75: Auschwitz 1

Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1

(Entrance of Auschwitz-Birkenau.)

The Auschwitz Concentration Camp (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 Concentration and Extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a Concentration and Extermination camp in Brzezinka three kilometers away; Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labor camp in Monowice created to staff an IG Farben synthetic-rubber factory; and dozens of other subcamps.

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking World War II, the Germans converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, to hold Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries, arrived in May 1940, and the first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I in September 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II–Birkenau began the following month; the camp went on to become a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its Gas Chambers; of the 960,000 Jews who died there, 865,000 were gassed on arrival. Overall, 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, 1.1 million of whom are thought to have died. The figures include 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and up to 15,000 other Europeans. Many of those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, beatings or individual executions. Others were killed during medical experiments. 

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers, launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising. Around 12 percent of the 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) who staffed the camp were later convicted of war crimes; several, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allies failure to act on early reports of atrocities in the camp by bombing it or its railways remains controversial. 

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent west on a death march to other camps. The remaining prisoners were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947 Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. 

Auschwitz I, II, and III

Auschwitz I, a former Polish army barracks, was the main camp (Stammlager) and administrative headquarters of the camp complex. Intending to use it to house political prisoners, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), approved the site in April 1940 on the recommendation of SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Rudolf Höss, then of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant, with SS-Obersturmführer (senior lieutenant) Josef Kramer as his deputy. Around 1,000 m long and 400 m wide, Auschwitz I consisted of 20 brick buildings, six of them two-story; a second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built. The camp housed the SS barracks and by 1943 held 30,000 inmates.  The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 after being transported from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany. Convicted German criminals (Berufsverbrecher), the men were known as "greens" after the green triangles they were required to wear on 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 began to take over their roles.  Bruno Brodniewitsch, the first prisoner, became Lagerältester (camp elder), and the others were given positions such as kapo and block supervisor.  The first mass transport of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic Priests and Jews, arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów, Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758. By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometre (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" surrounded by a double ring of electrified barbed wire fences and watchtowers. The inmate population grew quickly. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned there, most of them Poles.  An inmate's first encounter with the camp, if they were being registered and not sent straight to the gas chamber, would be at the prisoner reception centre, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given their striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 Gas Chambers for delousing clothes. Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt write that inmates would then leave this area via a porch that faced the gate with the Arbeit Macht Frei sign. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. 

Crematorium I, First Gassing:

Construction of Crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940.  Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camps, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the Crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over.  By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.  The first experimental gassing took place in September 1941, when Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch, at the instruction of Rudolf Höss, killed a group of Soviet Prisoners of War by throwing Zyklon B crystals into their basement cell in block 11 of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet Prisoners of War and around 250 sick Polish prisoners was gassed on 3–5 September.  The morgue was later converted to a Gas Chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people.  Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in the ceiling. In the view of Filip Müller, one of the Sonderkommando who worked in Crematorium I, tens of thousands of Jews were killed there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, Yugoslavia, and from the Theresienstadt, Ciechanow, and Grodno Ghettos. The last inmates to be gassed in Auschwitz I, in December 1942, were 300–400 members of the Auschwitz II Sonderkommando, who had been forced to dig up that camp's mass graves, thought to hold 100,000 corpses, and burn the remains. 

Auschwitz II-Birkenau:

The victories of Operation Barbarossa in the summer and fall of 1941 against Hitler's new enemy, the Soviet Union, led to dramatic changes in Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and the profile of prisoners brought to Auschwitz. Construction on Auschwitz II-Birkenau began in October 1941 to ease congestion at the main camp. The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (such as BIIa, BIIb) with their own gates and fences; sector BI was initially a quarantine camp. The overall capacity was to be 200,000. The chief of construction was SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff, an architect appointed by SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Kamler, an engineer. The first two sectors were completed, but the construction of BIII, begun in 1943, was stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned.  Bischoff's plans, based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners. He later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000. There were 174 barracks, each measuring 35.4 by 11.0 metres (116 by 36 ft), divided into 62 bays of 4 square metres (43 sq ft). The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of 1 square metre (11 sq ft) to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived, Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote, "of the minimum space needed to exist".  The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were being built; 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 within a few weeks of hypothermia, starvation or exhaustion. An initial contingent of 10,000 Soviet Prisoners of War arrived at Auschwitz I in October 1941, but by March 1942 only 945 were still alive, and these were transferred to Birkenau, where most of them had died by May. 

Crematoria II–V:

By 1942, on orders from Heinrich Himmler, Auschwitz had become a site for the annihilation of the Jews, initially by "extermination through labor" and later by gassing. The first Gas Chamber at Birkenau was in what prisoners called the "Little Red House" (known as Bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been converted into a gassing facility. The windows were bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said "Zur Desinfektion" ("To Disinfection"). It was operational by March 1942. A second brick cottage, the "Little White House" or Bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942. 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 the new IG Farben plant being constructed at the nearby town of Monowitz.  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. Crematorium II, which had been designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators, was converted by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas thereafter.  It went into operation in March 1943. Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the start as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four Crematoria were operational. Most of the victims were killed using these four structures.

Auschwitz III-Monowitz:

After examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture Buna-N, a type of synthetic rubber essential to the war effort, the German chemical cartel IG Farben chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) east of Auschwitz I. Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in the frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. The site had good railway connections and access to raw materials. In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of Oświęcim be 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.  Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG Auschwitz, in April 1941, and demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it. By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I. Anticipating that 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 there by train on freight wagons.  Because of 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. Known as KL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager (Auschwitz III-subcamps), and later as Monowitz Concentration Camp,  it was the first Concentration Camp to be financed and built by private industry. Measuring 270 by 490 metres (890 ft × 1,610 ft), the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring 17.5 by 8 metres (57 ft × 26 ft), each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks. IG Farben paid the SS three or four Reichsmark for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker.  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. Deaths and transfers to Birkenau reduced the population by nearly a fifth each month; site managers constantly threatened inmates with the Gas Chambers. In addition to the Auschwitz inmates, who comprised a third of the work force, IG Auschwitz employed slave laborers from all over Europe.  When the camp was liquidated in January 1945, 9,054 out of the 9,792 inmates were Jews. Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labor and raw materials meant start-up had to be postponed repeatedly.  The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and again on 26 December. On 19 January 1945, the SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates on a Death March to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice. The plant had almost been ready to commence production.  From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to Buchenwald and Mauthausen Concentration Camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated on 27 January 1945 by the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army.

Other Subcamps:

Various other German industrial enterprises, such as Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert, built factories with their own subcamps. There were around 50 such camps, 28 of them near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners.  Designated as Aussenlager (external camp), Nebenlager (extension or subcamp), or Arbeitslager (labor camp),  camps were built at Blechhammer, Jawiszowice, Jaworzno, Lagisze, Mysłowice, Trzebinia, and centers as far afield as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia. 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. For example, Wirtschaftshof Budy, in the village of Budy, was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days, often in the fields, but sometimes tending animals, cleaning ponds, digging ditches, and making compost by mixing human ashes from the Crematoria with sod and manure.  Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II, and Rajsko.

Commandants of Auschwitz:

Born in Baden-Baden in 1900, SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss became the first Commandant of Auschwitz when the camp was founded in April 1940, living with his wife and children in a villa just outside the camp grounds.  Appointed by Heinrich Himmler, he served until 11 November 1943, when he became director of Office DI of the SS-Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt (SS Business and Administration Head Office or WVHA) in Oranienburg. This post made Höss deputy of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, under SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks.  He returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as commander of the SS garrison (Standortältester) to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, a post that made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps. Höss was succeeded as Auschwitz commandant in November 1943 by SS Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel, who served until 15 May 1944. SS Sturmbannführer Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944, and SS Obersturmbannführer Fritz Hartjenstein of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by SS Obersturmbannführer Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation.

SS Personnel At Auschwitz: 

According to the historian Aleksander Lasik, 6,800 male SS personnel and 200 female SS supervisors (SS-Aufseherinnen) were posted to Auschwitz in total.  Of these, 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file. Most were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of Volksdeutsche from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Estonia and Yugoslavia, joined the SS at Auschwitz.  Camp guards were members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head Units); approximately three in four SS personnel were guards. Others 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. About 120 SS personnel were assigned to the Gas Chambers and lived on site at the Crematoria. Auschwitz was considered a comfortable posting by many SS personnel; it meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property. They were initially allowed to bring partners, spouses, and children to live at the camp, but when the SS camp grew more crowded, Höss restricted further arrivals. Facilities for the SS and their families included a library, swimming pool, coffee house, and a theater that hosted regular performances.

Functionaries and Sonderkommando:

Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles,  were assigned positions of authority as Funktionshäftlinge (Functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. Positions included Blockschreiber ("Barracks Clerk"), Kapo ("Overseer"), and Stubendienst ("Barracks Orderly").  Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners, the functionaries developed a reputation as sadists. Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed under SS orders and which had been individual actions.

Although the SS oversaw the killings at each Gas Chamber, the bulk of the work was done by prisoners known as the Sonderkommando (Special Squad). These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. By July 1944 about 900 prisoners belonged to the Sonderkommando. They removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and Gas Chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelery, their hair, and gold from their teeth, all of which was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the Sonderkommando burned them, either in the Crematoria or in nearby pits. The same prisoners worked in the "Kanada" barracks, in BIIg, where the victims' possessions were stored. Housed separately from other prisoners, their quality of life was further improved by access to these goods, which they were able to trade within the camp. Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; many were shot after a few weeks and others committed suicide. New Sonderkommando units were formed from incoming transports. Very few of the 2,000 prisoners placed in these units survived to the camp's liberation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp