During an uprise on October 7, 1944, prisoners blew up the gas chamber of crematorium IV. In November 1944, the SS detached the extermination plants and blew up all crematories.

There were industrial firms located near Auschwitz concentration camp, which leased KZ-prisoners from the SS as cheap slave-workers. The "IG-Farben-"plant in the suburb Monowitz for example produced synthetic rubber (Buna). The SS started to build the sub-camp Auschwitz-Monowitz for the inmates who worked there on May 31, 1942 until December 1943 center of Auschwitz III concentration camp. Besides, the SS also had own enterprises and mines. Altogether, there were 50 of such sub-camps.

Auschwitz concentration camp was evacuated from January 17 till 19, 1945 by the SS. Until then, 405.000 inmates had been counted with tatooed numbers, among them some 132.000 women. (The ones who had immediately been sent to the gas chamber, did not receive any number. Their figure is estimated as at least 1,3 million people). The closer the Red Army came, the more frightened became the SS; they started to evacuate the camp and sent all prisoners who still were able to move, on the "Death marches" to other concentration camps. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Army liberated the camp with some 5.000 ill and dying inmates left behind, in it.