Search results
The Nazis deported Jews from nearly every European country to the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) killing center in occupied Poland. In all, at least 1.1 million Jews and tens of thousands of other people perished in Auschwitz.
- Auschwitz Environs, Summer 1944
Map Auschwitz environs, summer 1944. Auschwitz was the...
- Auschwitz Camp Complex: Maps
Auschwitz environs, summer 1944. Auschwitz was the largest...
- Auschwitz Environs, Summer 1944
Soon after liberation, an emaciated child survivor is carried out of camp barracks by Soviet first-aid workers. Auschwitz, Poland, after January 27, 1945. This photograph is a still image from Soviet film of the liberation of Auschwitz . Item View.
Coordinates: 50°02′09″N19°10′42″E. "Auschwitz" redirects here. For the city, see Oświęcim. For other uses, see Auschwitz (disambiguation).
- Overview
- Auschwitz I
- Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III
Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp. Located near the industrial town of Oświęcim in southern Poland (in a portion of the country that was annexed by Germany at the beginning of World War II), Auschwitz was actually three camps in one: a prison camp, an extermination camp, and a slave-labour camp. As the most...
Auschwitz was probably chosen to play a central role in the “final solution” because it was located at a railway junction with 44 parallel tracks—rail lines that were used to transport Jews from throughout Europe to their death. Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, ordered the establishment of the first camp, the prison c...
In October 1941, work began on Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, located outside the nearby village of Brzezinka. There the SS later developed a huge concentration camp and extermination complex that included some 300 prison barracks; four large so-called Badeanstalten (German: “bathhouses”), in which prisoners were gassed to death; Leichenkeller (“corpse cellars”), in which their bodies were stored; and Einäscherungsöfen (“cremating ovens”). Another camp (Buna-Monowitz), near the village of Dwory, later called Auschwitz III, became in May 1942 a slave-labour camp supplying workers for the nearby chemical and synthetic-rubber works of IG Farben. In addition, Auschwitz became the nexus of a complex of 45 smaller subcamps in the region, most of which housed slave labourers. During most of the period from 1940 to 1945, the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps was SS-Hauptsturmführer (Capt.) and ultimately SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieut. Col.) Rudolf Franz Höss (Hoess).
The death camp and slave-labour camp were interrelated. Newly arrived prisoners at the death camp were divided in a process known as Selektion. The young and the able-bodied were sent to work. Young children and their mothers and the old and infirm were sent directly to the gas chambers. Thousands of prisoners were also selected by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, for medical experiments. Auschwitz doctors tested methods of sterilization on the prisoners, using massive doses of radiation, uterine injections, and other barbaric procedures. Experiments involving the killing of twins, upon whom autopsies were performed, were meant to provide information that would supposedly lead to the rapid expansion of the “Aryan race.”
Britannica Quiz
Nazi Germany Quiz
- Michael Berenbaum
Dec 15, 2009 · Yad Vashem Archives/AFP via Getty Images. Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Located in southern...
Gallery. Historical photographs, mostly from the archive of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum as well as saved historical documents from the camp operation period. Photographs showing a contemporary image of the sites of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp (i.e. ruins of the crematories and gas chambers, huts for prisoners or memory places ...
