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Revision as of 18:40, 13 August 2002 by Brooke Vibber (talk | contribs) (Auschwitz isn't still running...)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Auschwitz is the German name of the Polish town Oswiecim, about 60km west of Krakow. Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and extermination camps here during World War II. There were three main camps, and almost forty subcamps. The three main camps were:
- Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative centre for the whole complex, and the site for murder of roughly 70,000 Polish intellectuals and Soviet Prisoners of War
- Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp which served as the site for the murder of roughly 1 million Jews and Romany
- Auschwitz III (Monowice), which served as a labour camp for the IG Farben company
Auschwitz I
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Auschwitz I served as the administrative center for the whole complex. It was founded in spring 1940, on the basis of old Polish brick army barracks. It was initially used for interning Polish intellectuals and resistance movement members, then also for Soviet Prisonners of War. Common criminals, "anti-social elements" and homosexuals were also imprisoned there. Jews were sent to the camp as well, beginning with the very first shipment (from Tarnow). At any time, the camp held between 13 and 16 thousand inmates; in 1942 the number reached 20 thousand.
The entrance to Auschwitz I was (and still is) marked with the cynical sign "Arbeit Macht Frei", "work liberates". It is reported that the camp's prisoners were made to march through the gate at the sounds of an orchestra. Contrary to what is depicted in several films, however, the majority of the Jews were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II camp, and did not pass under this sign.
In September 1941, the SS conducted tests in block 10 of Auschwitz I, killing 850 Poles and Russians using Zyklon B gas, a pesticide that had previously been used to kill lice. The tests deemed successful, a gas chamber and crematorium was constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942 and was then converted into an air-raid shelter.
From April 1943 to May 1944, the gynecologist Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in Auschwitz I, with the aim of developing a simple injection method to be used on the Slavic people. Dr. Josef Mengele experimented on twins in the same complex.
About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from Auschwitz during the years of its operation, with about 300 attempts successful. A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others.
The first commandant of the camp, Rudolf Höss, was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium.
After the war, Auschwitz remained in a state of disrepair for several years; when restoring the site, the Polish government decided only to preserve Auschwitz II (where buildings were prone to decay), but not to restore it, while Auschwitz I was made a museum site.
As such, it combines elements from several periods into a single complex, for example restoring the gas chambers at Auschwitz I (which did not exist by the war's end), or moving the fence (because of building being done after the war but before the establishment of the museum). The camp was never intended to stand for centuries to come, and because of that, some of its elements are subject to reconstruction. However, in most cases the departure from the historical truth is minor, and is mentioned as such.
Auschwitz II
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is the camp that most people know simply as "Auschwitz". It was the site of imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and the murder of one to two million people, mainly Jews.
Construction started in 1941. The camp is located in Brzezinka (Birkenau), about 3 kilometers from Auschwitz I. The camp's size was about 2.5 kilometers by 2 kilometers. It was divided into several sections, each of which was separated into fields. Fields as well as the camp itself were surrounded with barbed, electrified wire (which was used by some of the inmates to commit suicide). The camp held up to 100,000 prisoners at one time.
The camp's main purpose, however, was not internment with forced labor (at Auschwitz III) but rather extermination. For this purpose, the camp was equipped with 4 gas chambers with crematoria. Extermination started in Spring 1942.
Most people arrived to the camp by rail (from 1944 a railway branch extended into the camp itself; before that, prisoners were marched from the Auschwitz railway station). There they were made to leave the railcars. Often, the whole transport would be sent to its death. Sometimes, the Nazis would choose ("selection") whom to kill immediately, and whom to imprison as labor force. The weak, sick or old were killed immediately.
The gas chamber/crematorium complexes were all constructed alike: an underground undressing room holding around 2000 victims, followed by the gas chamber with fake shower heads, leading to the ovens.
In a revolt on October 7, 1944, Jewish prisoners were able to partially destroy crematorium IV; the others gas chambers were detonated by the Nazis in November 1944, shortly before the camps were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
Today, the camp is open to the public.
Criticisms
Several authors, sometimes sympathetic to holocaust revisionism, have criticised what they claim to be historical inaccuracies about Auschwitz, perpetrated by the Polish government, Jewish lobby groups, popular literature and Hollywood; see for instance: Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust : From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold (ISBN 0415928133).
See also: