1964 Folder 12 POSTCARDS Camp BIRKENAU AUSCHWITZ MAP Judaica HOLOCAUST Jewish For Sale

DESCRIPITION :Up for sale is an EXTREMELY RARE Polish YIZKOR commemorative BOUND FOLDER of EXCEPTIONAL DESIGN of TWELVE PHOTO POSTCARDS from the AUSCHWITZ - BIRKENAU - BEZEZINKA concentration DEATH CAMP. The FOLDER which includes also TWO MAPS in addition to the IMPRESSIVE PHOTOS was published in WARSAW POLAND in 1964 ( Dated ). Each of the postcards is accompanied by a short explanation in 5 languages : ENGLISH , RUSSIAN , POLISH , FRENCH and GERMAN. Each of the FOLDER LEAVES is arranged in a way that once a postcard is being postaly used - There\'s a remaining part with a smaller photo. The folder is bound as issued by wrappers of impressive graphic design. The PRECIOUS FOLDER was bound for protection by the previous owner by a GENUINE BLACK LEATHER protective HARD binding with GILT HEADINGS. Original ILLUSTRATED WRAPPERS. Protective LUXURIOUS LEATHER HC. 9\" x 4.3\". 12 divided back . Postaly unused PHOTO POSTCARDS. MAPS. Very good condition.( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) . Will be sent extremely well packed inside a protective rigid packaging .

AUTHENTICITY: ThisistheORIGINALvintage1964 FIRST and ONLY edition ( Dated ), NOT a recent editionor a reprint , It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS: Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards.SHIPPMENT: Shipp worldwide via registered mail is $29. Will be sent extremely well packed inside a protective rigid packaging.Handling around 5-10 days after payment.

Auschwitz concentration camp(German:Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40concentrationandextermination campsoperated byNazi Germanyinoccupied Poland(in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939)[3]duringWorld War IIand theHolocaust. It consisted ofAuschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) inOświęcim;Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp withgas chambers;Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerateIG Farben; anddozens of subcamps.[4]The camps became a major site of the Nazis\'Final Solution to the Jewish Question.After Germanysparked World War IIbyinvading Polandin September 1939, theSchutzstaffel(SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp.[5]The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted nearly solely of Poles to whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years.[6]In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp asfunctionaries, established the camp\'s reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The firstgassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place inblock 11of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all overGerman-occupied Europeto its gas chambers. Of the1.3 million peoplesent to Auschwitz, 1.1million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.[7]Those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed duringmedical experiments.At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 twoSonderkommandounits, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789Schutzstaffelpersonnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended;[8]several were executed, including camp commandantRudolf Höss. TheAllies\' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.As the SovietRed Armyapproached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp\'s population west on adeath marchto camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troopsentered the campon 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 asInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such asPrimo Levi,Viktor Frankl, andElie Wieselwrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded theAuschwitz-Birkenau State Museumon the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named aWorld Heritage SitebyUNESCO.Contents1 Background2 Camps2.1 Auschwitz I2.1.1 Growth2.1.2 First mass transport2.1.3 Crematorium I, first gassings2.1.4 First mass transport of Jews2.2 Auschwitz II-Birkenau2.2.1 Construction2.2.2 Crematoria II–V2.3 Auschwitz III-Monowitz2.4 Subcamps3 Life in the camps3.1 SS garrison3.2 Functionaries andSonderkommando3.3 Tattoos and triangles3.4 Transports3.5 Life for the inmates3.6 Women\'s camp3.7 Medical experiments, block 103.8 Punishment, block 113.9 Death wall3.10 Family camps3.10.1 Gypsy family camp3.10.2 Theresienstadt family camp4 Selection and extermination process4.1 Gas chambers4.2 Selection4.3 Inside the crematoria4.4 Use of corpses4.5 Death toll5 Resistance, escapes, liberation5.1 Camp resistance, flow of information5.2 Escapes,Auschwitz Protocols5.3 Bombing proposal5.4 Sonderkommandorevolt5.5 Evacuation and death marches5.6 Liberation6 After the war6.1 Trials of war criminals6.2 Legacy6.3 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum7 See also8 Sources8.1 Notes8.2 Citations8.3 Works cited9 Further reading10 External linksBackgroundCamps and ghettos inGerman-occupied Europe, 1944Auschwitz I, II, and IIIThe ideology ofNational Socialism(Nazism) combined elements of \"racial and territorial expansionism,Richard J. Evanswrites.[9]Adolf Hitlerand hisNazi Partybecame obsessed by the \"Jewish question\".[10]Both during and immediately after theNazi seizure of powerin Germany in 1933, acts of violence againstGerman Jewsbecame ubiquitous,[11]and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law.[a]Harassment and economic pressureencouraged Jews to leave Germany; their businesses were denied access to markets, forofferden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts.[13]On 15 September 1935, theReichstagpassed theNuremberg Laws. One, theReich Citizenship Law, defined as citizens those of \"German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully\", and theLaw for the Protection of German Blood and German Honorprohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with \"German or related blood\" and Jews.[14]When Germanyinvaded Polandin September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed.[15]The area around Auschwitz wasannexed to the German Reich, as part of firstGau Silesiaand from 1941Gau Upper Silesia.[16]The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitlerinvaded the Soviet Union.[17]The first gassing at Auschwitz—of a group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941.[18]By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been killed in mass shootings by a combination of GermanEinsatzgruppen, ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators.[19]At theWannsee Conferencein Berlin on 20 January 1942,Reinhard Heydrichoutlined theFinal Solution to the Jewish Questionto senior Nazis,[20]and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all overoccupied Europeto Germanextermination campsin Poland: andTreblinka. Most prisoners were gassed on arrival.[21]CampsAuschwitz IGrowthAuschwitz I, 2013 (50.027606°N 19.203088°E)Auschwitz I, 2009; the prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of theAuschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[22]Former prisoner reception center; the building on the far left with the row of chimneys was the camp kitchen.An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp showing the Auschwitz I camp, 4 April 1944A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp (Stammlager) and administrative headquarters of the camp complex. Fiftykm southwest ofKraków, the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners byArpad Wigand, the inspector of theSicherheitspolizei(security police) and deputy ofErich von dem Bach-Zelewski, theHigher SS and Police Leaderfor Silesia.Richard Glücks, head of theConcentration Camps Inspectorate, sentWalter Eisfeld, former commandant of theSachsenhausen concentration campinOranienburg, Germany, to inspect it.[23]Around 1,000m long and 400m wide,[24]Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built.[25]Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler, head of theSS, approved the site in April 1940 on the recommendation of SS-ObersturmbannführerRudolf Hössof the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German \"career criminals\" (Berufsverbrecher), the men were known as \"greens\" (Grünen) after thegreen triangleson their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish the sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles.[26]Bruno Brodniewitsch, the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), becameLagerältester(camp elder). The others were given positions such askapoand block supervisor.[27]First mass transportFurther information:First mass transport to Auschwitz concentration campThe first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 fromTarnów, Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758.[b]In a letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was \"fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men\".[29]By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) \"zone of interest\" (Interessengebiet) patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police.[30]By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles.[24]An inmate\'s first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to the gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception center near the gate with theArbeit macht freisign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothes. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of theAuschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[22]Crematorium I, first gassingsFurther information:§Gas chambersCrematorium I, photographed in 2016, reconstructed after the war[31]Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940.[32]Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over.[33]By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.[34]The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when LagerführerKarl Fritzsch, at the instruction of Rudolf Höss, killed a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwingZyklon Bcrystals into their basement cell inblock 11of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September.[35]The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people.[34][c]Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in the ceiling.[34]First mass transport of JewsFurther information:Bytom SynagogueandBeuthen Jewish CommunityHistorians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At theWannsee Conferencein Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for theFinal Solution.[36]According toFranciszek Piper, the Auschwitz commandantRudolf Hössoffered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before the establishment of the women\'s camp in March 1942.[37]InKommandant in Auschwitz, he wrote: \"In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia.\"[38]On 15 February 1942, according toDanuta Czech, a transport of Jews from Beuthen,Upper Silesia(Bytom, Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber.[d][40]In 1998 an eyewitness said the train contained \"the women of Beuthen\".[e]Saul Friedländerwrote that the Beuthen Jews were from theOrganization Schmeltlabor camps and had been deemed unfit for work.[42]According toChristopher Browning, transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941.[43]The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 byNikolaus Wachsmann.[44]Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Polish Jews fromSilesiaandZagłębie Dąbrowskiewas taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation.[45]On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in thewomen\'s camp, where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized byAdolf Eichmann\'sdepartment IV B4(the Jewish office) in theReich Security Head Office(RSHA).[f]On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France.[46]\"Selection\", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany\'s increasing need for labor. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners.[47]There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I.Perry Broad, anSS-Unterscharführer, wrote that \"transport after transport vanished in the Auschwitz [I] crematorium.\"[48]In the view ofFilip Müller, one of the Auschwitz ISonderkommando, tens of thousands of Jews were killed there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from theTheresienstadt,Ciechanow, andGrodnoghettos.[49]Against this,Jean-Claude Pressacestimated that up to 10,000 people had been killed in Auschwitz I.[48]The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of the Auschwitz IISonderkommando, who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp\'s mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses.[50]Auschwitz II-Birkenau\"Birkenau\" redirects here. For other uses, seeBirkenau (disambiguation).ConstructionAuschwitz II-Birkenau gate from inside the camp, 2007Same scene, May/June 1944, with the gate in the background. \"Selection\" ofHungarian Jewsfor work or thegas chamber. From theAuschwitz Album, taken by the camp\'sErkennungsdienst.Gate with the camp remains in the background, 2009After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded,[51]althoughPeter Hayesnotes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told thePolish government-in-exilein London: \"the Auschwitz concentration camp...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000.\"[52]Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called aKriegsgefangenenlager(prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 inBrzezinka, about three kilometers from Auschwitz I.[53]The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned.[54]SS-SturmbannführerKarl Bischoff, an architect, was the chief of construction.[51]Based on an initial budget ofRM8.9million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000.[55]There were 174 barracks, each measuring 35.4 by 11.0 metres (116 by 36ft), divided into 62 bays of 4 square metres (43sqft). The bays were divided into \"roosts\", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of 1 square metre (11sqft) to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived,Robert-Jan van Peltwrote, \"of the minimum space needed to exist\".[56]The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men\'s camp) in the early months died ofhypothermia, starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks.[57]Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941,[58]but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II,[39]where most of them had died by May.[59]Crematoria II–VFurther information:§Gas chambersThe first gas chamber at Auschwitz II was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo fromSilesiaandZagłębie Dąbrowskiewas taken straight from theOświęcimfreight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow.[45]The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the \"little red house\" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into a gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said \"Zur Desinfektion\" (\"to disinfection\"). A second brick cottage, the \"little white house\" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942.[60]When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass killing in a gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the newIG Farbenplant being constructed atMonowitz.[61]Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944.[62]Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room 30 by 11.24 metres (98.4 by 36.9ft) on the ground floor, and an underground dressing room 49.43 by 7.93 metres (162.2 by 26.0ft) and gas chamber 30 by 7 metres (98 by 23ft). The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to the ceiling to resemble showerheads.[63]The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V.[64]By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at a time, theSonderkommandowere able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day.[65]Auschwitz III-MonowitzMain article:Monowitz concentration campDetailed map ofBuna Werke,Monowitz, and nearby subcampsAfter examining several sites for a new plant to manufactureBuna-N, a type ofsynthetic rubberessential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerateIG Farbenchose a site near the towns ofDworyand Monowice (Monowitz in German), about 7 kilometres (4.3mi) east of Auschwitz I.[66]Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in the frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labor, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials.[67]In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population ofOświęcimbe expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building the factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work.[68]Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it.[69]By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I.[70]Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through the town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons.[71]Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942.[72]Known asKL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager(Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as the Monowitz concentration camp,[73]it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry.[74]Heinrich Himmler(second left)visits theIG Farbenplant in Auschwitz III, July 1942.Measuring 270 by 490 metres (890ft ×1,610ft), the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring 17.5 by 8 metres (57ft ×26ft), each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks.[75]IG Farben paid the SS three or fourReichsmarkfor nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker.[76]In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) died as a result of malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp,Peter Hayeswrites, the inmates were \"reduced to walking skeletons\".[77]Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced the population by nearly a fifth each month.[78]Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp.[79]Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labor and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly.[80]The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945, the SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp atGliwice.[81]From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to theBuchenwaldandMauthausenconcentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by the1st Ukrainian Frontof theRed Army.[82]SubcampsFurther information:List of subcamps of AuschwitzSeveral other German industrial enterprises, such asKruppandSiemens-Schuckert, built factories with their own subcamps.[83]There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners.[84]Designated asAussenlager(external camp),Nebenlager(extension camp),Arbeitslager(labor camp), orAussenkommando(external work detail),[85]camps were built and as far afield as theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moraviain Czechoslovakia.[86]Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming.[87]For example,Wirtschaftshof Budy, in the Polish village of Budy nearBrzeszcze, was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from the crematoria with sod and manure.[88]Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube,Gleiwitz II, andRajsko.[89]Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps.[90]Life in the campsSS garrisonMain articles:SS command of Auschwitz concentration campandSS-TotenkopfverbändeFrom theHöcker Album(left to right):Richard Baer(Auschwitz commandant from May 1944),Josef Mengele(camp physician), andRudolf Höss(first commandant) inSolahütte, an SS resort near Auschwitz, summer 1944.[91]The commandant\'s and administration building, Auschwitz IRudolf Höss, born inBaden-Badenin 1900,[92]was named the first commandant of Auschwitz whenHeinrich Himmlerordered on 27 April 1940 that the camp be established.[93]Living with his wife and children in a two-storystuccohouse near the commandant\'s and administration building,[94]he served as commandant until 11 November 1943,[93]withJosef Krameras his deputy.[24]Succeeded as commandant byArthur Liebehenschel,[93]Höss joined the SSBusiness and Administration Head Officein Oranienburg as director of Amt DI,[93]a post that made him deputy of the camps inspectorate.[95]Richard Baerbecame commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 andFritz Hartjensteinof Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp\'s liquidation in January 1945.Heinrich Schwarzwas commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation.[96]Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as the local SS garrison commander (Standortältester) to oversee the arrival of Hungary\'s Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps.[93]According toAleksander Lasik, about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp\'s existence;[97]4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file.[98]In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz; the higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp.[99]Female guards were known as SS supervisors (SS-Aufseherinnen).[100]Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers ofVolksdeutschefrom other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.[101]Camp guards, around three quarters of the SS personnel, were members of theSS-Totenkopfverbände(death\'s headunits).[102]Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners.[103]The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims\' property.[104]Functionaries andSonderkommandoAuschwitz I, 2009Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles,[105]were assigned positions of authority asFunktionshäftlinge(functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. TheLagerprominenz(camp elite) includedBlockschreiber(barracks orderly), andKommandierte(trusties).[106]Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners, the functionaries developed a reputation as sadists.[105]Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS.[107]Although the SS oversaw the killings at each gas chamber, the bulk of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as theSonderkommando(special squad).[108]These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874.[109]TheSonderkommandoremoved goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, theSonderkommandoburned them in the crematoria.[110]Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the Sonderkommando lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them.[111]Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within the camp, including with the SS.[112]Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly killed and replaced.[113]About 100 survived to the camp\'s liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp atMauthausen, where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived.[114]Tattoos and trianglesFurther information:Nazi concentration camp badgeAuschwitz clothingUniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with a serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war[115]and on the left arm for civilians.[116][117]Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German:Winkel) sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners(Schutzhäftlingeor Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals (Berufsverbrecheror BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners (Asozialeor Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and the Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah\'s Witnesses (Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigungor IBV)\'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German.[118]An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz.[119]Jews wore ayellow badge, the shape of theStar of David, overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom.[120]TransportsFreight carinside Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the gatehouse, used to transport deportees, 2014[121]Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. TheAltejudenrampe(old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports.[121][122]Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck.[123]Work on a new railway line and ramp(right)between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival ofHungarian Jews[122]between May and early July 1944.[124]The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.[121]Life for the inmatesThe day began at 4:30am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly.[125]Sanitary arrangements were atrocious, with few latrines and a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets; the toilet facilities were \"sewage channels\" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe.[126]Primo Levidescribed a 1944Auschwitz IIIwashroom:Latrinein the men\'s quarantine camp, sector BIIa, Auschwitz II, 2003It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours. The walls are covered by curious didacticfrescoes: for example, there is the good Häftling [prisoner], portrayed stripped to the waist, about to diligently soap his sheared and rosy cranium, and the bad Häftling, with a strong Semitic nose and a greenish colour, bundled up in his ostentatiously stained clothes with a beret on his head, who cautiously dips a finger into the water of the washbasin. Under the first is written: \"So bist du rein\" (like this you are clean), and under the second, \"So gehst du ein\" (like this you come to a bad end); and lower down, in doubtful French but in Gothic script: \"La propreté, c\'est la santé\" [cleanliness is health].[127]Prisoners received half a liter of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food.[128]A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter the weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers\' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment.[129]Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted.[130]Auschwitz II brick barracks, sector BI, 2006; four prisoners slept in each partition, known as abuk.[131]Auschwitz II wooden barracks, 2008After roll call, to the sound of \"Arbeitskommandos formieren\" (\"form work details\"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter.[132]A prison orchestra, such as theWomen\'s Orchestra of Auschwitz, was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp.Kaposwere responsible for the prisoners\' behavior while they worked, as was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels.[133]Lunch was three quarters of a liter of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables (mostly potatoes andrutabaga) three times. The evening meal was 300 grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labor were given extra rations.[134]A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until the absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner,Tadeusz Wiejowski, had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee\'s barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death.[135]After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. Then they had some free time to use the washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew (\"nighttime quiet\") was marked by a gong at nine o\'clock.[136]Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen.[137]The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw.[138]According toMiklós 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.[139]Sunday was not a work day, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower,[140]and were allowed to write (in German) to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help.[141]Observant Jewstried to keep track of theHebrew calendarandJewish holidays, includingShabbat, and theweekly Torah portion. No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in the camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers.[142]Women\'s campSee also:Women\'s Orchestra of AuschwitzWomen in Auschwitz II, May 1944Roll call in front of the kitchen building, Auschwitz IIAbout 30 percent of the registered inmates were female.[143]The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from theRavensbrück concentration camp, arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women\'s camp.[144]Rudolf Höss wrote of them: \"It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them.\"[145]They were given serial numbers 1–999.[46][g]The women\'s guard from Ravensbrück,Johanna Langefeld, became the first Auschwitz women\'s campLagerführerin.[144]A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews fromPoprad, Slovakia, arrived on the same day. According toDanuta Czech, this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by theReich Security Head Office(RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SSObersturmbannführerAdolf Eichmann.[46](Office IV was theGestapo.)[146]A third transport of 798 Jewish women fromBratislava, Slovakia, followed on 28 March.[46]Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I,[147]but from 6 August 1942,[148]13,000 inmates were transferred to a new women\'s camp (Frauenkonzentrationslageror FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector (Bauabschnitt) BIa; it was later extended into BIb,[149]and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women.[150]In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in theGypsy family camp, as were several thousand in theTheresienstadt family camp.[151]Conditions in the women\'s camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive.[150]Gisella Perl, a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women\'s camp, wrote in 1948:There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get in to this tiny building, knee-deep in human excrement. As we all suffered from dysentry, we could barely wait until our turn came, and soiled our ragged clothes, which never came off our bodies, thus adding to the horror of our existence by the terrible smell that surrounded us like a cloud. The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on those planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another.[152]Langefeld was succeeded asLagerführerinin October 1942 by SSOberaufseherinMaria Mandl, who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SSObersturmführerPaul Müller, then SSHauptsturmführerFranz Hössler.[153]Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilization experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist,Carl Clauberg, and another German doctor,Horst Schumann.[150]Medical experiments, block 10Main articles:Block 10andNazi human experimentationBlock 10, Auschwitz I, where medical experiments were performed on womenGerman doctors performed a variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy ofX-raysas asterilizationdevice by administering large doses to female prisoners.Carl Clauberginjected chemicals into women\'suterusesin an effort to glue them shut. Prisoners were infected with spotted fever for vaccination research and exposed to toxic substances to study the effects.[154]In one experimentBayer, then part ofIG Farben, paid RM 150 each for 150 female inmates from Auschwitz (the camp had asked for RM 200 per woman), who were transferred to a Bayer facility to test an anesthetic. A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss: \"The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price.\" The Bayer research was led at Auschwitz byHelmuth Vetterof Bayer/IG Farben, who was also an Auschwitz physician and SS captain, and by Auschwitz physiciansFriedrich EntressandEduard Wirths.[155]Defendants during theDoctors\' trial, Nuremberg, 1946–1947The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz wasJosef Mengele, the \"Angel of Death\", who worked in Auschwitz II from 30 May 1943, at first in thegypsy family camp.[156]Interested in performing research onidentical twins,dwarfs, and those with hereditary disease, Mengele set up a kindergarten in barracks 29 and 31 for children he was experimenting on, and for all Romani children under six, where they were given better food rations.[157]From May 1944, he would select twins and dwarfs from among the new arrivals during \"selection\",[158]reportedly calling for twins with \"Zwillinge heraus!\" (\"twins step forward!\").[159]He and other doctors (the latter prisoners) would measure the twins\' body parts, photograph them, and subject them to dental, sight and hearing tests, x-rays, blood tests, surgery, and blood transfusions between them.[160]Then he would have them killed and dissected.[158]Kurt Heissmeyer, another German doctor and SS officer, took 20 Polish Jewish children from Auschwitz to use inpseudoscientificexperiments at theNeuengamme concentration campnear Hamburg, where he injected them with thetuberculosisbacillito test a cure for tuberculosis. In April 1945, the children were killed by hanging to conceal the project.[161]AJewish skeleton collectionwas obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics.Rudolf BrandtandWolfram Sievers, general manager of theAhnenerbe(a Nazi research institute), delivered the skeletons to the collection of the Anatomy Institute at theReichsuniversität StraßburginAlsace-Lorraine. The collection was sanctioned byHeinrich Himmlerand under the direction ofAugust Hirt. Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped toNatzweiler-Struthofand killed in August 1943.[162]Brandt and Sievers were executed in 1948 after being convicted during theDoctors\' trial, part of theSubsequent Nuremberg trials.[163]Punishment, block 11Main article:Block 11Block 11and(left)the \"death wall\", Auschwitz I, 2000Prisoners could be beaten and killed by guards and kapos for the slightest infraction of the rules. Polish historian Irena Strzelecka writes that kapos were given nicknames that reflected their sadism: \"Bloody\", \"Iron\", \"The Strangler\", \"The Boxer\".[164]Based on the 275 extant reports of punishment in the Auschwitz archives, Strzelecka lists common infractions: returning a second time for food at mealtimes, removing your own gold teeth to buy bread, breaking into the pigsty to steal the pigs\' food, putting your hands in your pockets.[165]Flogging during roll-call was common. A flogging table called \"the goat\" immobilized prisoners\' feet in a box, while they stretched themselves across the table. Prisoners had to count out the lashes—\"25 mit besten Dank habe ich erhalten\" (\"25 received with many thanks\")— and if they got the figure wrong, the flogging resumed from the beginning.[165]Punishment by \"the post\" involved tying prisoners hands behind their backs with chains attached to hooks, then raising the chains so the prisoners were left dangling by the wrists. If their shoulders were too damaged afterwards to work, they might be sent to the gas chamber. Prisoners were subjected to the post for helping a prisoner who had been beaten, and for picking up a cigarette butt.[166]To extract information from inmates, guards would force their heads onto the stove, and hold them there, burning their faces and eyes.[167]Known as block 13 until 1941, block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, reserved for inmates suspected of resistance activities.[168]Cell 22 in block 11 was a windowlessstanding cell(Stehbunker). Split into four sections, each section measured less than 1.0m2(11sqft) and held four prisoners, who entered it through a hatch near the floor. There was a 5cmx5cm vent for air, covered by a perforated sheet. Strzelecka writes that prisoners might have to spend several nights in cell 22; Wiesław Kielar spent four weeks in it for breaking a pipe.[169]Several rooms in block 11 were deemed thePolizei-Ersatz-Gefängnis Myslowitz in Auschwitz(Auschwitz branch of the police station atMysłowice).[170]There were alsoSonderbehandlungcases (\"special treatment\") for Poles and others regarded as dangerous to the Third Reich.[171]Death wallThe \"death wall\" showing the death-camp flag, the blue-and-white stripes with a red triangle signifying the Auschwitz uniform of political prisoners.The courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, known as the \"death wall\", served as an execution area, including for Poles in the General Government area who had been sentenced to death by a criminal court.[171]The first executions, by shooting inmates in the back of the head, took place at the death wall on 11 November 1941, Poland\'sNational Independence Day. The 151 accused were led to the wall one at a time, stripped naked and with their hands tied behind their backs.Danuta Czechnoted that a \"clandestineCatholic mass\" was said the following Sunday on the second floor of Block 4 in Auschwitz I, in a narrow space between bunks.[172]An estimated 4,500 Polish political prisoners were executed at the death wall, including members of the camp resistance. An additional 10,000 Poles were brought to the camp to be executed without being registered. About 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war died by execution, although this is a rough estimate. A Polish government-in-exile report stated that 11,274 prisoners and 6,314 prisoners of war had been executed.[173]Rudolf Hösswrote that \"execution orders arrived in an unbroken stream\".[170]According to SS officerPerry Broad, \"[s]ome of these walking skeletons had spent months in the stinking cells, where not even animals would be kept, and they could barely manage to stand straight. And yet, at that last moment, many of them shouted \'Long live Poland\', or \'Long live freedom\'.\"[174]The dead included ColonelJan Karczand MajorEdward Gött-Getyński, executed on 25 January 1943 with 51 others suspected of resistance activities.Józef Noji, the Polish long-distance runner, was executed on 15 February that year.[175]In October 1944, 200Sonderkommandowere executed for their part in theSonderkommandorevolt.[176]Family campsGypsy family campMain articles:Gypsy family camp (Auschwitz)andRomani genocideRomanichildren,Mulfingen, Germany, 1943; the children were studied byEva Justinand later sent to Auschwitz.[177]A separate camp for theRoma, theZigeunerfamilienlager(\"Gypsy family camp\"), was set up in the BIIe sector of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in February 1943. For unknown reasons, they were not subject to selection and families were allowed to stay together. The first transport ofGerman Romaarrived on 26 February that year. There had been a small number of Romani inmates before that; two Czech Romani prisoners, Ignatz and Frank Denhel, tried to escape in December 1942, the latter successfully, and a Polish Romani woman, Stefania Ciuron, arrived on 12 February 1943 and escaped in April.[178]Josef Mengele,the Holocaust\'s most infamous physician, worked in the gypsy family camp from 30 May 1943 when he began his work in Auschwitz.[156]The Auschwitz registry (Hauptbücher) shows that 20,946 Roma were registered prisoners,[179]and another 3,000 are thought to have entered unregistered.[180]On 22 March 1943, one transport of 1,700Polish Sinti and Romawas gassed on arrival because of illness, as was a second group of 1,035 on 25 May 1943.[179]The SS tried to liquidate the camp on 16 May 1944, but the Roma fought them, armed with knives and iron pipes, and the SS retreated. Shortly after this, the SS removed nearly 2,908 from the family camp to work, and on 2 August 1944 gassed the other 2,897. Ten thousand remain unaccounted for.[181]Theresienstadt family campMain article:Theresienstadt family campThe SS deported around 18,000 Jews to Auschwitz from theTheresienstadt on 8 September 1943 with a transport of 2,293 male and 2,713 female prisoners.[183]Placed in sector BIIb as a \"family camp\", they were allowed to keep their belongings, wear their own clothes, and write letters to family; they did not have their hair shaved and were not subjected to selection.[182]Correspondence betweenAdolf Eichmann\'s office and theInternational Red Crosssuggests that the Germans set up the camp to cast doubt on reports, in time for a planned Red Cross visit to Auschwitz, that mass murder was taking place there.[184]The women and girls were placed in odd-numbered barracks and the men and boys in even-numbered. An infirmary was set up in barracks 30 and 32, and barracks 31 became a school and kindergarten.[182]The somewhat better living conditions were nevertheless inadequate; 1,000 members of the family camp were dead within six months.[185]Two other groups of 2,491 and 2,473 Jews arrived from Theresienstadt in the family camp on 16 and 20 December 1943.[186]On 8 March 1944, 3,791 of the prisoners (men, women and children) were sent to the gas chambers; the men were taken to crematorium III and the women later to crematorium II.[187]Some of the group were reported to have sungHatikvahand the Czech national anthem on the way.[188]Before they died, they had been asked to write postcards to relatives, postdated to 25–27 March. Several twins were held back for medical experiments.[189]TheCzechoslovak government-in-exileinitiated diplomatic manoeuvers to save the remaining Czech Jews after its representative in Bern received theVrba-Wetzler report, written by two escaped prisoners,Rudolf VrbaandAlfred Wetzler, which warned that the remaining family-camp inmates would be gassed soon.[190]The BBC also became aware of the report; its German service broadcast news of the family-camp murders during its women\'s programme on 16 June 1944, warning: \"All those responsible for such massacres from top downwards will be called to account.\"[191]The Red Crossvisited Theresienstadtin June 1944 and were persuaded by the SS that no one was being deported from there.[184]The following month, about 2,000 women from the family camp were selected to be moved to other camps and 80 boys were moved to the men\'s camp; the remaining 7,000 were gassed between 10 and 12 July.[192]Selection and extermination processGas chambersA reconstruction of crematorium I, Auschwitz I, 2014[193]The first gassings at Auschwitz took place in early September 1941, when around 850 inmates—Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish inmates—were killed with Zyklon B in the basement ofblock 11in Auschwitz I. The building proved unsuitable, so gassings were conducted instead in crematorium I, also in Auschwitz I, which operated until December 1942. There, more than 700 victims could be killed at once.[194]Tens of thousands were killed in crematorium I.[49]To keep the victims calm, they were told they were to undergo disinfection and de-lousing; they were ordered to undress outside, then were locked in the building and gassed. After its decommissioning as a gas chamber, the building was converted to a storage facility and later served as an SS air raid shelter.[195]The gas chamber and crematorium were reconstructed after the war. Dwork and van Pelt write that a chimney was recreated; four openings in the roof were installed to show where the Zyklon B had entered; and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt with the original components.[31]Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz II, May/June 1944Crematoria II and III and their chimneys are visible in the background, left and right.Jewish women and children from Hungary walking toward the gas chamber, Auschwitz II, May/June 1944. The gate on the left leads to sector BI, the oldest part of the camp.[196]In early 1942, mass exterminations were moved to two provisional gas chambers (the \"red house\" and \"white house\", known as bunkers 1 and 2) in Auschwitz II, while the larger crematoria (II, III, IV, and V) were under construction. Bunker 2 was temporarily reactivated from May to November 1944, when large numbers of Hungarian Jews were gassed.[197]In summer 1944 the combined capacity of the crematoria and outdoor incineration pits was 20,000 bodies per day.[198]A planned sixth facility—crematorium VI—was never built.[199]From 1942, Jews were being transported to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys.[200]The gas chambers worked to their fullest capacity from May to July 1944, during theHolocaust in Hungary.[201]A rail spur leading to crematoria II and III in Auschwitz II was completed that May, and a new ramp was built between sectors BI and BII to deliver the victims closer to the gas chambers (images top right). On 29 April the first 1,800 Jews from Hungary arrived at the camp.[202]From 14 May until early July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews, half the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of that period.[124]The crematoria had to be overhauled. Crematoria II and III were given new elevators leading from the stoves to the gas chambers, new grates were fitted, and several of the dressing rooms and gas chambers were painted. Cremation pits were dug behind crematorium V.[202]The incoming volume was so great that theSonderkommandoresorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.[203]SelectionAccording to Polish historianFranciszek Piper, of the 1,095,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, around 205,000 were registered in the camp and given serial numbers; 25,000 were sent to other camps; and 865,000 were killed soon after arrival.[204]Adding non-Jewish victims gives a figure of 900,000 who were killed without being registered.[205]During \"selection\" on arrival, those deemed able to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp (registered), and the rest were sent to the left to be gassed. The group selected to die included almost all children, women with small children, the elderly, and others who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fit for work.[206]Practically any fault—scars, bandages, boils and emaciation—might provide reason enough to be deemed unfit.[207]Children might be made to walk toward a stick held at a certain height; those who could walk under it were selected for the gas.[208]Inmates unable to walk or who arrived at night were taken to the crematoria on trucks; otherwise the new arrivals were marched there.[209]Their belongings were seized and sorted by inmates in the\"Kanada\" warehouses, an area of the camp in sector BIIg that housed 30 barracks used as storage facilities for plundered goods; it derived its name from the inmates\' view of Canada as a land of plenty.[210]Inside the crematoriaEntrance to crematorium III, Auschwitz II, 2008[211]The crematoria consisted of a dressing room, gas chamber, and furnace room. In crematoria II and III, the dressing room and gas chamber were underground; in IV and V, they were on the ground floor. The dressing room had numbered hooks on the wall to hang clothes. In crematorium II, there was also a dissection room (Sezierraum).[212]SS officers told the victims they had to take a shower and undergo delousing. The victims undressed in the dressing room and walked into the gas chamber; signs said \"Bade\" (bath) or \"Desinfektionsraum\" (disinfection room). A former prisoner testified that the language of the signs changed depending on who was being killed.[213]Some inmates were given soap and a towel.[214]A gas chamber could hold up to 2,000; one former prisoner said it was around 3,000.[215]The Zyklon B was delivered to the crematoria by a special SS bureau known as the Hygiene Institute.[216]After the doors were shut, SS men dumped in the Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. The victims were usually dead within 10 minutes; Rudolf Höss testified that it took up to 20 minutes.[217]Leib Langfus, a member of theSonderkommando, buried his diary (written inYiddish) near crematorium III in Auschwitz II. It was found in 1952, signed \"A.Y.R.A\":[218]It would be difficult to even imagine that so many people would fit in such a small [room]. Anyone who did not want to go inside was shot[...] or torn apart by the dogs. They would have suffocated from the lack of air within several hours. Then all the doors were sealed tight and the gas thrown in by way of a small hole in the ceiling. There was nothing more that the people inside could do. And so they only screamed in bitter, lamentable voices. Others complained in voices full of despair, and others still sobbed spasmodically and sent up a dire, heart-rending weeping.... And in the meantime, their voices grew weaker and weaker... Because of the great crowding, people fell one atop another as they died, until a heap arose consisting of five or six layers atop the other, reaching a height of one meter. Mothers froze in a seated position on the ground embracing their children in their arms, and husbands and wives died hugging each other. Some of the people made up a formless mass. Others stood in a leaning position, while the upper parts, from the stomach up, were in a lying position. Some of the people had turned completely blue under the influence of the gas, while others looks entirely fresh, as if they were asleep.[219]Use of corpsesOne of theSonderkommandophotographs: Women on their way to the gas chamber, Auschwitz II, August 1944Sonderkommandowearing gas masks dragged the bodies from the chamber. They removed glasses and artificial limbs and shaved off the women\'s hair;[217]women\'s hair was removed before they entered the gas chamber atBełżec,Sobibór, andTreblinka, but at Auschwitz it was done after death.[220]By 6 February 1943, the Reich Economic Ministry had received 3,000kg of women\'s hair from Auschwitz andMajdanek.[220]The hair was first cleaned in a solution ofsal ammoniac, dried on the brick floor of the crematoria, combed, and placed in paper bags.[221]The hair was shipped to various companies, including one manufacturing plant inBremen-Bluementhal, where workers found tiny coins with Greek letters on some of the braids, possibly from some of the 50,000 Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943.[222]When they liberated the camp in January 1945, the Red Army found 7,000kg of human hair in bags ready to ship.[221]Just before cremation, jewelry was removed, along with dental work and teeth containing precious metals.[223]Gold was removed from the teeth of dead prisoners from 23 September 1940 onwards by order of Heinrich Himmler.[224]The work was carried out by members of theSonderkommandowho were dentists; anyone overlooking dental work might themselves be cremated alive.[223]The gold was sent to the SS Health Service and used by dentists to treat the SS and their families; 50kg had been collected by 8 October 1942.[224]By early 1944, 10–12kg of gold were being extracted monthly from victims\' teeth.[225]The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and the ashes were buried, thrown in theVistulariver, or used as fertilizer. Any bits of bone that had not burned properly were ground down in woodenmortars.[226]Death tollNew arrivals, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, May/June 1944At least 1.3million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1million died.[7]Overall 400,207 prisoners were registered in the camp: 268,657 male and 131,560 female.[143]A study in the late 1980s by Polish historianFranciszek Piper, published byYad Vashemin 1991,[227]used timetables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate that, of the 1.3million sent to the camp, 1,082,000 had died there, a figure (rounded up to 1.1million) that Piper regarded as a minimum.[7]That figure came to be widely accepted.[h]The Germans tried to conceal how many they had killed. In July 1942, according toRudolf Höss\'s post-war memoir, Höss received an order fromHeinrich Himmler, viaAdolf Eichmann\'s office and SS commanderPaul Blobel, that \"[a]ll mass graves were to be opened and the corpses burned. In addition the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of corpses burned.\"[231]Earlier estimates of the death toll were higher than Piper\'s. Following the camp\'s liberation, the Soviet government issued a statement, on 8 May 1945, that four million people had been killed on the site, a figure based on the capacity of the crematoria.[232]Höss told prosecutors at Nuremberg that at least 2,500,000 people had been gassed there, and that another 500,000 had died of starvation and disease.[233]He testified that the figure of over two million had come from Eichmann.[234]In his memoirs, written in custody, Höss wrote that Eichmann had given the figure of 2.5million to Höss\'s superior officerRichard Glücks, based on records that had been destroyed.[235]Höss regarded this figure as \"far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities,\" he Piper)[2] Registered deaths(Auschwitz) Unregistered deaths(Auschwitz) TotalJews 95,000 865,000 960,000Ethnic Poles 64,000 10,000 74,000 (70,000–75,000)RomaandSinti 19,000 2,000 21,000Soviet prisoners of war 12,000 3,000 15,000OtherEuropeans:Soviet 10,000–15,000 n/a 10,000–15,000Total deaths in Auschwitz, 1940–1945 200,000–205,000 880,000 1,080,000–1,085,000Around one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died in Auschwitz.[237]By nation, the greatest number of Auschwitz\'s Jewish victims originated from Hungary, accounting for 430,000 deaths, followed by Poland (300,000), France (69,000), Netherlands (60,000), Greece (55,000), Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (46,000), Slovakia (27,000), Belgium (25,000), Germany and Austria (23,000), Yugoslavia (10,000), Italy (7,500), Norway (690), and others (34,000).[238]Timothy Snyderwrites that fewer than one percent of the million Soviet Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed in Auschwitz.[239]Of the at least 387 Jehovah\'s Witnesses who were imprisoned at Auschwitz, 132 died in the camp.[240]Resistance, escapes, liberationCamp resistance, flow of informationSee also:Resistance movement in Auschwitz,Witold Report,Responsibility for the Holocaust §Allied knowledge of the atrocities, andThe Holocaust §Flow of information about the mass murderCamp of Deathpamphlet (1942) byNatalia Zarembina[241]Halina Krahelskareport from AuschwitzOświęcim, pamiętnik więźnia(\"Auschwitz: Diary of a prisoner\"), 1942.[242]\"The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland\", a paper issued by thePolish government-in-exileaddressed to theUnited Nations, 1942Information about Auschwitz became available to the Allies as a result of reports by CaptainWitold Pileckiof the PolishHome Army[243]who, as \"Tomasz Serafiński\" (serial number 4859),[244]allowed himself to be arrested in Warsaw and taken to Auschwitz.[243]He was imprisoned there from 22 September 1940[245]until his escape on 27 April 1943.[244]Michael Flemingwrites that Pilecki was instructed to sustain morale, organize food, clothing and resistance, prepare to take over the camp if possible, and smuggle information out to the Polish military.[243]Pilecki called his resistance movementZwiązek Organizacji Wojskowej(ZOW, \"Union of Military Organization\").[245]CaptainWitold PileckiThe resistance sent out the first oral message about Auschwitz with Dr. Aleksander Wielkopolski, a Polish engineer who was released in October 1940.[246]The following month the Polish underground in Warsaw prepared a report on the basis of that information,The camp in Auschwitz, part of which was published in London in May 1941 in a booklet,The German Occupation of Poland, by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The report said of the Jews in the camp that \"scarcely any of them came out alive\". According to Fleming, the booklet was \"widely circulated amongst British officials\". ThePolish Fortnightly Reviewbased a story on it, writing that \"three crematorium furnaces were insufficient to cope with the bodies being cremated\", as didThe Scotsmanon 8 January 1942, the only British news organization to do so.[247]On 24 December 1941, the resistance groups representing the various prisoner factions met in block 45 and agreed to cooperate. Fleming writes that it has not been possible to track Pilecki\'s early intelligence from the camp. Pilecki compiled two reports after he escaped in April 1943; the second,Raport W, detailed his life in Auschwitz I and estimated that 1.5million people, mostly Jews, had been killed.[248]On 1 July 1942, thePolish Fortnightly Reviewpublished a report describing Birkenau, writing that \"prisoners call this supplementary camp \'Paradisal\', presumably because there is only one road, leading to Paradise\". Reporting that inmates were being killed \"through excessive work, torture and medical means\", it noted the gassing of the Soviet prisoners of war and Polish inmates in Auschwitz I in September 1941, the first gassing in the camp. It said: \"It is estimated that the Oswiecim camp can accommodate fifteen thousand prisoners, but as they die on a mass scale there is always room for new arrivals.\"[249]The camp badge for non-Jewish Polish political prisonersThePolish government-in-exilein London first reported the gassing of prisoners in Auschwitz on 21 July 1942,[250]and reported the gassing of Soviet POWs and Jews on 4 September 1942.[251]In 1943, theKampfgruppe Auschwitz(Combat Group Auschwitz) was organized within the camp with the aim of sending out information about what was happening.[252]TheSonderkommandoburied notes in the ground, hoping they would be found by the camp\'s liberators.[253]The group also smuggled out photographs; theSonderkommandophotographs, of events around the gas chambers in Auschwitz II, were smuggled out of the camp in September 1944 in a toothpaste tube.[254]According to Fleming, the British press responded, in 1943 and the first half of 1944, either by not publishing reports about Auschwitz or by burying them on the inside pages. The exception was thePolish Jewish Observer, aCity and East London Observersupplement edited by Joel Cang, a former Warsaw correspondent for theManchester Guardian. The British reticence stemmed from a Foreign Office concern that the public might pressure the government to respond or provide refuge for the Jews, and that British actions on behalf of the Jews might affect its relationships in the Middle East. There was similar reticence in the United States, and indeed within the Polish government-in-exile and the Polish resistance. According to Fleming, the scholarship suggests that the Polish resistance distributed information about the Holocaust in Auschwitz without challenging the Allies\' reluctance to highlight it.[255]Escapes,Auschwitz ProtocolsFurther information:Vrba-Wetzler reportandAuschwitz ProtocolsTelegram dated 8 April 1944 fromKL Auschwitzreporting the escape ofRudolf VrbaandAlfréd WetzlerFrom the first escape on 6 July 1940 ofTadeusz Wiejowski, at least 802 prisoners (757 men and 45 women) tried to escape from the camp, according to Polish historianHenryk Świebocki.[256][i]He writes that most escapes were attempted from work sites outside the camp\'s perimeter fence.[258]Of the 802 escapes, 144 were successful, 327 were caught, and the fate of 331 is unknown.[257]Four Polish prisoners—Eugeniusz Bendera (serial number 8502),Kazimierz Piechowski(no.918), Stanisław Gustaw Jaster (no.6438), and Józef Lempart (no.3419)—escaped successfully on 20 June 1942. After breaking into a warehouse, three of them dressed as SS officers and stole rifles and an SS staff car, which they drove out of the camp with the fourth handcuffed as a prisoner. They wrote later to Rudolf Höss apologizing for the loss of the vehicle.[259]On 21 July 1944, Polish inmateJerzy Bieleckidressed in an SS uniform and, using a faked pass, managed to cross the camp\'s gate with his Jewish girlfriend, Cyla Cybulska, pretending that she was wanted for questioning. Both survived the war. For having saved her, Bielecki was recognized byYad VashemasRighteous Among the Nations.[260]Jerzy Tabeau(no.27273, registered as Jerzy Wesołowski) and Roman Cieliczko (no.27089), both Polish prisoners, escaped on 19 November 1943; Tabeau made contact with the Polish underground and, between December 1943 and early 1944, wrote what became known as thePolish Major\'s reportabout the situation in the camp.[261]On 27 April 1944,Rudolf Vrba(no.44070) andAlfréd Wetzler(no.29162) escaped to Slovakia, carrying detailed information to theSlovak Jewish Councilabout the gas chambers. The distribution of theVrba-Wetzler report, andpublication of parts of itin June 1944, helped to halt thedeportation of Hungarian Jewsto Auschwitz. On 27 May 1944, Arnost Rosin (no.29858) andCzesław Mordowicz(no.84216) also escaped to Slovakia; theRosin-Mordowicz reportwas added to the Vrba-Wetzler and Tabeau reports to become what is known as theAuschwitz Protocols.[262]The reports were first published in their entirety in November 1944 by the United StatesWar Refugee Board, in a document entitledThe Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia.[263]Bombing proposalMain article:Auschwitz bombing debateAerial view of Auschwitz II-Birkenau taken by theRAFon 23 August 1944In January 1941 the Commander-in-Chief of thePolish Armyand prime minister-in-exile,Władysław Sikorski, arranged for a report to be forwarded to Air MarshalRichard Pierse, head ofRAFBomber Command.[264]Written by Auschwitz prisoners in or around December 1940, the report described the camp\'s atrocious living conditions and asked thePolish government-in-exileto bomb it:The prisoners implore the Polish Government to have the camp bombed. The destruction of the electrified barbed wire, the ensuing panic and darkness prevailing, the chances of escape would be great. The local population will hide them and help them to leave the neighbourhood. The prisoners are confidently awaiting the day when Polish planes from Great Britain will enable their escape. This is the prisoners unanimous demand to the Polish Government in London.[265]Pierse replied that it was not technically feasible to bomb the camp without harming the prisoners.[264]In May 1944 Slovak rabbiMichael Dov Weissmandlsuggested that the Allies bomb the rails leading to the camp.[266]HistorianDavid Wymanpublished an essay inCommentaryin 1978 entitled \"Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed\", arguing that theUnited States Army Air Forcescould and should have attacked Auschwitz. In his bookThe Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945(1984), Wyman argued that, since the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz III had been bombed three times between August and December 1944 by the USFifteenth Air Forcein Italy, it would have been feasible for the other camps or railway lines to be bombed too.Bernard Wasserstein\'sBritain and the Jews of Europe(1979) andMartin Gilbert\'sAuschwitz and the Allies(1981) raised similar questions about British inaction.[267]Since the 1990s, other historians have argued that Allied bombing accuracy was not sufficient for Wyman\'s proposed attack, and thatcounterfactual historyis an inherently problematic information:Sonderkommando §AuschwitzSonderkommandomemberZalmen Gradowski, pictured with his wife, Sonia, buried his notebooks near crematorium III. Sonia Gradowski was gassed on 8 December 1942.[269]TheSonderkommandowho worked in the crematoria were witnesses to the mass murder and were therefore regularly killed themselves.[270]On 7 October 1944, following an announcement that 300 of them were to be sent to a nearby town to clear away rubble—\"transfers\" were a common ruse for the murder of prisoners—the group, mostly Jews from Greece and Hungary, staged an uprising.[271]They attacked the SS with stones and hammers, killing three of them, and set crematorium IV on fire with rags soaked in oil that they had hidden.[272]Hearing the commotion, theSonderkommandoat crematorium II believed that a camp uprising had begun and threw theirOberkapointo a furnace. After escaping through a fence using wirecutters, they managed to reachRajsko, where they hid in the granary of an Auschwitz satellite camp, but the SS pursued and killed them by setting the granary on fire.[273]By the time the rebellion at crematorium IV had been suppressed, 212 members of theSonderkommandowere still alive and 451 had been killed.[274]The dead includedZalmen Gradowski, who kept notes of his time in Auschwitz and buried them near crematorium III; after the war, anotherSonderkommandomember showed the prosecutors where to dig.[275]The notes were published in several formats, including in 2017 asFrom the Heart of Hell.[276]Evacuation and death marchesFurther information:Death marches (Holocaust)Ruins of crematorium IV, Auschwitz II, blown up during the revoltThe last mass transports to arrive in Auschwitz were 60,000–70,000 Jews from theŁódź Ghetto, some 2,000 from Theresienstadt, and 8,000 fromSlovakia.[277]The last selection took place on 30 October 1944.[198]On 1 or 2 November 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to halt the mass murder by gas;[278]and on 25 November he ordered that Auschwitz\'s gas chambers and crematoria be destroyed. TheSonderkommandoand other prisoners began the job of dismantling the buildings and cleaning up the site.[279]On 18 January 1945, Engelbert Marketsch, a German criminal transferred fromMauthausen, became the last prisoner to be assigned a serial number in Auschwitz, number 202499.[280]According to Polish historian Andrzej Strzelecki, the evacuation of the camp was one of its \"most tragic chapters\".[281]Himmler ordered the evacuation of all camps in January 1945, telling camp commanders: \"The Führer holds you personally responsible for... making sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy.\"[282]The plundered goods from the \"Kanada\" barracks, together with building supplies, were transported to the German interior. Between 1 December 1944 and 15 January 1945, over one million items of clothing were packed to be shipped out of Auschwitz; 95,000 such parcels were sent to concentration camps in Germany.[283]Beginning on 17 January, some 58,000 Auschwitz detainees (about two-thirds Jews)—over 20,000 from Auschwitz I and II and over 30,000 from the subcamps—were evacuated under guard, at first heading west on foot, then by open-topped freight trains, to concentration camps in Germany and andSachsenhausen.[284]Fewer than 9,000 remained in the camps, deemed too sick to move.[285]During the marches, the SS shot or otherwise dispatched anyone unable to continue; \"execution details\" followed the marchers, killing prisoners who lagged behind.[281]Peter Longerichestimated that a quarter of the detainees were thus killed.[286]By December 1944 some 15,000 Jewish prisoners had made it from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated by the British on 15 April 1945.[287]On 20 January, crematoria II and III were blown up, and on 23 January the \"Kanada\" warehouses were set on fire; they apparently burned for five days. Crematorium IV had been partly demolished after theSonderkommandorevoltin October, and the rest of it was destroyed later. On 26 January, one day ahead of the Red Army\'s arrival, crematorium V was blown up.[288]LiberationMain article:Liberation of Auschwitz concentration campYoung survivors at the camp, liberated by theRed Armyin January 1945Eyeglasses of victims, 1945The first in the camp complex to be liberated was Auschwitz III, the IG Farben camp at Monowitz; a soldier from the 100th Infantry Division of theRed Armyentered the camp around 9am on Saturday, 27 January 1945.[289]The60th Armyof the1st Ukrainian Front(also part of the Red Army) arrived in Auschwitz I and II around 3pm. They found 7,000 prisoners alive in the three main camps, 500 in the other subcamps, and over 600 corpses.[290]Items found included 837,000 women\'s garments, 370,000 men\'s suits, 44,000 pairs of shoes,[291]and 7,000kg of human hair, estimated by the Soviet war crimes commission to have come from 140,000 people.[221]Some of the hair was examined by the Forensic Science Institute inKraków, where it was found to contain traces ofHydrogen cyanide, the main ingredient ofZyklon B.[292]Primo Levidescribed seeing the first four soldiers on horseback approach Auschwitz III, where he had been in the sick bay. They threw \"strangely embarrassed glances at the sprawling bodies, at the battered huts and at us few still alive...\":[293]They did not greet us, nor did they smile; they seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint, which sealed their lips and bound their eyes to the funereal scene. It was that shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man\'s crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defence.[294]Georgii Elisavetskii, a Soviet soldier who entered one of the barracks, said in 1980 that he could hear other soldiers telling the inmates: \"You are free, comrades!\" But they did not respond, so he tried in Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian. Then he used someYiddish: \"They think that I am provoking them. They begin to hide. And only when I said to them: \'Do not be afraid, I am a colonel of Soviet Army and a Jew. We have come to liberate you\'... Finally, as if the barrier collapsed... they rushed toward us shouting, fell on their knees, kissed the flaps of our overcoats, and threw their arms around our legs.\"[291]The Soviet military medical service andPolish Red Cross(PCK) set up field hospitals that looked after 4,500 prisoners suffering from the effects of starvation (mostlydiarrhea) andtuberculosis. Local volunteers helped until the Red Cross team arrived from Kraków in early February.[295]In Auschwitz II, the layers of excrement on the barracks floors had to be scraped off with shovels. Water was obtained from snow and from fire-fighting wells. Before more help arrived, 2,200 patients there were looked after by a few doctors and 12 PCK nurses. All the patients were later moved to the brick buildings in Auschwitz I, where several blocks became a hospital, with medical personnel working 18-hour shifts.[296]The liberation of Auschwitz received little press attention at the time; the Red Army was focusing on its advance toward Germany and liberating the camp had not been one of its key aims.Boris Polevoireported on the liberation inPravdaon 2 February 1945 but made no mention of Jews;[297]inmates were described collectively as \"victims of Fascism\".[298]It was when the Western Allies arrived inBuchenwald,Bergen-Belsen, andDachauin April 1945 that the liberation of the camps received extensive coverage.[299]After the warTrials of war criminalsFurther information:End of World War II in Europe,Auschwitz trial, andFrankfurt Auschwitz trialsGallows in Auschwitz I whereRudolf Hösswas executed on 16 April 1947Only 789 Auschwitz staff, up to 15 percent, ever stood trial;[8]most of the cases were pursued in Poland and theFederal Republic of Germany.[300]According toAleksander Lasik, female SS officers were treated more harshly than male; of the 17 women sentenced, four received the death penalty and the others longer prison terms than the men. He writes that this may have been because there were only 200 women overseers, and therefore they were more visible and memorable to the inmates.[301]Camp commandantRudolf Hösswas arrested by the British on 11 March 1946 nearFlensburg, northern Germany, where he had been working as a farmer under the pseudonym Franz Lang. He was imprisoned inHeide, then transferred toMindenfor interrogation, part of theBritish occupation zone. From there he was taken toNurembergto testify for the defense in the trial ofSS-ObergruppenführerErnst Kaltenbrunner. Höss was straightforward about his own role in the mass murder and said he had followed the orders ofHeinrich Himmler.[302][j]Extradited to Poland on 25 May 1946,[303]he wrote his memoirs in custody, first published in Polish in 1951 then in German in 1958 asKommandant in Auschwitz.[304]His trial before theSupreme National TribunalinWarsawopened on 11 March 1947; he was sentenced to death on 2 April and hanged in Auschwitz I on 16 April, near crematorium I.[305]On 25 November 1947, theAuschwitz trialbegan inKraków, when Poland\'sSupreme National Tribunalbrought to court 40 former Auschwitz staff, including commandantArthur Liebehenschel, women\'s camp leaderMaria Mandel, and camp leaderHans Aumeier. The trials ended on 22 December 1947, with 23 death sentences, seven life sentences, and nine prison sentences ranging from three to 15 years.Hans Münch, an SS doctor who had several former prisoners testify on his behalf, was the only person to be acquitted.[306]Other former staff were hanged for war crimes in theDachau Trialsand theBelsen Trial, including camp leadersJosef Kramer,Franz Hössler, andVinzenz Schöttl; doctorFriedrich Entress; and guardsIrma GreseandElisabeth Volkenrath.[307]Bruno TeschandKarl Weinbacher, the owner and chief executive officer of the firmTesch & Stabenow, one of the suppliers of Zyklon B, were arrested by the British after the war and executed for knowingly supplying the chemical for use on humans.[308]The 180-dayFrankfurt Auschwitz trials, held inWest Germanyfrom 20 December 1963 to 20 August 1965, tried 22 defendants, including two dentists, a doctor, two camp adjudants and the camp\'s pharmacist. The 700-page indictment, presenting the testimony of 254 witnesses, was accompanied by a 300-page report about the camp,Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager, written by historians from theInstitut für Zeitgeschichtein Germany, includingMartin BroszatandHelmut Krausnick. The report became the basis of their book,Anatomy of the SS State(1968), the first comprehensive study of the camp and the SS. The court convicted 19 of the defendants, giving six of them life sentences and the others between three and ten years.[309]LegacyBarracks at Auschwitz IIAuschwitz II gate in 1959In the decades since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a primary symbol of the Holocaust. HistorianTimothy D. Snyderattributes this to the camp\'s high death toll and \"unusual combination of an industrial camp complex and a killing facility\", which left behind far more witnesses than single-purpose killing facilities such asChełmnoorTreblinka.[310]In 2005 theUnited Nations General Assemblydesignated 27 January, the date of the camp\'s liberation, asInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day.[311]Helmut Schmidtvisited the site in November 1977, the firstWest Germanchancellorto do so, followed by his successor,Helmut Kohl, in November 1989.[312]In a statement on the 50th anniversary of the liberation, Kohl said that \"[t]he darkest and most awful chapter in German history was written at Auschwitz.\"[313]In January 2020, world leaders gathered atYad Vashemin Jerusalem to commemorate the 75th anniversary.[314]It was the city\'s largest-ever political gathering, with over 45 heads of state and world leaders, including royalty.[315]At Auschwitz itself,Reuven RivlinandAndrzej Duda, the presidents of Israel and Poland, laid wreaths.[316]Notable memoirists of the camp includePrimo Levi,Elie Wiesel, andTadeusz Borowski.[237]Levi\'sIf This is a Man, first published in Italy in 1947 asSe questo è un uomo, became a classic of Holocaust literature, an \"imperishable masterpiece\".[317][k]Wiesel wrote about his imprisonment at Auschwitz inNight(1960) and other works, and became a prominent spokesman against ethnic violence; in 1986, he was awarded theNobel Peace Prize.[319]Camp survivorSimone Veilwas elected President of theEuropean Parliament, serving from 1979 to 1982.[320]Two Auschwitz victims—Maximilian Kolbe, a priest who volunteered to die by starvation in place of a stranger, andEdith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism—were named saints of theCatholic Church.[321]In 2017, aKörber Foundationsurvey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was.[322][323]The following year a survey organized by theClaims Conference,United States Holocaust Memorial Museumand others found that 41 percent of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66 percent ofmillennials, did not know what Auschwitz was, while 22 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust.[324]ACNN-ComRespoll in 2018 found a similar situation in Europe.[325]Auschwitz-Birkenau State MuseumMain article:Auschwitz-Birkenau State MuseumCzesława Kwoka, photographed in Auschwitz byWilhelm Brasseof the camp\'sErkennungsdienstMuseum exhibit, 2016Israeli Air ForceF-15 Eaglesfly over Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 2003End of the rail track inside Auschwitz IIOn 2 July 1947, the Polish government passed a law establishing a state memorial to remember \"the martyrdom of the Polish nation and other nations in Oswiecim\".[326]The museum established its exhibits at Auschwitz I; after the war, the barracks in Auschwitz II-Birkenau had been mostly dismantled and moved to Warsaw to be used on building sites. Dwork and van Pelt write that, in addition, Auschwitz I played a more central role in the persecution of the Polish people, in opposition to the importance of Auschwitz II to the Jews, including Polish Jews.[327]An exhibition opened in Auschwitz I in 1955, displaying prisonermug shots; hair, suitcases, and shoes taken from murdered prisoners; canisters of Zyklon B pellets; and other objects related to the killings.[328]UNESCOadded the camp to its list ofWorld Heritage Sitesin 1979.[329]All the museum\'s directors were, until 1990, former Auschwitz prisoners. Visitors to the site have increased from 492,500 in 2001, to over one million in 2009,[330]to two million in 2016.[331]There have been protracted disputes over the perceived Christianization of the site. PopeJohn Paul IIcelebratedmassover the train tracks leading to Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 7 June 1979[332]and called the camp \"theGolgothaof our age\", referring to thecrucifixion of Jesus.[333]More controversy followed whenCarmelitenuns founded a convent in 1984 in a former theater outside the camp\'s perimeter, near block 11 of Auschwitz I,[334]after which a local priest and some survivorserected a large cross—one that had been used during the pope\'s mass—behind block 11 to commemorate 152 Polish inmates shot by the Germans in 1941.[335][336]After a long dispute, Pope John Paul II intervened and the nuns moved the convent elsewhere in 1993.[337]The cross remained, triggering the \"War of the Crosses\", as more crosses were erected to commemorate Christian victims, despite international objections. The Polish government and Catholic Church eventually agreed to remove all but the original.[338]On 4 September 2003, despite a protest from the museum, threeIsraeli Air ForceF-15 Eaglesperformed a fly-over of Auschwitz II-Birkenau during a ceremony at the camp below. All three pilots were descendants of Holocaust survivors, including the man who led the flight, Major-GeneralAmir Eshel.[339]On 27 January 2015, some 300 Auschwitz survivors gathered with world leaders under a giant tent at the entrance to Auschwitz II to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the camp\'s liberation.[340][l]Museum curators consider visitors who pick up items from the ground to be thieves, and local police will charge them as such; the maximum penalty is a 10-year prison sentence.[342]In 2017 two British youths from thePerse Schoolwere fined in Poland after picking up buttons and shards of decorative glass in 2015 from the \"Kanada\" area of Auschwitz II, where camp victims\' personal effects were stored.[343]The 16-ftArbeit Macht Freisign over the main camp\'s gate was stolen in December 2009 by a Swedish former neo-Nazi and two Polish men. The sign was later recovered.[344]In 2018 the Polish government passed an amendment to itsAct on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it a criminal offence to violate the \"good name\" of Poland by accusing it of crimes committed by Germany in theHolocaust, which would include referring to Auschwitz and other camps as\"Polish death camps\".[345]Staff at the museum were accused by nationalist media in Poland of focusing too much on the fate of the Jews in Auschwitz at the expense of ethnic Poles. The brother of the museum\'s director,Piotr Cywiński, wrote that Cywiński had experienced \"50 days of incessant hatred\".[346]After discussions with Israel\'s prime minister, amid international concern that the new law would stifle research, the Polish government adjusted the amendment so that anyone accusing Poland of complicity would be guilty only of a civil offence.[347]****The commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau,Rudolf Höss, stated in his autobiography that in 1941 (no exact date is given) he was summoned to Berlin, whereHimmlerinformed him thatHitlerhad issued an order to solve the “Jewish Question” for good, and that the order was to be implemented by the SS. “The existing extermination places in the east are unsuited to a large scale, long-term action. I have designated Auschwitz for this purpose,” Himmler said.Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the concentration and extermination camps established on Polish soil, served concurrently as a labor camp and as a center for the rapid extermination of Jews. Chosen as the central location for the annihilation of the Jewish people, it was equipped with several extermination facilities and crematoria. Extermination was carried out by means ofZyklon Bgas, a substance that had previously been tested onRussian prisoners of war.Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was established in October 1941, three kilometers from Auschwitz. Exterminations in Birkenau began in March 1942. There were four gas chambers in the camp that used Zyklon B gas. Until November 1944 the camp functioned as a factory for mass murder, receiving transports from all over Europe. Most of those brought to the camp were Jews and nearly all were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Only a small percentage was selected for labor in the camp itself, labor in munitions plants at satellite camps, or the “medical” experiments ofDr. Josef Mengeleand his staff. In the spring and summer of 1944, the rate of extermination was increased as the Jews of Hungary and the Lodz ghetto were brought to the camp.The process of selection and murder was carefully planned and organized. When a train stopped at the platform, veteran prisoners received the victims and gathered their belongings in several barracks in an area known as “Kanada.” The arrivals were lined up in two columns – men and boys in one, women and girls in the other – and SS physicians performed a selection. The criterion was the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate, for labor or for death, was determined at will. Before they entered the chamber, they were told that they were about to be disinfected and ordered to undress. The doors of the chamber were locked and the gas was introduced. After the victims were murdered, their gold teeth were extracted and women’s hair was shorn by theSonderkommando– groups of Jews forced to work in the crematoria. The bodies were hauled to the crematorium furnaces for incineration, the bones were pulverized and the ashes were scattered in the fields.Repeat selections took place several times during the day in roll calls. Inmates who had become weak or ill were separated from the ranks and sent to the gas chambers. A brutal regimen based on a set of punishments and torture was invoked in the camp. Few managed to survive. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, more than 1,100,000 Jews, 70,000 Poles, 25,000Sinti and Roma (Gypsies)and some 15,000 prisoners of war from the USSR and other countries were murdered. ****Auschwitzconcentration camp, PolandAlternate titles: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–-1945), Birkenau, OświęcimPrintCiteShareMoreBYMichael Berenbaum|Last Updated:Oct 6, 2021|View Edit HistoryFAST FACTS2-Min SummaryFacts & Related ContentAuschwitz: entrance gatesSee all mediaDate:1940 - 1945Key People:Anne FrankElie WieselEdith SteinViktor FranklSt. Maksymilian Maria KolbeRelated Topics:Nazi Partygenocideforced labourgas chamberSSRelated Places:PolandOświęcimSee all facts and data →Auschwitz, PolishOświęcim, also campandextermination camp. Located near the industrial town ofOświęcimin southernPoland(in a portion of the country that was annexed by Germany at the beginning ofWorld War II), Auschwitz was actually three camps in one: a prison camp, an extermination camp, and aslave-labour camp. As the most lethal of the Nazi extermination camps, Auschwitz has become the emblematic site of the “final solution,” a virtual synonym for theHolocaust. Between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz; 90 percent of them wereJews. Also among the dead were some 19,000Romawho were held at the camp until the Nazis gassed them on July 31, 1944—the only other victim group gassed in family units alongside the Jews. The Polesconstitutedthe second largest victim group at Auschwitz, where some 83,000 were killed or died.AuschwitzEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Auschwitz IAuschwitz was probably chosen to play a central role in the “final solution” because it was located at a railway junction with 44 parallel tracks—rail lines that were used to transport Jews from throughoutEuropeto their death.Heinrich Himmler, chief of theSS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, ordered the establishment of the first camp, the prison camp, on April 27, 1940, and the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived on June 14. This small camp, Auschwitz I, was reserved throughout its history for political prisoners, mainly Poles and Germans.Auschwitz: crematoriumThe crematorium in Auschwitz I, near Oświęcim, Poland.© train tracks leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany\'s largest concentration camp, near Oświęcim, Poland.Dinos Michail—iStock Editorial/Getty ImagesBRITANNICA QUIZNazi Germany QuizWhich book was considered the bible of National Socialism in Germany’s Third Reich? Who were Hitler’s elite bodyguards? How much do you know about Nazi Germany? Take this quiz and find out.Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz IIIListen to the horrible events of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where the Jews were exterminated or used as slave labor by the NazisOverview of Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this articleIn October 1941, work began on Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, located outside the nearby village of Brzezinka. There the SS later developed a huge concentration camp and extermination complex that included some 300 prison barracks; four large so-calledBadeanstalten(German: “bathhouses”), in which prisoners were gassed to death;Leichenkeller(“corpse cellars”), in which their bodies were stored; andEinäscherungsöfen(“cremating ovens”). Another camp (Buna-Monowitz), near the village of Dwory, later called Auschwitz III, became in May 1942 a slave-labour camp supplying workers for the nearby chemical and synthetic-rubber works ofIG Farben. In addition, Auschwitz became the nexus of a complex of 45 smaller subcamps in the region, most of which housed slave labourers. During most of the period from 1940 to 1945, the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps was SS-Hauptsturmführer (Capt.) and ultimately SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieut. Col.)Rudolf Franz Höss (Hoess).Auschwitz IIClandestine photo of women being driven to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in German-occupied Poland.Archiwum Panstwowego Muzeum w Oswiecimiu-Brzezince, courtesy of USHMM Photo ArchivesAuschwitz-Birkenau State MuseumAuschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, founded in 1946 on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland.Gianni Tortoli/Photo ResearchersThe death camp and slave-labour camp were interrelated. Newly arrived prisoners at the death camp were divided in a process known asSelektion. The young and the able-bodied were sent to work. Young children and their mothers and the old and infirm were sent directly to the gas chambers. Thousands of prisoners were also selected by the camp doctor,Josef Mengele, for medical experiments. Auschwitz doctors tested methods ofsterilizationon the prisoners, using massive doses ofradiation, uterine injections, and other barbaric procedures. Experiments involving the killing oftwins, upon whom autopsies were performed, were meant to provide information that would supposedly lead to the rapid expansion of the “Aryan race.”Corpses of Auschwitz victimsCorpses of female victims of Auschwitz.© Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/Institute of National Memory/United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumAuschwitz III memorial, Père-Lachaise Cemetery, ParisAuschwitz III memorial, Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.© coulanges/FotoliaGet a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.Subscribe NowSubject to harsh conditions—including inadequate shelter and sanitation—given minimal food, and worked to exhaustion, those who could no longer work faced transport back to Birkenau for gassing. German corporations invested heavily in the slave-labour industriesadjacentto Auschwitz. In 1942 IG Farben alone invested more than 700 million Reichsmarks in its facilities at Auschwitz III.Auschwitz: prisoner barracksPrisoner barracks at Auschwitz, near Oświęcim, Poland.© Radoslaw Maciejewski/Shutterstock.comIG Farben factoryIG Farben factory in Monowitz, near Auschwitz, 1941.German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv), Bild 146-2007-0057; photograph, o.Ang.The Allied response to AuschwitzThroughout the camp’s history, there were numerous escape attempts, and on April 10, 1944, two Slovak Jews—Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler—successfully broke out of Auschwitz-Birkenau. After a harrowing two-week journey through Nazi-occupiedPoland, they made it back to their home country. There they made contact with Slovak resistance forces and gave them a complete report on theextermination camp. Vrba and Wetzler documented the killing process and provided detailed maps of the camp’s layout. This information was passed on to Western intelligence organizations along with an urgent request to bomb Auschwitz. Part of the report was forwarded to the U.S. government’sWar Refugee Boardand arrived in Washington in July 1944. InAugustU.S. Assistant Secretary of WarJohn J. McCloyrejected the notion of bombing Auschwitz, stating that “such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtfulefficacythat it would not warrant the use of our resources.” Although theIG Farbenindustrial complexadjacentto Auschwitz was bombed four times in the final year of the war, the death camp and its crematoria were left untouched, a subject of controversy more than 70 years later. (SeeWhy Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed?)AuschwitzAerial reconnaissance photograph of Auschwitz II–Birkenau extermination camp in German-occupied Poland taken in September 1944 during one of four bombing missions conducted in the area. The upper left quadrant shows bombs intended for an IG Farben factory falling over gas chambers II and III.© National Archives/United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumOn March 19, 1944,Germanyoccupied Hungary, and, while the Allies considered the ramifications of the Vrba-Wetzler report, the Nazis undertook the systematic destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, some 438,000 Hungarian Jews were shipped on 147 trains to Birkenau, stretching the camp’s resources for killing beyond all limits. Because the crematoria were overcrowded, bodies were burned in open pyres fueled partly by the victims’ own fat. More than two-thirds of Hungary’s Jewish population would perish in theHolocaust, and the overwhelming majority of those murders would take place at Birkenau.concentration campA group of Hungarian Jews arriving at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in German-occupied Poland.Yad Vashem Photo Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo ArchivesHolocaustMembers of the SS burning the bodies of gassed prisoners in the open air at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in German-occupied Poland.Archiwum Panstwowego Muzeum w Oswiecimiu-Brzezince, courtesy of USHMM Photo ArchivesAs Soviet armies advanced in 1944 and early 1945, Auschwitz was gradually abandoned. On January 18, 1945, some 60,000 prisoners were marched toWodzisław Śląski, where they were put on freight trains (many in open cars) and sent westward to concentration camps away from the front. One in four died en route from starvation, cold, exhaustion, and despair. Many were shot along the way in what became known as the “death marches.” The 7,650 sick or starving prisoners who remained were found by arriving Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.The legacy of Auschwitz and war crimes trialsLearn about the Auschwitz trials of 1963–65 against the SS members in Frankfurt am MainOverview of the Auschwitz trials of 1963–65 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this articleAfter the war, hundreds of Nazi officials andSSsoldiers would be tried forwar crimesin connection with the atrocities committed at Auschwitz. Höss was arrested by Alliedmilitary policein 1946, and the following year a Polish tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging. On April 16, 1947, he was executed on the grounds of Auschwitz. Another tribunal wasconvenedatKrakówin 1947, and 23 SS officers, including Arthur Liebehenschel (who had served as commandant of Auschwitz I) and Maria Mandel (director of the women’s camp at Birkenau) were sentenced to death. Mengele went into hiding after the war and fled toSouth Americain 1949. With the exception ofAdolf Eichmann, Mengele was arguably the highest-profile Nazi to escapejusticein the years immediately followingWorld War II. Eichmann was arrested byMossadagents in Buenos Aires in May 1960 and returned to Israel for trial, but Mengele would remain at large. In 1985 a team offorensicinvestigators concluded that Mengele had died of a stroke in 1979 while living in Brazil under the assumed identity of Wolfgang Gerhard.Although the Germans destroyed parts of the camps before abandoning them in 1945, much of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) remained intact and were later converted into a museum and memorial. The site has been threatened by increased industrial activity in Oświęcim. In 1996, however, the Polish government joined with other organizations in a large-scale effort to ensure its preservation. Originally named Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the memorial was designated aUNESCOWorld Heritage sitein 1979. It was renamed “Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)” in 2007.
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