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Auschwitz ( Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau , in German Concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau ) was largest Concentration camp and extermination Nazi. He is located in the town of Oświęcim ( Auschwitz in German) at 70 kilometers at the west of Cracow (in Small-Poland, area of Poland, country then occupied by the Reich). He was created in May 1940 and was operated by the S, then released by the Red Army the January 27th 1945. In 5 years, not less than 1,3 million men, women and children, in 90% of the Jews, died in Auschwitz, of which: 900000 immediately at their exit of the trains which had brought them: mainly in the gas chambers, sometimes shot down. The majority of the remainder of the prisoners ended up dying of diseases, malnutrition, ill treatments, of medical experiments, even of gazage after all this maltreatment.

Auschwitz, to be the largest death camp of all times, is regarded as the symbol of the murders in mass Nazis, of the Génocide of the Jews in whom nearly 6 million Jews were assassinated: the symbol of the Shoah.

Following the example other concentration camps, Auschwitz was under the orders of Heinrich Himmler and the Schutzstaffel. The person in charge of the camp was the S Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß until the summer 1943, replaced then by Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. Rudolf Höß will provide detailed descriptions of the operation of the camp in its autobiography, but also when one questions it at the time of the Procès of Nuremberg. Found by the Allies in Bavaria, where it hid under a false identity, it is condemned to died by a court Polish and hung in 1947 vis-a-vis crématorium of Auschwitz I.

Auschwitz: vast complex

The complex concentrationnaire of Auschwitz was mainly made up of three camps:

Auschwitz I , open the May 20th 1940 - the camp stock (the main thing) is a concentration camp where perished nearly 70.000 men, at the beginning of the prisoners of war and the Polish and Soviet political opponents; then Jews and the resistant ones of all nationalities.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau), open the October 8th 1941 - At the same time concentration camp and center of setting to immediate death where perished more than one million people, Jewish in their vast majority as well as gypsies.
Auschwitz III (Monowitz), open the May 31st 1942 - a camp of work for the factories IG Farben

These 3 camps were supplemented of about fifty small camps dispersed in the area and placed under the same administration.

Auschwitz I

The creation of the camp stock Auschwitz I is decided by the S in February 1940 on the site of old Polish barracks, vacuums since the area was annexed by Reich. The first Polish prisoners arrive in June 1940. Auschwitz is in the beginning a forced labor and concentration camp. The camp accommodates the politicians and the intellectuals opposed to the Nazi regime before accommodating Soviet prisoners of war, German criminals, political prisoners, as well as “asocial elements” (term Nazi) such as the gypsies, the prostitutes, the homosexual ones, the handicapped people, the witnesses of Jéhovah and the Jews. In 1940, the internal camp counts between: 13000 and: 16000 men. The number of prisoners will go until: 20000 in 1942. The entry in the camp is done by a gate which carries the inscription, resumption of Dachau, Arbeit macht frei : “Work makes free”. Each day, when the prisoners left the camp to go to work, it was at the rate/rhythm of a walk put in music by an orchestra of prisoners. The same applied when new trains arrived: the music continued.

To supervise the prisoners, the S drew among more the violent ones of the German criminals recognized for acts of violence. They are the Kapo . The prisoners were identified by a symbol bent on their combination of convict: political prisoner, Jew… The latter being maltreated more.

The prisoners worked during 6 days, if they are not 7 per week. Sunday was reserved for the personal toilet. What quickly caused many deaths for malnutrition and lack of hygiene. In order to accelerate the process of death, the S tested as of September 1941 a gas pesticide, the Zyklon B, in the cellars of block 11. Six hundred Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Polish political prisoners were thus gauzes. The S then used in the camp stock a building including/understanding a gas chamber and crematory composed of 3 furnaces. This installation was in service between 1941 and 1942, before being transformed into bunker of protection in the event of air attack. For this reason, the building was not destroyed by the Nazis. The Crematorium currently visible was rebuilt there after the war starting from the original material remained on the spot.

In 1942, the camp also saw the arrival of the first women. Between April 1943 and May 1944, the Jewish women were used as guinea-pigs for experiments of sterilization for Professor Karl Clauberg. The doctor Josef Mengele, as for him, made any kind of experiments on any type of prisoner, especially on twin children. When the prisoners did not cure rather quickly, they were then killed by phenol injection in the middle.

On the orders of Heinrich Himmler, the block 24 was transformed into brothel to reward the supervisory staff.

Auschwitz II Birkenau

What much names “Auschwitz” is in fact the camp of Birkenau, which includes/understands the center of extermination as well as a gigantic camp of forced labor. It is there that 1,1 perished million individuals, mainly of the Jews and the Gypsies.

The camp is located, to 3 km of Auschwitz I, the site of the village of Brzezinka ( Birkenau in German) destroyed to build the camp Of a theoretical capacity of: 100000 prisoners, it extends on a surface from 170 hectares. It includes/understands, in its final configuration, 3 parts or Lager : the camp of the women, the camp of the men and an extension ever finished. Each Lager is surrounded by walls of electrified barbed wires with high voltage. Certain prisoners eager to commit suicide threw themselves on these iron wire. Initially, Himmler had thought Birkenau as an extension of Auschwitz intended to accommodate Soviet prisoners of war within the framework of the invasion of the Soviet Union. They are besides these Soviet prisoners who start to build the brick hutments which will become later the camp of the women. The main role of Birkenau, definite as of end 1941, then was to apply the Final solution Jewish question, i.e. the setting with systematic and programmed death Jews of Europe. To this end the Nazis made build in Birkenau 4 complexes of rooms with gas-crématoriums (K II, K III, K IV and K V). Construction began in 1942. K I is the room unit with gas-crématorium of Auschwitz I. Them preceded two old farms located near the camp and transforms in gas chambers, named the red house and the White House. It is in these farms (bunker I and II) that died an important part of the off-set Jews of France.

The prisoners arrived from all Europe at Auschwitz-Birkenau in the train, often after several days spent in cattle coaches. Some died during the voyage of thirst, hunger, disease or asphyxiated. During most of the operation of the camp, the deportees arrived at the level of the old goods station of Auschwitz (the Judenrampe ) and walked approximately 1 kilometer until Birkenau. The way was prolonged in spring 1944 to finish its way inside Birkenau, closest to the devices of gazage. The traditional photography where one sees rails which end in the entry of the camp of Birkenau such as it presents today thus corresponds to the ultimate configuration of the camp It lets believe that it is about the way of railroad which returns in the camp but in fact it is taken from the interior of the camp

Hardly left the train, the prisoners underwent the “selection”. On a side, the weak ones, elderly, patients, expectant mothers, children intended to be gauzes immediately. Other, the adults (in theory as from 16 years) most valid that the S intended for dead by the forced labor. Often, the doctor Josef Mengele was useful himself among the newcomers to lead his experiments.

In all the cases, the prisoners were exposed, shaved, tattooed, dispossessed of their goods which one stored in warehouses called “Canada” in the jargon of the camp These personal objects for the majority were then sent in Germany.

The survivors with this first sorting were organized in work groups ( Kommandos ) and were employed like labor slave in the factories depending on the camp, but also in farms or inside the camp

The gas chambers could receive close to: 2000 people at the same time. A part, spaces factitious shower, let foresee a trap door on the roof from where the Zyklon B was thrown. It was the mission of the selected Sonderkommando among the prisoners. The bodies were then burned in contiguous crématoriums. Towards the end of the war, whereas the crématoriums turned to full mode, the Nazis killed even more and burned the bodies in pits.

In March 1944: 440000 Hungarian Jews are off-set in Auschwitz-Birkenau after Wehrmacht had taken the control of the Hungary. : 250000 of them were assassinated, the other envoys in camps of work.

The October 7th 1944, of the members of the Sonderkommando , 250 prisoners responsible for the bodies of the people after gazage, are raised. They had gotten explosives subtilized by a commando of Jewish young women, to destroy crematory the IV partially enough. After the explosion, they cut the barbed wires electrified using manufactured grips of electrician to haste, and escaped in the forest. But their escape failed and the majority of the group were liquidated, little survived.

Auschwitz III Monowitz

What the Allies knew

Between 1940 and 1942, information arrives at drop by drop, in particular concerning the massacres made by the Einsatzgruppen in the east, first mode of extermination of the Jews by commandos. The credibility of the policy of extermination is guaranteed to the summer 1942 with famous the Télégramme Riegner of August 8th, 1942.

With the autumn 1942, survivors of the horrors Nazis testify, like resistant Polish Jan Karski who discusses directly with Roosevelt and the British administration in order to put a term at the massacre. And on December 17th, 1942, the forces américano-British, and the governments in exile in London make a joint statement condemning the policy of extermination of the Jews of Europe, threatening of reprisals their authors.

The allied forces knew, it is the thesis of the majority of the historians, and yet they saved only a few tens of thousands of Jews by diplomatic channels, without having recourse to the average soldiers. The inaction on Auschwitz was a choice, which is quite difficult to admit without tarnishing the idyllic portrait of the Allies brushed by the History. Two angles are generally used as study with the question: military strategy and political inertias.

The Allies were with the current of the existence of the camps of Auschwitz before 1944 but did not believe in the thesis of the extermination of mass. Until two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, do to them a report/ratio detailed on the practices in the camps of death, little time before the Débarquement in Normandy.

It should have been waited until 2003 so that the Royal Air Force reveals officially certain stereotypes taken in 1944. The RAF which sought military installations did not delay on the camps… Information however arrived to the ears of Winston Churchill which decided finally for an attack before retracting with the idea to kill unnecessarily out of the prisoners by an air attack.

Work of the historians since the Années 1970 made it possible to show that the Allies were informed of the Final solution, namely the policy of systematic extermination of all the Jews of Europe. The role of the neutral countries was crucial in this field, the Suisse, and with less title the Sweden, were grounds of safety for the Jewish agencies and the combined diplomats, by whom they could receive information. The Polish resistance and of the friendly contacts in the administration Nazi made it possible little by little to put at the day this secrecy which the Nazis baited themselves to dissimulate.

Auschwitz, a non-existent military target

The camp with range of shooting

The Allies attacked Monowitz on September 13rd, 1944, manufacturing plant of synthetic rubber to a few kilometers of the camp of Auschwitz. Certain bombs same fell on the camp killing ten deportees accidentally. This raid is the absolute demonstration that an air attack on Auschwitz was in the capacity of the Allies. In 1942, Churchill, under the pressure of the Parliament and the Church Anglican, had given the order to its military administration to consider all the possibilities of bombardment of the camps, but it was answered to him that the targets were out of reach action.

It is thus only as from 1944, when the American deterrent forces are stationed in Foggia in the south of the Italy that the camps can be destroyed. The Luftwaffe is inoperative a long time since good, the Allies control the airs completely. The few doubts being able to remain on the extent of the atrocities, the systematic exterminations from now on are dissipated in 1944. In the United States, the newspapers speak in their column about the Final solution, the American Jewish agencies make pressure on the military administration to obtain an attack on Auschwitz.

The Minister associated with the War John McCloy refuses because the target is not soldier.

Setting in doubt of the effectiveness of a bombardment

The historians refuting the assumption of an intentional negligence of Allied are based on a major argument: the bombardments would have killed out of tens of thousands of Jews without inevitably reaching the gas chambers. The raid would have been massive, and would have killed only some S without putting out of state to harm the machine to be killed German. More especially as the operating costs of the death camps, for the effort of war of the Nazi Germany, were exorbitant, and that a bombardment would have had an extremely limited effect.

Indeed the distance enters the United Kingdom or Italy of the south forces the bombers to devote the essence of their load to the fuel, with the detriment of the bombs. The bombers brinanic (of night) are unable to aim at a precise target and are intended for the industrial parks or the cities. The American bombers should thus tackle day, out of their own cover of hunting. So technically the attack is possible (although it is very risky and dangerous), it is probable that it would have unfortunately had only little or not of effect: the ways of railroad are very easily reparable (at most a few days of unavailability) whereas the complex itself is a target extremely difficult to reach at the time

But such militaro-strategic controversies remain extremely hypothetical for the simple reason that the department of the War forever taken the sorrow to carry out such a study, the army being held with a strict principle to know that Auschwitz could not constitute a military target. Why?

A true effective operation would have required colossal means with the Allies, which could not be allowed to divert their machine of war of the military objectives. The German defeat was not yet obvious at the winter 1944, the bombers thus concentrated on the resources of energy of Reich. An effective attack of Auschwitz would have been a difficult operation, mobilizing time and patience the Allies did not have.

The humane causes passed in the second plan, according to logic more quickly the war will be finished, more quickly the people will be delivered tyranny Nazi. Albert Speer, Minister for the war Nazi confirmed at the end of the conflict the frightening effectiveness of this strategy. However like the philosopher Elie Wiesel underlined so well “time with Auschwitz did not run out at the same speed as outwards”.

In any event, the public opinion would have disapproved. The American Jewish community itself fears an increase of the anti-semitism in its own country and fears to feed the enemy propaganda which fulminates against the “Jewish war”. Criticisms were likely to rain on Roosevelt already shown to support the Jews with his New Deal (baptized by the anti-semites Jew Deal , word game where jew means Jewish in English). Propaganda Nazi would make her lambsquarters of them, or worse, the Nazis post-war period would try to share the responsibility for the crimes with the Allies.

One touches with the node of the problem, much of historians not hesitating to qualify the question of the bombardment of Auschwitz like an anachronism. Because today we know the specificity of the Shoah but, at the time, the Jewish question was too much sensitive so that a specific intervention on Auschwitz is programmed.

Auschwitz, in the center of the Jewish question

Political circumstances of the Holocaust: the Anti-semitism diffuse.

Like it shows historian R. Breittman, the Allies could have saved hundreds of thousands of Jews if they had had the will of it. Suspecting very early persecutions Nazis, it would have is enough to let enter the Jewish refugees the neutral countries, namely the Sweden, the Suisse, the Turkey. This solution was possible if the Allies had guaranteed to the neutral countries a humanitarian aid, and if they had agree themselves to open their borders. However nothing of all that was done. The the United States and the Great Britain fearing a destabilization internal and refusing to make the play of Reich. The British could have opened the doors of the Palestine to the Jews of Europe as claimed it many Jewish organizations but that would have been with the danger of their mandate over there, the Arabs making feel their anger vis-a-vis the massive arrival of Jews. David Ben Gourion, person in charge of the Yishouv, the Jewish authority of Palestine, understood that the situation was without exit for the Jews Ashkenazes, and will concentrate on the creation of a State for the Jews of North Africa, the Sépharades. British and Americans will not have of cease to return the ball in front of what was for them a true burden. An English lady wrote in Churchill in 1943: “the dark England in a hypocrisy such that the members of the Parliament show compassion for death of the Jews and in same time its persons in charge condemn them to die”.

It is trying to show the bureaucracy américano-British of Antisémitisme. The private secretary of Anthony Eden, then Foreign Minister wrote in this connection in his newspaper: “There will remain inébranlable about the Palestine because he loves the Arabs and hates the Jews”. And the American Secretary of State Adolf Berle declared in 1943 in a speech in Boston: “It is the first time in the modern history which a civilized country puts at execution a program of national murder. But nothing can be made to save these unhappy without defense. Except the invasion of the Europe and the fall of the German capacity, there is not an other solution”. But such a charge would be misleading, the Allies are not any responsible in the Final solution, they are the Nazis and their accomplices who must carry forever the load of this atrocious crime. One should not however lose sight of the fact that they were helped in their company of died by an anti-semitism deeply anchored in part of the populations of the occupied countries.

Was it necessary to bombard Auschwitz?

The political environment vis-a-vis this question illustrates at which point the Final solution was not a priority for the Allies. Nothing concrete was done in the direction a bombardment Auschwitz quite simply because that represented for them a minor stake.

Some think that by not bombarding Auschwitz, the Allies made a moral fault. All the survivors protest it “We requested so that fall from the bombs. We were ready to die rather than to be assassinated by our of torture in the gas chambers, leaves which awaited all the Jewish prisoners, we knew it” tells J. Rubinstein, a survivor. Hugo Gryn, another survivor tells “one of the aspect most painful of the life in the camp was the feeling to have been completely abandoned of God and the men”.

The Final solution is the product of several centuries of anti-semitism in Europe vis-a-vis the Jewish question. The Jews of Europe found only, disarmed themselves and gave up world vis-a-vis the Nazis, whose objective was their pure and simple destruction.

Evacuation and release of the camp

As from August 1944, the Red Army is to 200 km of Auschwitz. The authorities Nazis then consider the liquidation of the camp in the event of new Soviet victories, as that had already been done for the other centers of extermination located more at the East.

As a long time as that was possible, the Nazis continued the extermination in the gas chambers. It is only in November 1944 that the three crematory ones remaining in activity (crematory the IV are unusable since October following a revolt of the Sonderkommando) are dynamited. Before that, the Nazis take care to assassinate the majority of the eyewitnesses of the genocide and particularly those of the Jews which had worked in the crematory ones. Generally the S try, in second half of the year 1944, to destroy and erase the traces of the committed crimes. They burn the lists of the exterminated Jews, part of the files and documentation. They make clean and cover with ground by deportees the pits containing of ashes of victims.

The Nazis do not put an end to work of enlarging of Auschwitz (camp stock and Birkenau) only to the end of the year 1944. Work of extension of some of the auxiliary camps practically continues until the release.

The camp is depopulated gradually. The evacuated prisoners either are employed in arms factories located more inside Reich (mainly of the Poles and Soviets), or, within the framework of the steps and the transport of death, led towards other concentration camps. The steps of death, realized by exhausted prisoners, without eating or almost, in a freezing cold, are responsible for several tens of thousands of deaths. January 17th, 1945 takes place the last general call. Y are present: 67000 deportees of which: 31800 in Auschwitz I and II and: 35100 in the auxiliary camps depending on Monowitz.

The camp of Auschwitz is released by the Red Army on January 27th, 1945.

The camp stock of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau are released by the soldiers of the sixtieth army of the Ukrainian face within the framework of an offensive on left bank of the Vistula. Those penetrate there towards 15:00 following combat which make 66 dead among the Soviets. : 7000 deportees, maintained in the camp, survived until the release. The Soviet soldiers on the spot discovered approximately 600 bodies of prisoners, carried out by the S during the evacuation of the camp or died of exhaustion.

Installation of a programme of readjustment of the survivors of the concentration camp of Auschwitz, with the participation of the psychiatrist Antoni Kępiński. He even, former deportee.

Statistics of the victims

According to the estimates going back to 1998 of Franciszek Piper, historian of the museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the assessment of Auschwitz is established as follows:

1,3 million people were off-set in the camp of Auschwitz
1,1 million deportees died there of which:

: 960000 Jews
: 70000 with: 75000 Poles
: 21000 Gypsies
: 15000 Soviet prisoners of war
: 10000 with: 15000 prisoners of other nationalities (Soviet, Czech, Yougoslaves, French, German, Autrichiens, Belgians if the Jews are excluded)

Famous prisoners

Jean Améry, Austrian writer, survivor of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Polish Foreign Minister
Joseph Bor, Czech lawyer
Bibi Bunna, champion of boxing featherweight, which beat an S with Monowitz
Charlotte Delbo, surviving Frenchwoman of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, writer
Robert Desnos, French poet
Anne Frank, held between September and October 1944 with Auschwitz-Birkenau then sent to Bergen-Belsen where she died
André Kahn, youngest deportee, at 15 years and 5 days, survivor of Bergen-Belsen, released by the English
Imre Kertész, Hungarian author, Nobel Prize of literature in 2002, survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald
Gertrud Kolmar, writer German
Hans Krása, type-setter germano-Czech
Primo Levi, chemist and Italian author, survivor of Auschwitz III Monowitz. On his experiment of prisoner
Witold Pilecki - the single prisoner " wrote later; volontaire" KL Auschwitz
Simone Veil, French political woman, Minister and president of the European Parliament. Held 13 month with Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz; released on January 27th, 1945
Elie Wiesel, American writer, survivor of Auschwitz III Monowitz. Wrote later on its experiment of prisoner
Samuel Pisar, survivor of Auschwitz, international lawyer, writer. Wrote later on its experiment of prisoner ( the blood of the hope )
Adalbert Nierychlewski, religious Polish, died under torture.
Holy Maximilien Kolbe, catholic priest Polish

Auschwitz, a Duty to remember

After its release in 1945, Auschwitz remains abandoned during two years. The Polish Parliament decides in 1947 to make of Auschwitz a museum to the memory of the victims.

The museum extends on 191 hectares: 20 in Auschwitz I and 171 in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. There remain nothing today the factory IG Farben of Monowitz, Auschwitz III. Auschwitz-Birkenau forms part since 1979 of the World heritage of UNESCO.

The camp stock, Auschwitz I, were restored and its blocks 4 and 5 used since the Années 1950 by the Poles to carry out a permanent exposure which wants to present the living conditions of the prisoners, mainly starting from object recovered in the remainder of Canada de Birkenau to the release of the camp are there in particular personal effects of deportees: crockery, glasses, shoes etc, exposed in windows. One of them shows hair which was to be used to manufacture fabric. All that belonged to the victims, was to be used again and benefit the Reich. Since the Years 1960, certain blocks lodge " exposures nationales" realized by the various countries from where the Juif S were off-set in Auschwitz. With rez of roadway of block 20 is the French exposure, inaugurated in January 2005, of a great museographic quality.

Auschwitz II was voluntarily left in the state like witness of the extent of the crime. Only a line of the huts out of wooden of the camp of forty the men was rebuilt. An international monument with the memory of the victims, located between crematory II and III, was inaugurated in 1967. It is a place of meditation in what can be regarded as the largest cemetery of the history of humanity.

That this place where the Nazis assassinated a million and half of men, women and children, as a majority of the Jews of various countries of Europe, is forever for humanity a cry of despair and a warning. Auschwitz - Birkenau 1940 - 1945. This text is registered on 21 flagstones fixed on the ground of the monument, all translated in different languages.

Recently spaces in periphery of the two principal camps and apart from the space of the museum are emphasized. It is the case of the railway slope ( Judenrampe ) located at 1,5 km of Birkenau, where the trains arrived convoyant the deportees of March 1942 at April 1944. It is only starting from the end of spring 1944 that the prolongation of the railway, decided by the Nazis to accelerate the extermination of the Juif S Hungarian, that the trains arrive in the vicinity immediate of the gas chambers, inside the camp During the Cold war, the figures were inflated by the Polish Communist government. Primarily Jewish character of the victims, in a climate of persistent Anti-semitism, tending to being denied or at least minimized.

2005 is marked by the solemn celebration of the 60e birthday of the release of the camp in the presence of the last survivors and many personalities of the whole world. Since September 2006, Piotr Cywiński is the director of the museum.

Each year proceeds with the Synagog Charles Liché with Paris a Commémoration in remembering the release of the camps of Auschwitz.

Sources

With the approach of the opposing armies, the Nazis destroyed the most possible evidence: disassembling of the installations, destruction of the documents, exhumation of the bodies them to incinerate and dispersion of ashes, etc Nevertheless, relating to Auschwitz, of the evidence remained, in addition to testimonys of survivors:

In July 1944, a photographer S took 189 photographs of the operations of extermination after the arrival of a convoy of Hungarian Jews. This album, known as Album of Auschwitz , will be found on April 11th, 1945 during the release of the camp of Gilded-Mittelbau by captive Lily Jacob, which precisely formed part of this convoy and then was moved vis-a-vis in advance of the Red Army . It agreed to deposit its photographs with the Mémorial of Yad Vashem at the beginning of the Années 1980. The album was published in 1981 and one documentary realized in 1984 per Alain Joubert: Auschwitz, the album of the memory , published in DVD by the Montparnasse editions in 2005.

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