Other private companies like Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert also ran factories nearby, to use the prisoners as slave labour. When Auschwitz was eventually liberated, it had more than 40 camps and subcamps. How Auschwitz became centre of Nazi Holocaust.
People from all over Europe were crammed into cattle wagons without windows, toilets, seats or food, and transported to Auschwitz. There they were sorted into those who could work and those who were to be immediately killed. The latter group were ordered to strip naked and sent to the showers for "delousing" - a euphemism used for the gas chambers. Guards from the so-called "Hygienic Institute" would then drop powerful Zyklon-B gas pellets into the sealed chambers, and wait for people to die.
It took about 20 minutes. The thick walls could not hide the screams of those suffocating inside. Then Sonderkommandos - other prisoners, usually Jews forced to work for the guards or be killed - would remove artificial limbs, glasses, hair and teeth before dragging the corpses to the incinerators.
Ashes of the bodies were buried or used as fertiliser. Belongings of those gassed and those sent to work were taken for sorting in a part of the camp known as "Canada" - so named because the country was seen as a land of plenty. SS guards sought to hide their crimes as Soviet troops closed in, and tried to destroy their extensive prisoner records - making it hard to fully quantify the number of victims. Academic studies since agree that in total close to 1. About 1.
Jews from all across Nazi-controlled Europe made up the vast majority of the victims. Almost one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz. Initially, gassing experiments were conducted in the basement of one of the prison blocks, but the SS soon discovered that a sealed room in the crematorium of the main camp was a more effective place to kill people. By the early part of , Jews from the local area no longer thought fit to work had also been gassed in this new killing chamber.
Meantime, also brought a change in function for the new camp at Auschwitz Birkenau. The Soviet PoWs were needed elsewhere for work, and so the Nazis decided that Birkenau could be a place to send Jews from all over Europe. From until the liberation of Auschwitz in January , Jews from a variety of countries, starting with Slovakia, suffered and died in Birkenau. Initially the Jews were murdered in make-shift gas chambers in converted peasant cottages at Birkenau — this was considered a more secluded killing location than the crematoria in the main camp.
These killing factories streamlined the murder process still further. Auschwitz had an unusual role in the Nazi system: it was both a death camp and a concentration camp. There is often confusion about the contrasting roles of each today.
A concentration camp, like Dachau, had existed since and its function was not a secret. But though the treatment of prisoners in these concentration camps was appalling, the majority of the inmates in the pre-war camps survived the horrendous experience.
Death camps, on the other hand, only came into existence during the Second World War and their location and function was a state secret. Jews were sent there to be murdered immediately on arrival — only a tiny number were selected to work within the camp and assist the SS with tasks like the sorting of the belongings of murdered Jews.
Over time the Nazis intended these Jews to perish as well. Auschwitz was more complicated. The selection process, for instance, was conducted on a larger scale. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz, they found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses left behind. To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the construction of death camps. Auschwitz, the largest and arguably the most notorious of all the Nazi death camps, opened in the spring of Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the country in These detainees included anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and luminaries from the cultural and scientific communities.
For one thing, it was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent. For another, it was in close proximity to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the network of Nazi camps. However, not all those arriving at Auschwitz were immediately exterminated.
At its peak of operation, Auschwitz consisted of several divisions. The original camp, known as Auschwitz I, housed between 15, and 20, political prisoners. Birkenau, the biggest of the Auschwitz facilities, could hold some 90, prisoners. It also housed a group of bathhouses where countless people were gassed to death, and crematory ovens where bodies were burned. The majority of Auschwitz victims died at Birkenau. More than 40 smaller facilities, called subcamps, dotted the landscape and served as slave-labor camps.
The largest of these subcamps, Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, began operating in and housed some 10, prisoners. By mid, the majority of those being sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz were Jews.
Upon arriving at the camp, detainees were examined by Nazi doctors. Memory is not something that is acquired once and stays on forever.
The moment that the last eyewitnesses and survivors pass away, we have to work together to build on that which remains: the testimonies of those former prisoners and the authentic artifacts connected with Auschwitz. Each item can have its own enormous meaning and should find its place in the collection of the Auschwitz Memorial.
Here, it will be preserved, studied, and displayed. Its place is here. The official podcast of the Auschwitz Memorial.
The history of Auschwitz is exceptionally complex. It combined two functions: a concentration camp and an extermination center.
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