The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Soviet troops. Camp Liberation Day is established by the UN as the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust.
About 1.4 million people, of which about 1.1 million were Jews, were killed in Auschwitz in 1941-1945. At the same time, according to the historian G. D. Komkov, in an article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the total number of victims was over 4 million people. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest and longest-running of the Nazi extermination camps, which is why it became one of the main symbols of the Holocaust.
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The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz 2 and Auschwitz 3. total area the camp was approximately 500 hectares.
Auschwitz I
After this area of Poland was occupied by German troops in 1939, the city of Oswiecim was renamed Auschwitz. The first concentration camp in Auschwitz was Auschwitz 1, which later served as the administrative center of the entire complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 on the basis of brick one-story and two-story buildings of the former Polish, and earlier Austrian barracks. Initially, members of the Jewish community of the city of Auschwitz were forcibly involved in the construction of the Auschwitz I concentration camp. The former vegetable store was rebuilt as Crematorium I with a mortuary.
During the construction, the second floors were added to all one-story buildings. Several new two-story buildings were built. In total, there were 24 two-story buildings (blocks) in the Auschwitz I camp. Block No. 11 (“Block of Death”) was a camp prison, where the so-called “Emergency Court” met two or three times a month, according to which death sentences were carried out against members of the Resistance movement arrested by the Gestapo and prisoners of the camp . From October 6, 1941 to February 28, 1942, Soviet prisoners of war were placed in blocks No. 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 22, 23, who were then transferred to the Auschwitz II / Birkenau camp.
In connection with the fact that it was decided to create in Auschwitz concentration camp, the Polish population was evicted from the adjacent territory. This happened in two stages; the first took place in June 1940. Then about 2 thousand people were evicted, who lived near the former barracks of the Polish army and the buildings of the Polish Tobacco Monopoly. The second stage of the eviction - July 1940, it covered the residents of Korotkaya, Polnaya and Legionov streets. In November of the same year, the third eviction took place, it affected the Zasole area. Eviction activities continued into 1941; in March and April, the inhabitants of the villages of Babice, Buda, Raysko, Brzezinka, Broszkowice, Plav and Harmenzhe were evicted. In total, residents were evicted from an area of 40 km², which was declared the "Sphere of Interest of the Auschwitz camp"; in 1941-1943 subsidiary agricultural camps were created here: fish farms, poultry and cattle breeding farms. Agricultural products were supplied to the SS garrison. The camp was surrounded by a double wire fence, through which a high voltage electric current was passed.
In the spring of 1942, the Auschwitz I camp was surrounded on both sides by a reinforced concrete fence. The guards of the Auschwitz camp, and then Auschwitz II / Birkenau, Auschwitz III / Monowitz, were carried by the SS troops from the Totenkopf formation. The first group of prisoners, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners, arrived at the camp on June 14, 1940. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13,000 to 16,000, and by 1942 reached 20,000 prisoners. The SS selected some prisoners, mostly Germans, to spy on the rest. The prisoners of the camp were divided into classes, which was visually reflected by stripes on their clothes. 6 days a week, except Sunday, the prisoners were required to work. An exhausting work schedule and meager food caused numerous deaths. In the Auschwitz I camp, there were separate blocks that served various purposes. In Block No. 11, punishments were made for those who violated the rules of the camp. Four people were placed in so-called "standing cells" measuring 90x90 cm, where they had to stand all night. More severe measures meant slow killings: the guilty were either put in a sealed chamber, where they died from a lack of oxygen, or starved to death. Between blocks 10 and 11 there was a torture yard where prisoners were tortured and shot. The wall near which the shooting was carried out was reconstructed after the end of the war. And in the block number 24 in the middle of the war, on the second floor, a brothel functioned.
On September 3, 1941, on the orders of the deputy camp commandant, SS Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the first test of poisoning people with Zyklon B gas was carried out in the basement cells of block 11, as a result of which 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Polish prisoners, mostly sick, died. The experience was considered a success, and the morgue in the building of crematorium I was redesigned into a gas chamber. The chamber functioned from 1941 to 1942, and then it was rebuilt into an SS bomb shelter. Subsequently, the chamber and crematorium I were recreated from the original parts and exist to this day as a monument to Nazi brutality.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, or Brzezinka) is what is usually meant when talking about Auschwitz itself. In it, in one-story wooden barracks, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities were kept. The number of victims of this camp amounted to more than a million people. The construction of this part of the camp began in October 1941. There were four construction sites in total. In 1942, section I was commissioned (male and female camps were located there); in 1943-44, the camps located on the construction site II were put into operation (Gypsy camp, men's quarantine, men's, men's hospital, Jewish family camp, warehouses and "Depotlager", that is, a camp for Hungarian Jews). In 1944, construction began on building site III; Jewish women lived in unfinished barracks in June and July 1944, whose names were not entered in the camp registration books. This camp was also called "Depotcamp", and then "Mexico". Section IV was never built up.
New prisoners arrived daily by train to Auschwitz 2 from all over occupied Europe. After a cursory selection (first of all, the state of health, age, complexion and then oral personal data: family composition, education, profession) were taken into account, all arrivals were divided into four groups:
The first group, which accounted for about ¾ of all those brought, went to the gas chambers for several hours. This group included everyone who was recognized as unfit for work: first of all, the sick, the very old, the disabled, children, elderly women and men, and those who arrived in poor health, not of average height or complexion were also considered unfit.
Auschwitz 2 had 4 gas chambers and 4 crematoria. All four crematoria went into operation in 1943. The exact dates of entry into operation: March 1 - crematorium I, June 25 - crematorium II, March 22 - crematorium III, April 4 - crematorium IV. The average number of corpses burned in 24 hours, taking into account a three-hour break per day to clean the ovens in 30 ovens of the first two crematoria, was 5,000, and in 16 ovens of crematoria I and II - 3,000. (According to the numbering of crematoria adopted by the camp administration, crematorium I was Auschwitz I camp, and crematoria II, III, IV, V - in the Auschwitz II / Birkenau camp, which is discussed in the article). When, in the summer of 1944, crematoria IV and V in Birkenau could not cope with the destruction of the bodies of those killed in the gas chambers, the bodies of the dead were burned in ditches behind crematorium V. There were so many civilians of Jewish nationality brought to Birkenau from European countries that the doomed sometimes waited for 6-12 hours in a forest grove between crematoria III and crematoria IV, V, turn to be destroyed in the gas chambers.
The third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, went to various medical experiments, in particular to Dr. Josef Mengele, known by the nickname "angel of death."
The fourth group, predominantly women, were selected in the "Canada" group for personal use by the Germans as servants and personal slaves, as well as for sorting the personal property of prisoners arriving at the camp. The name "Canada" was chosen as a mockery of the Polish prisoners - in Poland the word "Canada" was often used as an exclamation at the sight of a valuable gift. Previously, Polish emigrants often sent gifts home from Canada.
Auschwitz was partially serviced by prisoners who were periodically killed and replaced with new ones. A special role was played by the so-called " Sonderkommando" - prisoners who took out the bodies from the gas chambers and transferred them to the crematorium. About 6,000 SS men followed everything. The ashes of Birkenau prisoners were thrown into the ponds in the camp or used as fertilizer.
By 1943, a resistance group had formed in the camp, which helped some of the prisoners to escape, and in October 1944, a group of prisoners from the "Sonderkommando" destroyed crematorium IV. In connection with the approach of Soviet troops, the Auschwitz administration began the evacuation of prisoners to camps located on German territory. More than 58 thousand prisoners who had survived by this time were taken out before the end of January 1945.
On January 25, 1945, the SS men set fire to 35 warehouse barracks, which were full of things taken from the Jews; they were not taken out.
When January 27, 1945 soviet soldiers occupied Auschwitz, they found there about 7.5 thousand prisoners who they did not have time to take away, and in the partially surviving warehouse barracks - 1,185,345 men's and women's suits, 43,255 pairs of men's and women's shoes, 13,694 carpets, a huge amount of dental brushes and brushes for shaving, as well as other small household items.
Several Jewish prisoners from the Sonderkommando, including the leader of the Resistance group, Zalman Gradovsky, wrote messages that they hid in the pits in which they buried ashes from the crematoria. 9 such notes were later found and published.
In memory of the victims of the camp in 1947, Poland created a museum on the territory of Auschwitz.
Auschwitz III
Auschwitz 3 was a group of about 40 small camps set up around factories and mines around a common complex. The largest of these camps was Manowitz, which takes its name from the Polish village located on its territory. It became operational in May 1942 and was assigned to IG Farben. Such camps regularly visited doctors and selected the weak and sick for the Birkenau gas chambers.
On October 16, 1942, the central leadership in Berlin issued an order to build a kennel for 250 service dogs; it was planned on a grand scale and allocated 81,000 marks. During the construction of the facility, the point of view of the camp veterinarian was taken into account and all measures were taken to create good sanitary conditions. They did not forget to allocate a large area with lawns for dogs, built a veterinary hospital and a special kitchen. This fact deserves special attention if we imagine that, simultaneously with this concern for animals, the camp authorities treated with complete indifference to the sanitary and hygienic conditions in which thousands of camp prisoners lived. From the memoirs of commandant Rudolf Höss:
In the entire history of Auschwitz, about 700 escape attempts were made, 300 of which were crowned with success, however, if someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all prisoners from his block were exponentially executed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape. In 1996, the German government declared January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, an official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. By UN Resolution 60/7 of November 1, 2005, January 27 was declared World Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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camp jargon
According to the memoirs of prisoners and camp staff, the following jargon was used in Auschwitz:
- "tsugangi" - newcomers to the camp;
- "Canada" - a warehouse with the things of the dead; there were two "canadas": the first was located on the territory of the mother camp (Auschwitz 1), the second - in the western part in Birkenau;
- "kapo" - a prisoner who performs administrative work and oversees the work brigade;
- "Muslim (ka)" - a prisoner who was in a state of extreme exhaustion; they looked like skeletons, their bones were barely covered with skin, their eyes were clouded, and mental exhaustion was accompanied by general physical exhaustion;
- "organization" - to find a way to get food, clothes, medicines and other household items not by stealing from your comrades, but by stealing them secretly from German warehouses;
- “go to the wire” - commit suicide by touching the barbed wire under high voltage (often the prisoner did not have time to reach the wire: he was killed by SS sentries who kept watch on watchtowers);
- "fly into the chimney" - to be burned in the crematorium.
Categories of prisoners
Prisoners of the concentration camps were designated by triangles (" winkel") different colors depending on the reason why they ended up in the camp. For example, political prisoners were marked with red triangles, criminals - green, antisocial - black, Jehovah's Witnesses - purple, homosexuals - pink. The Jews, above all, were to wear the yellow triangle; in combination with the Winkel, these two triangles formed a six-pointed star of David.
Number of victims
It is impossible to establish the exact number of deaths in Auschwitz, since many documents were destroyed. In addition, the Germans did not keep records of the victims sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. The online database of dead prisoners contains 180,000 names. In total, individual data on 650 thousand prisoners have been preserved.
Beginning in 1940, up to 10 echelons of people per day arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp from the occupied territories and Germany. There were 40-50, and sometimes more cars in the echelon. There were from 50 to 100 people in each car. About 70% of all brought Jews were sent to the gas chambers within a few hours. Powerful crematoriums for burning corpses functioned, in addition to them, bodies were burned in huge quantities on special bonfires. Approximate throughput crematoria: No. 1 (for 24 months) - 216,000 people, No. 2 (for 19 months) - 1,710,000 people, No. 3 (for 18 months of existence) - 1,618,000 people, No. 4 (for 17 months) - 765 000 people, No. 5 (for 18 months) - 810,000 people.
Modern historians agree that between 1.1 and 1.6 million people were massacred at Auschwitz, the majority of whom were Jews. This estimate was obtained indirectly, for which the study of deportation lists and the calculation of data on the arrival of trains to Auschwitz was carried out.
The French historian Georges Weller was one of the first to use deportation data in 1983, estimating the number of people killed in Auschwitz at 1,613,000, of which 1,440,000 were Jews and 146,000 were Poles. In a later, considered the most authoritative work of the Polish historian Franciszek Pieper today, the following assessment is given:
- 1 million Jews
- 70-75 thousand Poles
- 21 thousand gypsies
- 15 thousand Soviet prisoners of war
- 15 thousand others (Czechs, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, Austrians, etc.).
In a statistical compilation dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, public administration Statistics Poland published the following data:
- the total number of deaths - 1.1 million people, including:
- Jews - 960 thousand (including Polish Jews - 300 thousand);
- Poles - 70-75 thousand;
- gypsies - 21 thousand;
- Soviet prisoners - 15 thousand;
- other nationalities - 10-15 thousand people
Experiments on people
Medical experiments and experiments were widely practiced in the camp. The effects of chemicals on the human body were studied. The latest pharmaceutical preparations were tested. Prisoners were artificially infected with malaria, hepatitis and other dangerous diseases as an experiment. Nazi doctors trained in conducting surgical operations on healthy people. Castration of men and sterilization of women, especially young women, was often carried out, accompanied by the removal of the ovaries.
According to the memoirs of David Sures from Greece:
Liberation
The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the 59th and 60th armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal of the Soviet Union I. S. Konev in cooperation with the troops of the 38th Army of the 4th Ukrainian Front under the command of Colonel General I. E. Petrova during the Vistula-Oder operation.
Parts of the 106th Rifle Corps of the 60th Army and the 115th Rifle Corps of the 59th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front took a direct part in the liberation of the concentration camp.
Two eastern branches of Auschwitz - Monowitz and Zaratz were liberated by soldiers of the 100th and 322nd rifle divisions of the 106th rifle corps.
At about 3 pm on January 27, 1945, units of the 100th Infantry Division (454th Infantry Regiment) (commander Major General F.M. Krasavin) of the 1st Ukrainian Front liberated Auschwitz. On the same day, another branch of Auschwitz, Yaworzhno, was liberated by soldiers of the 286th Rifle Division (commander Major General M. D. Grishin) of the 59th Army (commander Major General N. P. Kovalchuk) of the 1st Ukrainian Front.
Auschwitz in faces
Notable prisoners
Dead in the camp
- Estella Agsteribbe - Dutch gymnast, Olympic champion in 1928.
- Oleksandr Bandera - Ukrainian nationalist figure, younger brother Stepan Bandera.
- Vasily Bandera is a Ukrainian nationalist figure, the younger brother of Stepan Bandera.
- Otto Wallburg is a German film actor.
- Bedřich Wacławek was a Czechoslovakian literary critic and Marxist esthetician.
- Árpád Weiss is a Hungarian footballer and coach.
- Jacques Ventura was a Greek communist of Jewish origin.
- Joseph (Józef) Kowalski - Catholic Polish priest-Salesian, canonized as a holy martyr.
- Maximilian Kolbe is a Catholic Polish Franciscan priest, canonized as a holy martyr.
- Irene Nemirovsky is a French writer.
- Sandro Fazini is a Russian and French artist and photographer.
- Aron Simanovich - personal secretary of Grigory Rasputin, memoirist.
- Ilya Fondaminsky - Russian political and public figure, canonized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople as a holy martyr.
- Julius Hirsch- German footballer
Survivors
- Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba - fugitives from Auschwitz (1944) who published the first internationally known account of the Holocaust.
- Biro Dayan - Israeli military commander.
- František Gajovniček is a prisoner whom Maximilian Kolbe saved at the cost of his own life.
- Primo Levi is an Italian writer.
- Witold Pilecki is a Polish leader of the Resistance movement.
- Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist.
- Jozef Cyrankiewicz - Polish politician, long-term Prime Minister of Poland.
- Tadeusz Borovsky - Polish poet and prose writer.
- Miklós Nisli - Hungarian Jewish doctor, Holocaust witness, author of the documentary novel "Witness for the Prosecution".
- Stanislava Leshchinskaya is a midwife who delivered births to more than 3,000 female prisoners.
- Simon Laks - Polish-French composer, conductor of the camp orchestra.
- Roman Rozdolsky - Ukrainian Marxist scientist, economic and social historian, public figure.
- Wiesel, Eli - Jewish, French and American writer, journalist, public figure. Laureate Nobel Prize peace in 1986.
- Kristina Zhivulskaya?!- writer-humorist. In 1947, her book I Survived Auschwitz was published.
- Vladek and Anna Spiegelman are the parents of the writer Art Spiegelman.
- Imre Kertész is a Hungarian writer and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature.
SS staff
- Hans Aumeier - served as camp commander from January 1942 to 18 August 1943.
- Stefan Barecki - from the autumn of 1942 until January 1945 he was the head of the block in the men's camp in Birkenau.
- Richard Baer - from May 11, 1944, commandant of Auschwitz, from July 27 - head of the SS garrison.
- Ursula Báthory is Gerhard Palich's medical assistant at the Gypsy camp in Birkenau; carried out the selection of prisoners, sending them to the gas chambers, was distinguished by extreme cruelty towards gypsy prisoners.
- Karl Bischoff - from October 1, 1941 until the autumn of 1944, the head of the construction of the camp.
- Eduard Wirths - since September 6, 1942, the doctor of the SS garrison in the camp, conducted research on cancer in block 10 and performed operations on prisoners who were at least suspected of having cancer.
- Fritz Hartenstein - in May 1942 he was appointed commander of the camp's SS garrison.
- Max Gebhardt - until May 1942, SS commander in the camp.
- Franz Gesler - in 1940-1941 he was the head of the camp kitchen.
- Franz-Johann Hoffmann - since December 1942, the second chief in Auschwitz 1, and then the head of the gypsy camp in Birkenau, in December 1943 he received the position of the first head of the Auschwitz 1 camp.
- Maximilian Grabner - until December 1, 1943, head of the political department in the camp.
- Irma Grese - from March 1943 to March 1945, senior warden.
- Oswald Kaduk - c
The word Auschwitz (or Auschwitz) in the minds of many people is a symbol or even the quintessence of evil, horror, death, the concentration of the most unimaginable inhuman fanaticism and torture.
Many today dispute what former prisoners and historians say happened here. This is their personal right and opinion. But having been to Auschwitz and seeing with my own eyes huge rooms filled with ... glasses, tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, tons of cut hair and ... children's things ... You have an emptiness inside. And the hair is moving in horror. The horror of realizing that this hair, glasses and shoes belonged to a living person. Maybe a postman, maybe a student. Ordinary worker or merchant in the market. Or a girl. Or a seven year old. Which they cut off, removed, thrown into a common pile. To a hundred more of the same.
Auschwitz. A place of evil and inhumanity.
1. Young student Tadeusz Uzhinsky arrived in the first echelon with prisoners. The Auschwitz concentration camp began to function in 1940, being a camp for Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners of Auschwitz were 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow. At the time of its foundation, there were 20 buildings in the camp - former Polish military barracks. Some of them were converted for mass detention of people, and 6 more buildings were additionally built. The average number of prisoners ranged from 13-16 thousand people, and in 1942 it reached 20 thousand. The Auschwitz camp became the base camp for a whole network of new camps - in 1941, the Auschwitz II - Birkenau camp was built 3 km away, and in 1943 - Auschwitz III - Monowitz. In addition, in the years 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, built near metallurgical plants, factories and mines, which were subordinate to the Auschwitz III concentration camp. And the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau camps have completely turned into a plant for the destruction of people.
2. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the prisoners were selected and those of them who were found fit by the SS doctors for work were sent for registration. Rudolf Höss, the head of the camp, told them on the very first day that they "... arrived at the concentration camp, from which there is only one way out - through the crematorium pipe." personal numbers. Initially, each prisoner was photographed in three positions
3. In 1943, they introduced a tattoo of the prisoner's number on the arm. Infants and young children were most often numbered on the thigh. According to the Auschwitz State Museum, this concentration camp was the only Nazi camp in which prisoners were tattooed with numbers.
4. Depending on the reasons for the arrest, the prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, together with the numbers, were sewn onto camp clothes. Political prisoners were supposed to have a red triangle, criminals - green. Gypsies and anti-social elements received black triangles, Jehovah's Witnesses - purple, homosexuals - pink. The Jews wore a six-pointed star, consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for the arrest. Soviet prisoners of war had a patch in the form of the letters SU. The camp clothes were quite thin and provided little protection from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even once a month, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies
5. Prisoners in the Auschwitz I camp lived in brick blocks, in Auschwitz II-Birkenau - mainly in wooden barracks. brick blocks were only in the women's section of the Auschwitz II camp. During the entire existence of the Auschwitz I camp, about 400 thousand prisoners of various nationalities, Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of corps No. 11, who were awaiting the conclusion of the Gestapo police tribunal, were registered here. One of the disasters of camp life was verification, which checked the number of prisoners. They lasted for several, and sometimes more than 10 hours (for example, 19 hours on July 6, 1940). The camp authorities very often announced penal checks, during which the prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were verifications when they had to keep their hands up for several hours.
6. Living conditions in different periods very different, but they were always catastrophic. The prisoners, who were brought in at the very beginning by the first echelons, slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor.
7. Later introduced hay bedding. They were thin mattresses stuffed with a small amount of it. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people.
8. With the increase in the number of prisoners in the camp, it became necessary to compact their accommodation. There were three-tiered bunks. There were 2 people on one level. In the form of bedding, as a rule, there was rotten straw. The prisoners were covered with rags and what was. In the Auschwitz camp, the bunks were wooden, in Auschwitz-Birkenau both wooden and brick with wooden flooring.
9. The toilet of the Auschwitz I camp, compared to the conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, looked like a real miracle of civilization.
10. Toilet barracks in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp
11. Washroom. The water was only cold and the prisoner had access to it for only a few minutes a day. The prisoners were allowed to wash extremely rarely, and for them it was a real holiday.
12. Plate with the number of the residential unit on the wall
13. Until 1944, when Auschwitz turned into an extermination factory, most of the prisoners were sent to grueling work every day. At first they worked on the expansion of the camp, and then they were used as slaves in the industrial facilities of the Third Reich. Every day, columns of emaciated slaves came and went through the gate with the cynical inscription "Arbeit macht Frei" (Work makes free). The prisoner had to do the work by running, without a second of rest. The pace of work, meager portions of food and constant beatings increased mortality. During the return of prisoners to the camp, dead or exhausted, who could not move on their own, were dragged or carried in wheelbarrows. And at this time, a brass band consisting of prisoners played for them near the gates of the camp.
14. For every inhabitant of Auschwitz, Block 11 was one of the scariest places. Unlike other blocks, its doors were always closed. The windows were completely walled up. Only on the first floor there were two windows - in the room where the SS men were on duty. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the emergency police court, which came to the Auschwitz camp from Katowice once or twice a month. Within 2-3 hours of his work, he passed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.
15. The cramped cells, in which there were sometimes a huge number of people awaiting sentence, had only a tiny barred window right up to the ceiling. And from the side of the street, near these windows, there were tin boxes that blocked these windows from the influx of fresh air.
16. Those sentenced before being shot were forced to undress in this room. If there were few of them that day, then the sentence was carried out right here.
17. If there were many condemned, then they were taken to the "Wall of Death", which was located behind high fence with blind gates between buildings 10 and 11. On the chest naked people applied with an ink pencil big numbers their camp number (before 1943, when tattoos appeared on the arm), so that later it would be easy to identify the corpse.
18. Under stone fence in the yard of block 11, a large wall was built of black insulation boards, sheathed with absorbent material. This wall became the last facet of the lives of thousands of people sentenced to death by the Gestapo court for their unwillingness to betray their homeland, attempted flight and political "crimes".
19. Fibers of death. The condemned were shot by the reporter or members of the political department. To do this, they used a small-caliber rifle so as not to attract too much attention with the sounds of shots. After all, it was very close stone wall behind which was the highway.
20. In the Auschwitz camp there was a whole system of punishments for prisoners. It can also be called one of the fragments of their deliberate destruction. The prisoner was punished for picking an apple or finding a potato in the field, defecation while working, or for working too slowly. One of the most terrible places of punishment, often leading to the death of a prisoner, was one of the basements of the 11th building. Here, in the back room, there were four narrow vertical sealed punishment cells measuring 90x90 centimeters in perimeter. In each of them there was a door with a metal bolt at the bottom.
21. Through this door, the punished was forced to squeeze inside and closed it with a bolt. In this cage, a person could only be standing. So he stood without food and water for as long as the SS wanted. Often this was the last punishment in the prisoner's life.
23. In September 1941, the first attempt was made to mass exterminate people with gas. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital were placed in small batches in airtight cells in the basement of building 11.
24. Copper pipelines with valves have already been laid along the walls of the cells. Gas was supplied through them to the chambers ...
25. The names of the destroyed people were entered in the "Book of the Daily Status" of the Auschwitz camp
26. Lists of people sentenced to death by the emergency police court
27. Found notes left by those sentenced to death on scraps of paper
28. In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp with their parents. These were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most of the Jewish children perished in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. The rest, after a strict selection, were sent to the camp, where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults.
29. Children were registered and photographed in the same way as adults and were labeled as political prisoners.
30. One of the most terrible pages in the history of Auschwitz were medical experiments by SS doctors. Including over children. So, for example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method for the biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10. Dr. Josef Mengele, within the framework of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities. In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and preparations, toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin grafts were performed, etc.
31. Conclusion on the results of X-rays carried out during experiments with twins by Dr. Mengele.
32. Letter from Heinrich Himmler ordering the start of a series of sterilization experiments
33. Maps of records of anthropometric data of experimental prisoners in the framework of Dr. Mengele's experiments.
34. Pages of the register of the dead, which indicate the names of 80 boys who died after phenol injections as part of medical experiments.
35. List of released prisoners placed in a Soviet hospital for treatment
36. Since the autumn of 1941, a gas chamber began to function in the Auschwitz camp, in which Zyklon B gas is used. It was produced by the Degesch company, which in the period 1941-1944 received about 300 thousand marks of profit from the sale of this gas. To kill 1,500 people, according to the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, about 5-7 kg of gas were needed.
37. After the liberation of Auschwitz, a huge number of used Zyklon B cans and cans with unused contents were found in the camp warehouses. For the period 1942-1943, according to documents, about 20 thousand kg of Zyklon B crystals were delivered to Auschwitz alone.
38. Most of the Jews doomed to death arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the conviction that they were being taken "to a settlement" in Eastern Europe. This was especially true of Jews from Greece and Hungary, to whom the Germans even sold non-existent building plots and land or offered work in fictitious factories. That is why people sent to the camp for destruction often brought with them the most valuable things, jewelry and money.
39. Upon arrival at the unloading platform, all things and valuables were taken away from people, SS doctors selected the deported people. Those who were deemed incapacitated were sent to the gas chambers. According to Rudolf Goess, there were about 70-75% of those who arrived.
40. Things found in the warehouses of Auschwitz after the liberation of the camp
41. Model of the gas chamber and crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau. People were convinced that they were being sent to the bathhouse, so they appear relatively calm.
42. Here the prisoners are forced to take off their clothes and driven to the next room, simulating a bath. Shower holes were located under the ceiling, through which water never flowed. About 2,000 people were brought into a room of about 210 square meters, after which the doors were closed and gas was supplied to the room. People were dying within 15-20 minutes. Gold teeth were pulled out from the dead, rings and earrings were removed, women's hair was cut off.
43. After that, the corpses were transported to the ovens of the crematoria, where the fire roared continuously. In the event of an overflow of the ovens or at a time when the pipes were damaged by overloading, the bodies were destroyed in the places of burning behind the crematoria. All these actions were carried out by prisoners belonging to the so-called "Sonderkommando" group. At the peak of the activity of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, its number was about 1000 people.
44. Photo taken by one of the members of the Sonderkommando, which shows the process of burning those dead people.
45. In the Auschwitz camp, the crematorium was located behind the camp fence. Its largest room was the mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber.
46. Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the ghettos located on the territory of Upper Silesia were exterminated.
47. In the second hall there were three double furnaces, in which up to 350 bodies were burned during the day.
48. In one retort, 2-3 corpses were placed.
49. The crematorium was built by Topf & Sons from Erfurt, which in 1942-1943 installed stoves in four crematoria in Brzezinka.
50. Building No. 5 is now the most terrible. Here you can find material evidence of Nazi crimes in Auschwitz
51. Thousands of glasses, the arms of which are intertwined like the fates of people who took them off before last trip to the "bath"
52. Next room half stocked with personal care products - shaving brushes, toothbrushes, combs...
54. Hundreds of prostheses, corsets, crutches. The disabled were unsuitable for work, so upon arrival at the camp, only one fate awaited them - a gas chamber and a crematorium.
56. A two-story room, which, before the ceiling of the first floor, was filled with metal utensils that were in the prisoners' suitcases - bowls, plates, teapots ...
57. Suitcases with the names of deported people written on them.
58. All the property that the deported people brought was sorted, stored, and the most valuable was taken to the Third Reich for the needs of the SS, the Wehrmacht and civilian population. In addition, prisoners' items were used by employees of the camp garrison. For example, they turned to the commandant with written requests to issue strollers, things for babies, and other items.
59. One of the most sinister rooms is a huge room, littered with mountains of shoes on both sides. Which was once worn by living people. They removed it in front of the "bath".
60. Silent witnesses of the last minutes of the life of their masters
62. The Red Army, which was liberating the camp in Auschwitz, found about 7000 kg of hair packed in bags in warehouses not burned by the Germans. These were the remnants that the camp authorities did not have time to sell and send to the factories. An analysis conducted at the Institute of Forensic Examinations showed that they had traces of hydrocyanic acid, a poisonous component that was part of Tsilon B. From human hair, German firms produced a tailor's bead.
63. Found children's things.
64. It is impossible to endure at their sight. I want to get out of here as soon as possible
66. And again mountains of shoes. Children's.
67. The steps of the barracks, which today house the expositions of the Auschwitz State Museum, are crushed by millions of human legs that have visited this museum of horror for almost 70 years
68. The gates of the death factory were closed on January 27, 1945, when 7 thousand prisoners left by the Germans waited for the Red Army detachments ...
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January 27, 2015 From the editors of "Russia Forever": Arkady Mahler: I wrote this article 5 years ago and some patriots told me then that it was not "relevant" enough.
A photo:January 1945Liberated children from the Auschwitz concentration camp. These children are no longer in danger, except for nightmares at night and memory, from which there is no escape. Of the 1,300,000 Auschwitz prisoners, about 234,000 were children.—220,000 Jewish children, 11,000 Gypsies; several thousand Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish. By the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, 611 children remained in the camp.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev (1897-1973) liberated the largest Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz. This event marked the liberation mission of the Russian Soviet army, and in 2005 the UN General Assembly recognized January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Originally, Auschwitz is the name of a Polish city located 60 kilometers west of Krakow, occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939. The Germans called it in their own way - Auschwitz, and under this name it is known throughout the non-Slavic world. In the Auschwitz-Auschwitz area, the German authorities built the famous concentration camp, or rather, a whole complex of concentration camps, which made this a household name.
But today, the memory of crimes against humanity, as the charges against the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials were accurately formulated, disappears along with the last witnesses of these crimes, and not every schoolchild, not only in Germany, but even in Poland and Russia itself, imagines what a concentration camp is and why the memory of this nightmare must never leave the human race, if it still wants to remain human. The idea to isolate this or that category of enemies and prisoners in specially designated premises, and bring them to death with inhuman labor and endless psychobiological experiments has no author - its initiators can be imagined anywhere and anytime, but only in the country of victorious National Socialism, in “ civilized" German Empire of the twentieth century, this idea was fully realized, with German methodicalness and Nordic equanimity.
It is impossible to calculate the exact number of all people who died in Auschwitz, as well as in the entire concentration camp system of any totalitarian state, because the very idea of a concentration camp does not involve statistics.
The idea of exterminating people in gas chambers, which today terrifies any sane person, was then considered the height of progress and even the most “humane” means of all possible, because people had to be killed not one at a time, but in whole hundreds, and preferably without too much blood . The first test of gas persecution in Auschwitz was carried out on September 3, 1941, by order of the deputy camp commandant, SS Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, when 600 Soviet prisoners of war and another 250 prisoners died of suffocation in a short time. In the future, more than 20,000 people could be killed in a concentration camp in one day. People died from torture, and from hunger, and from unbearable work, and when trying to escape, and if someone suspected them of disobedience, and from their own attempts to commit suicide in this hell created by human hands.
In general, according to general calculations, about one and a half million (!) People died in Auschwitz alone. At the same time, the commandant of this camp in 1940-43, Rudolf Goess, at the Nuremberg Tribunal, stated that about two and a half million (!) People died, and admitted that no one counted the people themselves. When the Russians liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, about seven and a half thousand prisoners were found on its territory, and 1,185,345 men and women were found in clothing warehouses. women's suits. In a short time, the Nazis managed to withdraw and kill more than 58 thousand people.
The meeting of the army of Marshal Konev with Auschwitz can only be compared with the meeting of the army of Scipio with Carthage - just as the Romans suddenly saw the temple of Baal with the bodies of thousands of burnt people sacrificed to this demon, so the Russians suddenly saw the hell that the “enlightened ” Germany. It was a meeting with barbarism posing as culture. And it was necessary to have a very strong will to live and hope for salvation, so that even after this meeting they would continue to pretend that nothing like this had happened. That is why the philosopher Theodor Adorno said that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, for what better are we, the survivors, than those who ended up in this hell?
The experience of Auschwitz shows us what a person can be capable of who has ceased to perceive humanity as a value. People living in Germany in the 30s and 40s of the twentieth century are no worse than any other people who have ever lived anywhere, but they only managed to create a state that systematically destroys people along ethnic lines and sincerely believes that this will continue forever. This is evidence of the abyss of evil in which a person can voluntarily find himself and from which everything that we still call culture is trying to protect him. And today there are a lot of people all over the world who would be ready to arrange more than one Auschwitz if they had such an opportunity, and they perceive our feelings about the past as nothing more than our personal problems,
- after all, it cannot even enter their heads that any new Auschwitz can touch them, and often in the first place.
It's the same in our world more people who consider the Great Patriotic War nothing more than “Soviet-Nazi” and are happy to talk about all the “charms” of the German occupation. But Auschwitz is exactly what could have happened to each of us, and also to each of them, if Nazi Germany had defeated Soviet Russia. If they had won World War II, they would have been Baltic nationalists, “Banderites”, the “Galicia” division, the so-called. "Russian Liberation Army" of General Vlasov, etc. If they won, then we would have Auschwitz. That is why out of hatred for historical Russia they are ready to step over today last line and deny even what is recognized in the entire European civilization, of which they so want to consider themselves to be a part - to deny the tragedy of the Holocaust and Great Victory 1945. And how can they call for sympathy for their own historical pain, if the price is complete indifference to the real pain of everyone else.
The fact of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army is still not sufficiently appreciated in world history. AT Soviet Russia this event was regarded as a natural component of the overall victory over Nazi Germany, and in the West the image of the Russian warrior-liberator was carefully superseded by the American one, so now the average European schoolboy can be sure that all the concentration camps were liberated by the Americans, and the Russians in the war seem to would not exist at all. But there are facts that cannot be denied - how exactly Russia won the Second World War in the first place, so it was Russia that liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. This is the greatest achievement of our national history, not only no less, but even more important than the launch of a satellite or the flight of Gagarin, because here we are talking directly about the liberation of living people and the victory over the anti-human regime of all times and peoples, which could one day destroy all of humanity. With the liberation of Auschwitz, Russia once again showed its historical mission, and the Soviet regime for the first time received moral justification, so that the USSR before and after the war are practically two different states. Therefore, the liberation of Auschwitz should become one of the main pages in the textbooks of Russian history, it is we who should make films and programs about it, and this event itself should become a symbol of the universal mission of Russia as a country that has repeatedly saved European humanity from death.
To this day, only three photographs taken by prisoners in the camp have survived. In the first, naked Jewish women are led to the gas chambers. The other two show huge piles of human bodies being burned in the open air.
While liberating the Auschwitz camp, the Soviet Army found about 7 tons of hair packed in bags in the warehouses. These were the remnants that the camp authorities did not have time to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis carried out showed that they had traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special toxic component of the preparations called Zyklon B. From human hair, German firms, among other products, produced a hair tailor's bead. Found in one of the cities, the rolls of beading, which are in the window, were given for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made of human hair, most likely female.
It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that were played out daily in the camp. Former prisoners - artists - tried to convey the atmosphere of those days in their work:
Scenes from the life of the Auschwitz camp. Construction on the verification area
Before being sent to the gas chamber. Artist - former prisoner Wladislaw Siwek
To work
The return of prisoners from work. Some exhausted prisoners are carried by their comrades so that the escorts do not shoot the exhausted man on the spot. Artist - former prisoner Wladislaw Siwek
A brass band, consisting of prisoners, plays a march during the return of prisoners from work to the camp. Artist - Mstislav Koshchelnyak (Miesczyslaw Koscielniak)
The prisoners were allowed to bathe. Artist - Mstislav Koshchelnyak (Miesczyslaw Koscielniak)
Captured fugitives awaiting the death penalty. Artist - Mstislav Koshchelnyak (Miesczyslaw Koscielniak). In the entire history of Auschwitz, there were about 700 escape attempts, 300 of which were successful, but if someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape.
The photographs of 14-year-old Czeslawa Kwoka, courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, were taken by Wilhelm Brasse, who worked as a photographer in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. In December 1942, the Polish Catholic Czesława, originally from Wolka Zlojecka, was sent to Auschwitz with her mother. They both died three months later. In 2005, photographer (and co-prisoner) Brasset described how he photographed Cheslava: “She was so young and so scared. The girl did not realize why she was here and did not understand what she was being told. And then the capo (prison guard) took a stick and hit her face. This German woman just took out her anger on the girl. Such a beautiful, young and innocent creature. She cried, but could not help it. Before being photographed, the girl wiped her tears and blood from her broken lip. Frankly, I felt as if they had beaten me, but could not intervene. For me it would have ended fatally "().
Hard work and hunger led to complete exhaustion of the body. From hunger, the prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photos were taken after the release; they show adult prisoners weighing from 23 to 35 kg.
In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most of the Jewish children perished in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. A few of them, after careful selection, were sent to the camp, where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults. Some of the children, such as twins, were subjected to criminal experiments.
Children, victims of the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives)
Josef Mengele. Did Mengele consider his experiments to be serious research, given the carelessness with which he worked? Most operations were performed without anesthetics. For example, Mengele once removed part of his stomach without anesthesia. Another time, the heart was removed, and again without anesthesia. It was monstrous. Mengele was obsessed with power.
Experiments on twins
Maps of records of anthropometric data of experimental prisoners in the framework of Dr. Mengele's experiments
Pages of the register of the dead, which indicate the names of 80 boys who died after being injected with phenol as part of medical experiments
Selection in the cellars of block 11. Artist - former prisoner Wladislaw Siwek
Before the execution at the Wall of Death. Artist - former prisoner Wladislaw Siwek
Execution in the courtyard of block 11 at the Wall of Death
One of the scariest exhibits is a model of one of the crematoria in the Auschwitz II camp. On average, about 3 thousand people were killed and burned in such a building per day ...
In the Auschwitz concentration camp, the crematorium was located behind the camp fence. Its largest room was the mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the ghetto located on the territory of Upper Silesia were exterminated.
Transportation of the bodies of those executed at the Wall of Death by prisoners from the Sonderkommando. former prisoner Wladislaw Siwek
Tears
Security, guards and support staff of the camp. In total, Auschwitz was guarded by about 6,000 SS men.
Their personal information has been preserved. Three-quarters had a complete secondary education. 5% are university graduates with advanced degrees. Almost 4/5 identified themselves as believers. Catholics - 42.4%; Protestants - 36.5%.
On vacation
SS Choir
Auschwitz. Members of the SS Helferinnen (guards) and SS officer Karl Hoecker are sitting on the fence eating blueberries from cups, accompanied by an accordion player
Resting...
Hard day's Night
After work: Richard Baer, unknown person, camp doctor Josef Mengele, Birkenau camp commandant Josef Kramer (partially obscured) and the previous commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with namesake and almost namesake - "flyer" Rudolf Hess)
Liberation of Auschwitz. A Soviet nurse is holding a girl, Zinaida Grinevich, in her arms. Here is how it is described in the material about the rescued girl: "Then there is also an old newspaper clipping. With a photograph taken in Auschwitz shortly after the liberation. Children in prison clothes with an old sad look. Barbed wire, watchtowers. baby blanket - Zinaida.
50.035833 , 19.178333
The picture was taken shortly before she, along with two other children, was sent to Lvov, in Orphanage. The three-year-old child had already been separated from his mother for several months, who was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Bartya and the sisters went to a camp in Lithuania. Zinaida was too weak to travel. In addition, the concentration camp executioners needed her as a guinea pig. She was infected again and again various diseases. Rubella, chickenpox. And then the Nazi doctors tested anti-drugs on her. Zinaida is one of those children who survived torture."The main gate of the Birkenau camp (Auschwitz 2), 2002
Auschwitz, also known by German names Auschwitz, or, completely, Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp(Polish Oswiecim, German Auschwitz, KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau ) - a complex of German concentration camps, located in - in the south of Poland, near the city of Auschwitz, 60 km west of Krakow. Above the entrance to Auschwitz hung the slogan: "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free"). Included in the World Heritage List.
Structure
The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz 2 and Auschwitz 3.
Auschwitz 1
Inside the barrack
Auschwitz 1 served as the administrative center of the entire complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 on the basis of brick two- and three-story buildings of the former Polish, and earlier Austrian barracks. The first group, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners, arrived at the camp on June 14 of the same year. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13,000 to 16,000, and by 1942 reached 20,000. The SS selected some prisoners, mostly Germans, to spy on the rest. The prisoners of the camp were divided into classes, which was visually reflected by the stripes on their clothes. 6 days a week, except Sunday, the prisoners were required to work. An exhausting work schedule and meager food caused numerous deaths. In the Auschwitz 1 camp, there were separate blocks that served various purposes. In blocks 11 and 13, punishments were made for violators of the rules of the camp. People were placed in groups of 4 in so-called "standing cells" measuring 90 cm x 90 cm, where they had to stand all night. More severe measures meant slow killings: the guilty were either put in a sealed chamber, where they died from lack of oxygen, or simply starved to death. Between blocks 10 and 11 there was a torture yard, where prisoners were simply shot at best. The wall near which the shooting was carried out was reconstructed after the end of the war.
Story
- May 20 - laying the camp on the orders of Himmler on the basis of the barracks of the Polish army. The first 728 prisoners arrived at Auschwitz on 14 June. The first commander of the camp was Rudolf Hoess. Karl Fritzsch became his deputy.
- August 14 - Catholic priest Maximilian Maria Kolbe died in Auschwitz, who voluntarily went to his death in order to save his comrade in misfortune, Sergeant Frantisek Gajovnichek. Subsequently, for this feat, Maximilian Kolbe was canonized as a holy martyr.
- 3 September – The first gas chamber is launched in the camp by order of Karl Fritzsch. Test results approved by Rudolf Goess.
- September 23 - The first Soviet prisoners of war were brought to Auschwitz.
- - started medical experiments on Jewish women and gypsies under the guidance of gynecologist Carl Clauberg. The experiments included amputation of the uterus and ovaries, irradiation, drug testing on orders from pharmaceutical companies.
- - started medical experiments on prisoners under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele.
- January 18 - part of the able-bodied prisoners (58 thousand people) was evacuated deep into German territory.
- January 27 - Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Konev entered Auschwitz, in which at that moment there were about 7.5 thousand prisoners.
- - an international monument to his victims was erected on the territory of Birkenau. The inscriptions on it were made in the language of the peoples whose representatives were martyred here. There is also an inscription in Russian.
Categories of prisoners
- Jehovah's Witnesses (Biebelforscher, Purple Triangles)
- Members of the Polish resistance to the German occupation.
- Prisoners of war
- German criminals and anti-social elements
Number of victims
It is impossible to establish the exact number of deaths in Auschwitz, since many documents were destroyed, in addition, the Germans did not keep records of the victims sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Modern historians agree that between 1.1 and 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz, most of them Jews. This estimate was obtained indirectly, through the study of deportation lists and the study of data on the arrival of trains to Auschwitz.
The French historian Georges Weller in 1983 was one of the first to use deportation data, and on their basis he estimated the number of people killed in Auschwitz at 1.613 million people, 1.44 million of which were Jews and 146 thousand Poles. In a later, considered the most authoritative work of the Polish historian Franciszek Pieper to date, the following assessment is given:
- 1.1 million Jews
- 140-150 thousand Poles
- 100 thousand Russians
- 23 thousand gypsies
In addition, an unspecified number of homosexuals were killed in the camp.
Of the approximately 16,000 Soviet prisoners of war held in the camp, 96 survived.
Links
- Article " Auschwitz» in the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
- The case does not promise big dividends Michael Dorfman
- Memoirs of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Franz Höss
Auschwitz consisted of a complex of German concentration camps and "death camps". They were located on the western outskirts of the city called Auschwitz (Poland) and functioned throughout the years 1940-1945. In the world, you can most often hear the German version of the name of the camp - "Auschwitz", since the Nazi administration of the institution often used it. Even now, when humanity is celebrating 70 years of the liberation of Auschwitz, there are not so many such structures on the globe. It was a colossal complex, the buildings, infrastructure and "population" of which had no analogues in the world at that time.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz) has become a symbol of all those cruel crimes that the Nazis committed against humanity. It was the largest of all such Nazi extermination institutions and lasted the longest. Therefore, the day when Auschwitz was liberated Soviet troops became International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Organization of Auschwitz
After the transfer of this territory of Poland under Hitler's control in 1939, the city of Oswiecim was renamed Auschwitz. In order to create a correctional labor institution, the entire Polish population was resettled from this area in several stages. The first to be taken out in June 1940 were all those who lived close to the former barracks and the Polish Tobacco Monopoly. It was about two thousand people.
A month later, the second stage began, during which the streets Short, Polnaya and Legions were liberated. During the third eviction, the Zasol area was cleared of inhabitants. The events did not end there, and as a result, the area liberated from the inhabitants of the territory amounted to approximately 40 square kilometers.
It was called the “Sphere of Interest of the Auschwitz Camp” and functioned until the moment when the liberation of Auschwitz became obvious. A variety of auxiliary camps with an agricultural profile were created here. Products from these fish farms, poultry and cattle breeding farms were supplied to the garrisons of the SS troops.
Auschwitz (Auschwitz) was surrounded by a double layer of wire fence. A high electrical voltage passed through it.
The structure of the Auschwitz-1 camp
The Auschwitz complex included three main camps: Auschwitz-1, Auschwitz-2 and Auschwitz-3.
Auschwitz-1 is the administrative center of the entire complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 in Polish (formerly Austrian) barracks, which looked like two- and three-story brick buildings. The construction of the Auschwitz-1 concentration camp was carried out by city Jews, who were forcibly involved in the work. The vegetable storage located on this territory was converted into the first crematorium with a mortuary.
During construction, everything one-story buildings were completed with second floors. Several similar new houses were also erected. These buildings were called “blocks”, and there were 24 of them in the camp. Building No. 11 became a camp prison, where meetings of the participants in the “Emergency Court” were periodically held. Within the walls of this "block of death" the fate of millions of arrested people from different countries peace.
The first group that arrived here and entered on June 14 of the same year through the main gate, which has the inscription (on Auschwitz) "Work sets you free", were 728 Polish political prisoners. From 1940 to 1942, the number of local prisoners was within 13-16 thousand. In 1942 there were about 20 thousand of them. The SS staff made a careful selection among the prisoners of those who would watch over everyone else. In most cases they were Germans.
Conditions of stay of prisoners of Auschwitz-1
The prisoners were divided into classes, which could be distinguished by the stripes on their clothes. Throughout the week, the arrested were supposed to be at their workplaces. The day off was Sunday. It was because of unbearable working conditions and very poor food that many people died.
In addition to the prison, the Auschwitz concentration camp included other blocks. The 11th and 13th buildings were designed to carry out punishments for violators of camp rules. There were standing cells with dimensions of 90x90 centimeters, where 4 people were placed. The small area did not allow the punished to sit down, so they were forced to spend the whole night in a standing position.
Also in these blocks were airtight chambers in which prisoners died from lack of oxygen. Here the prisoners were starved, slowly killing them. In the torture yard, located between the 10th and 11th blocks, mass torture and executions of camp prisoners who were not destined to see the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops were carried out. Block 24 housed a brothel.
On September 3, 1941, the deputy chief of the camp, SS Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, issued a decree according to which the first gassing of prisoners was to be carried out in block No. 11. During this experiment, about 850 prisoners died, including Soviet prisoners of war and sick people. After the success of this operation, a gas chamber and a crematorium were made in one of the bunkers. In 1942, this chamber was converted into an SS bomb shelter.
Second section - Auschwitz-2
Since 1942, the main place for the extermination of Jews has become the second main Auschwitz concentration camp - Auschvits Birkenau, which occupied the territory of the village of Brzezinka. People arrived here through iron gates, the path from which led only one way - to the gas chambers and the crematorium. Therefore, they were also called the "Gate of Death". The size of the camp was so huge that it could accommodate about 100 thousand prisoners at a time. All of them were settled in 300 barracks on an area of 175 hectares.
The territory of Auschwitz Birkenau consisted of several zones. These were the following departments:
- quarantine;
- camp for women;
- a family institution for Jews from Terzin;
- department for Hungarian Jews;
- male camp;
- place of detention of gypsies;
- hospital;
- storage buildings;
- platforms for unloading;
- crematoria and gas chambers.
All of them were isolated from each other with barbed wire and guard towers. Here, unlike Auschwitz-1, almost all the barracks were made of wood and there were practically no even basic sanitary conditions. Previously, these premises were field stables. But that was not what Auschwitz was especially terrible for. Experiments on people are the worst thing that happened here.
Main Features
All the people who arrived here were sure that they were being taken to a new place of residence. Therefore, among the luggage that they took with them, there were a lot of valuable things, jewelry and money. But after a long road leading to the camp, the property of those prisoners who survived was simply taken away. Subsequently, it was sorted, disinfected and sent for further processing or use.
Much of this property was found by the Soviet military at the time when they were liberating the prisoners of Auschwitz.
Prostheses, jewelry made of metal and gold were removed from the bodies of the murdered prisoners. They also cut off their hair. All this went to work. The liberation of Auschwitz led to a terrible find: men's and women's suits (about 1.2 million) and shoes (approximately 43 thousand pairs) were found in the camp warehouses. Also here was a large number of carpets, toothbrushes, shaving brushes and other household items. The warehouses of the tannery located on the territory of the camp were filled with women's hair packed in 293 bales, the total weight of which was more than 7 tons. According to the results of the commission of inquiry, they were cut off the heads of 140,000 women.
Very appreciated human skin used for making gloves. In order for them to have a tattoo, the drawing was applied to the body of people during their lifetime. In most cases, the skin of young girls was used.
Crimes against humanity at Auschwitz Birkenau
In 1942, there was a peak in the functioning of this camp. Trains ran almost around the clock between him and Hungary until the liberation of Auschwitz began. The date of this event was so anticipated by many suicide bombers! The main goal of the leadership was the destruction at one time of all Hungarian Jews. The three tracks of the railway line leading to Auschwitz Birkenau contributed to the accelerated unloading of a huge number of people doomed to death.
They were divided into 4 groups. The first included those who were unfit for work. They were immediately sent to the crematorium. The other group, mostly twins and dwarfs, arrived at Auschwitz. Experiments on people - that's what this group was intended for. The prisoners of the third group were sent to various jobs and subsequently almost all died from hard work, beatings and diseases. The fourth included women who were taken by the Nazis as servants.
Four crematoria, which were located on the territory of the camp, worked non-stop, burning about 8 thousand corpses per day. When, due to overload, some of them refused to function, the bodies of the prisoners were burned right in the fresh air in the ditches behind the terrible room.
Some time before the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the building located at the end of the unloading platform was blown up by the SS. By destroying this gas chamber and the crematorium, they tried to remove the traces of all the crimes committed here.
Sonderkommandos, uprisings and escapes
Sonderkommandos provided invaluable assistance in the destruction of objectionable nationalities. Their occurrence is due to the fact that not all Aryan guards could withstand the emotional stress while contemplating the constant brutal murder. These groups included Jewish people, calming and helping to undress all those prisoners who were in front of the gas chambers. Also among their functions were cleaning and loading furnaces, working with bodies. Members of the Sonderkommandos pulled crowns from corpses and cut off their hair. After some time, they were also burned in the cell, and new prisoners were recruited in their place.
But, despite all the measures that were taken to ensure the proper level of protection for the prisoners, uprisings took place, from time to time reviving Auschwitz. The history of one of them, which took place on October 7, 1944, is closely connected with the members of the Sonderkommando. As a result of this uprising, three SS men were killed and twelve wounded. Also then the fourth crematorium was blown up. All the prisoners who joined this rebellion were destroyed.
There was also the release of the prisoners of Auschwitz by organizing escapes. In total, during the existence of the camp, there were about 700 attempts to leave its territory. Only 300 of them had a successful outcome. But the management of Auschwitz came up with very effective measures to prevent such attempts. All the prisoners who lived in the same block as the fugitive were killed. They also searched for his relatives, who were at large, and brought them to the camp.
There were a large number of suicide attempts. Some prisoners threw themselves on the wire fence, which was under enormous voltage. But few managed to run to him - a significant part of potential suicides were shot by machine gunners standing on observation towers.
Camp Monowitz (Auschwitz-3)
Auschwitz-3 included 43 small subcamps, which were created at factories and mines. They were located around the collective complex. Doctors who worked in the camp regularly came here to select weakened and sick prisoners for the gas chambers.
A relatively small number of prisoners who were in this territory performed forced labor at six livestock farms and 28 industrial enterprises (military industry, mines, construction, repairs of rolling stock, fruit processing, etc.). They also performed special functions, which included the maintenance of holiday homes for the SS and the removal of rubble after the end of the bombing.
Auschwitz-3 had its own specifics. Its prisoners were supposed to work for IG Farben AG. She specialized in the chemical industry: synthetic fuels, dyes, Zyklon-B, synthetic rubber and lubricants. In total, about 500 thousand prisoners passed through this camp during its existence, most of whom died.
Auschwitz Statistics
Even in our time, when the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is celebrated, the exact number of its victims remains unknown. Nobody can install it anymore. In 1945, the Soviet commission counted everything incorrectly. Only theoretical ones were taken. technical capabilities Auschwitz and multiplied by the duration of its crematoria.
More authoritative are the studies of Frantisek Piper, a scientist from Poland. During his calculations, he used surviving documents, information about the deportation and demographic data. Based on this, the following indicators of the number of those killed in the camp were obtained:
- Jews - 1 million 100 thousand;
- Poles - 150 thousand;
- citizens of the USSR - about 100 thousand;
- gypsies - 2-3 thousand;
- citizens of other countries - 30-50 thousand.
Camp Liberation
Almost on the very day of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the German authorities decided on Operation "Death March". During its execution, about 60 thousand able-bodied prisoners were evacuated deep into Germany. Documentation and some objects were also destroyed. During the arrival of the Soviet army, only about seven thousand prisoners remained, who were not evacuated by the Nazis due to the fact that they could not move independently.
But if the war had not ended, Auschwitz would have continued to exist. Its history would continue with the construction of new barracks on the territory of Auschwitz, the completion of the construction of the third construction site, where Hungarian Jews were placed in unfinished and unheated barracks.
Based on the data of German documentation, the liberation of Auschwitz did not allow further planned development and expansion of the camp. After all, there were still a lot of those who were supposed to be buried here in the world. These are European Jews, Gypsies and Slavs, who were subject to "special treatment".
What could be the consequences of the activities of this "death camp" is hard to imagine. But in January 1945, Soviet soldiers under the command of Major General Vasily Yakovlevich Petrenko liberated the camp. This liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet troops actually saved all of humanity from the abyss over which it then stood. It contributed to the salvation of not only the prisoners, but also those who could become them.
After the liberation of Auschwitz took place (the date is known to the whole world), part of the barracks was converted into hospitals for prisoners. After that, prisons belonging to the NKVD and the Polish Ministry of Public Security were placed here. The plant in a city such as Oswiecim (Poland), the government of the state made the basis for the development of the chemical industry in the region. Now the site of the camp is a museum, which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
On the night of December 18, 2009, a cast-iron inscription on Auschwitz was stolen. She was discovered three days later in a sawn state for shipment to Switzerland. After that, it was replaced with a copy that was made during the restoration of the original.