In 1979 this camp into one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, in honor of the prisoners who have died and evidence of the death of countless people, one of the indisputable evidence of crimes ever committed by man, is also a monument to a strength of the human spirit which in appalling conditions difficulty resisting the efforts of the German Nazi regime to suppress freedom and free thought and to wipe out the entire race.
The building is a World Heritage Site by UNESCO is an important place of memory for all of humanity for the massacre, racist policies and barbarism, which is where our collective memory about this article, the dark in the history of humanity, spread to the younger generation and be a warning sign of many threats and tragic consequences of extreme ideologies and denial of human dignity.
Introduction
Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany made several concentration camps and extermination camps in Auschwitz region, which at that time was occupied by Nazi Germany. These camps are a major part of the Holocaust.
These three main camps were
Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which was used as the administrative center for the whole compound, and a place of death of about 70,000 Poles, homosexuals, and Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp and place of death of about 1 million Jews, 75,000 Poles, homosexuals, gypsies and about 19,000 people.
Auschwitz III (Monowitz), being used as forced labor for IG Farben company.
The total number of victims of Nazi here is debatable, but it is generally estimated to about 1-1,5 million people.
Like all other Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz camps operated by the SS officer under Heinrich Himmler. The camp commander was SS-officers Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß until the summer of 1943, and later Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. Höß give a detailed account of the work in the camp when he was interrogated after the war and also in his autobiography. He was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium of Auschwitz I. Head women's camp handled by Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, and last by Elisabeth Volkenrath.
Auschwitz I is used as the administrative center for the entire complex. This camp was established on May 20, 1940, on top of an old Polish army barracks. A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of Auschwitz on June 14 that year. The camp was initially used for interning the intellectuals and members of the Polish resistance movement. Later also for Soviet prisoners of war. German criminal usual, "anti-social elements" and homosexuals are also dipencarakan there. Jews were sent to the camp, starting with the first shipment (from Tarnów). Usually the camp's prisoner 13 000 up to 16,000 people; but in 1942 the number reached 20,000.
The entrance to Auschwitz I fitted (until now) writing a sarcastic tone "Arbeit Macht Frei", "Work (will) make (you) free" (or "labor free"). The camp inmates who leave the camp during the day to work in construction or in the field were marched through the gate at the music of the orchestra sounded. Contrary to what is usually portrayed in several films, most Jews held in Auschwitz II camp, and not through this sign.
SS officers selected a number of prisoners, mostly German criminals, as a supervisor who get special rights over friends setawanan the other (called Kapo). Prisoners are distinguished by different levels of special marks on their clothes. Jews are usually treated the worst. All prisoners should work. Except in weapons factories associated with the camp, Sunday is used for cleaning, bathing, and the prisoners were not put to work.
About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the camp was used, and about 300 people worked. The usual punishment meted to those who tried to escape the death penalty with a left hungry families of those who fled are sometimes arrested and detained in Auschwitz and intentionally displayed to the other prisoners to scare them.
The situation in Camp
Auschwitz
Heavy work demands, coupled with poor nutrition and health, resulting in high mortality rates among the prisoners.
Block 11 of Auschwitz I is a "prison within a prison". Here the various rule violations was sentenced. Some detainees were held for several days in cells that are too small even to sit. The others were executed by being shot, hanged, or starved.
On September 1941, the SS conducted a number of toxic gas tests in block 11, a deadly 850 Poles and Russians using cyanide. The first experiments performed on 3 September 1941 and shut down 600 Soviet prisoners of war. Substance that produces a highly toxic cyanide gas is sold under the trademark of Zyklon B, and originally intended as a pesticide used to kill head lice. The trial is deemed successful, then built a gas chamber and crematorium by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 until 1942 and then converted into air-raid shelter.
Auschwitz I concentration camp in 2001
Gate of Auschwitz I
The first women arrived at the camp on March 26, 1942. From April 1943 until May 1944, Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg, a gynecologist, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in block 10 of Auschwitz I, with the intention of developing a simple injection method to be used on the Slavic people. Dr. Josef Mengele experimented on twins men in the same complex. The prisoners in the camp hospital who did not immediately recover usually killed with phenol injections death.
Camp brothel, which was inaugurated in the summer of 1943 on the orders of Himmler, at block 24 and used for prisoners who have special rights. Brothels are filled by women specially selected, and by a volunteer from among the female prisoners.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
Birkenau concentration camp, 2001
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp which is known to many as "Auschwitz". This is where hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and more than one million people were killed, mostly Jews.
The camp is located in Brzezinka (Birkenau), about 3 km. of Auschwitz I. This camp is designed in accordance with the concept of the Bauhaus functionalism. Its construction began in 1941 as part of the final solution (Endlösung). This camp is a 2.5 km. x 2 km. and divided into several sections, each separated into fields. Fields and the camp itself is surrounded by an electrified barbed wire (which is used by a number of prisoners to commit suicide). This camp accommodates up to 100,000 people.
However, the main purpose of this camp is not a concentration camp with forced labor (as Auschwitz I and III) but to be destroyed. For this purpose, the camp was equipped with four crematoria with gas chambers. Each gas chamber was designed to accommodate up to 2,500 people. Large-scale extermination started the spring of 1942.
Most people arrived at the camp by train, often with terrifying journey in cattle wagons to take up to several days. From 1944 railways were built to go into the camp itself. Previously, the prisoners were marched from the station came to the Auschwitz camp. Sometimes, the whole shipment was immediately sent to the gas chambers. At other times, the Nazis would do a "selection", often by Josef Mengele, the purpose of choosing who will be killed and who would be imprisoned as forced labor or used for medical experiments. Small children separated from their mothers and placed with the women who are older to gassed, together with the sick, weak, and the elderly.
Prisoners who arrived and survived the initial selection will be placed for some time in quarantine rooms and then employed in the maintenance of the camp or to extend, or sent to a labor camp in the neighborhood.
A part of the camp reserved for female prisoners. On the other, known as "Canada" (as the Germans believe that Canada is a land very rich), the property of the prisoners who arrived there sorted and stored, to be transferred to the German government. Items such as money, currency, jewelry, precious metals and diamonds eliminated from "Canada" and sent to the "Reichsbank" (Bank Negara).
Those selected to be destroyed is sent to one of the four complexes chamber / crematorium giants, all of which are located on the outskirts of the camp. Two of these crematoria (Crema Crema II and III) each have room to take off clothes in the basement and the gas chambers, each of which can contain thousands of people. To avoid mass panic, victims were told that they were there to bathe; to reinforce this impression, a shower installed in the chamber, though he never really connected with water pipes. The victims were ordered to remove all clothes and leave their belongings in a locker room in a location that they can remember, and told to go into the next chamber. Once the victims are locked in a meeting room, a toxic substance released from the Zyklon B holes in the ceiling. Gas chambers in Crema IV and V are located on the face of the earth and the Zyklon B was poured through the windows in the wall. A number of the selected camp prisoners called Sonderkommandos removing the bodies from there and then burn it in an oven chamber that is part of the same building.
On March 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary. Between May and July 1944 approximately 438 000 Jews from Hungary were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the majority of them were killed there. When all the crematorium there overwhelmed, the bodies were burned in open pits.
Many Gypsies were detained in a special section of the camp. Most of them are placed in family units. They gassed in July 1944. On October 10, 800 Roma children were systematically murdered in Birkenau.
On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (the prisoners who are separated from the main camp and involved in the operation of gas chambers and crematoria) rebellion. The women prisoners to smuggle explosives from a weapons factory, and crematorium IV partially destroyed by an explosion. Then the prisoners tried to escape, but all of them - 250 men - were killed instantly.
Auschwitz III and satellite camps
Cf. also list sub-camp of Auschwitz
Labor camps in the surrounding satellite is closely related to German industry and related weapons factories, places and forging iron mines. The largest work camp was Auschwitz III Monowitz, which began operating in May 1942. The camp is associated with synthetic rubber and liquid fuel Buna-Werke owned by IG Farben. Regular doctors from Auschwitz II visited the labor camps, and choose those who are weak and sick to be sent to the gas chambers at Birkenau. Sub-sub largest camp was built in Trzebinia, Bleechammer and Althammer. Sub-sub female camp was built in Budy, Plawy, Hindenburg, Gleiwitz I, II, III, and in Lichtenwerden Rajsko
.
Known Allies
A photograph of Birkenau, taken on May 31, 1944 by a Mosquito aircraft of the South African Air Force, sent to take photographs of the fuel plant at Monowitz is not far away. Photo analysts did not manage to find the significance of this photo, it was discovered in the late 1970s and analyzed by the CIA in 1978. Smoke can come out of Krematoria terliat V, which indicates that a group of prisoners had just gassed.
Some information regarding Auschwitz reached the hands of the Allied Forces in 1941-1944, such as reports of Witold Pilecki and Jerzy Tabeau, but the claims of mass murder there is generally considered excessive. This changed when it receives a very detailed report of two prisoners who escaped, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which finally convinced most Allied leaders about the truth about Auschwitz in mid-1944.
Photographs of the camp from the air by chance that detail taken in 1944 by aircraft seeking to photograph military industrial targets nearby, but there was no attempt to analyze it. (In fact it was not until the 1970's photographs of Auschwitz is scrutinized).
Starting with the request of a rabbi Weissmandl Slovakia on May 1944, there was an increasingly aggressive campaign to convince the Allies to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines to it. On one occasion, Winston Churchill ordered the preparation for the plan, but he was told that bombing the camp would very likely kill prisoners without disrupting the killing operation, and that the bombing of railway lines was technically not possible. Later several nearby military targets were bombed it. A bomb accidentally fell on the camp and killed some prisoners. Since that time there was debate about what should be done, or whether it should try to do even if such failure.
Evacuation and liberation
The gas chambers at Birkenau were blown up by German soldiers in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the Soviet army was advancing. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the place, and most of the prisoners were marched to the west in what is called a line to the West. Are too weak or sick to walk left, about 7500 were released by the 322nd Infantry unit of the Red Army on January 27, 1945.
'Liberation' does not automatically end the suffering of many prisoners. Soviet prisoners of war accused of collaborating with their captors and they were executed or sent to a gulag, gulag in the Soviet Union.
After the war
After the war, Auschwitz remains in a severe state of disrepair for several years. Buna Werke were taken over by the Polish government and became the basis for the chemical industry in the area.
The Polish government then decided to restore Auschwitz I and turn it into a museum to honor the victims of Nazism. Auschwitz II, which is easily damaged buildings, preserved but not restored. Auschwitz museum now where I combine some elements from several periods into a single complex: for example, the gas chamber in Auschwitz I (which no longer exists at the time the war ended) was restored and the fence removed (because the building was built after the war, but not before the construction of the museum . However, in general deviations from the historical truth is very small, and clearly labeled.
Part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site - the ruins in Birkenau, 2002
Auschwitz II and the remains of gas chambers there are also open to the public. Auschwitz concentration camp is part of UNESCO World Heritage Site list.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II from Poland who was just elected, celebrating Mass in the courtyard of Auschwitz II to some 500,000 people. After the pope announced the beatification of Edith Stein, a number of Catholics set up a cross near bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where he was gassed. Shortly thereafter, a Star of David appeared on the scene, and berjamuranlah religious symbols there. Finally, all the symbols were removed.
Carmelite nuns opened a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. After some Jewish groups called for the removal of the convent, some representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987. A year later the Carmelites established a cross member of an 8 meters from the 1979 mass near their site, just outside block 11 and is practically invisible from inside the camp. It aroused protests by Jewish groups, who say that most Jews murdered at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be removed from the premises. A number of Catholics showed that they are generally killed in the Auschwitz I is Catholic Poland. The Catholic Church told the Carmelite nuns to move in 1989, but they remained there until 1993, and let the big cross. In 1998, after further calls to get rid of the cross, about 300 smaller crosses put up by local activists near the large cross, and invite protests and disputes more heat. Following an agreement between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish government, crucifixes smaller tahn was removed in 1999 but the large papal crucifix remained in situ. See Auschwitz cross for more detailed information.
In 1996, Germany declared January 27, the day of liberation of Auschwitz, as the official day for the commemoration of the victims 'National Socialism' (Nazi).
The European Parliament marked the anniversary of the camp's liberation in 2005 with a moment of silence for one minute and received the following resolution:
"January 27, 2005, the 60th anniversary of liberation of Nazi German death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where some 1.5 million Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians and prisoners of various nationalities, and homosexuals, were murdered, not just an event important for European citizens to remember and condemn the horrors and tragedy of the Holocaust is remarkable, but also to discuss the rise of anti-semitism are disturbing conscience, and in particular the events of anti-Semitic, in Europe, and to relearn the lessons more deep understanding of the dangers of victimization of people based on race, ethnic origin, religion, social classification, politics or sexual orientation. "
Other Controversies
Over the years, a plaque mounted in memory of the camp by the Russian government and the communist Polish government stated that 4 million people have been killed in Auschwitz. This figure was never taken seriously by scholars of Western history, and is never used in any calculation of the number of deaths at Auschwitz (which is usually consistent between 1 to 1.5 million people over the last 60 years) or for the total number of victims of the Holocaust. After the collapse of the Communist government, a plaque was removed and the number of deaths officially acknowledged 1.1 million. Holocaust Deniers have sought to use this replacement as propaganda. Nizkor says: "The Deniers often use the" Four Million Variant 'as a springboard to jump from what was seen as a contradiction to the notion that the Holocaust was a lie, which re-done by a conspiracy.
They hope to discredit historians by making they seem to be inconsistent. If they can not count carefully, so they reason, how could we say that their evidence for the Holocaust can trust? People naturally will wonder which historians they are talking about, as most consistent with their estimates of approximately one million casualties. In short, all the protests of the denial of the "Four Million Variant" that is an unwarranted attempt to trick readers into their scam nets. It can be removed after a review of the most basic of historical records that have been published.
Recently the Polish media and the Polish Foreign Ministry has objected to the use of "Polish death camps" to Auschwitz, because they feel that this word can be misleading and give the impression that Poland that person (and not a German) who did the Holocaust. Most media sources now seem aware that the impression could arise, and try to avoid it (or the sorry state after use, such as the recent record of
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people came to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to pay homage to one million people who died there. Indeed, some believe that the visit is an important ritual of the human journey that should never overlook this most unforgettable moment in history.
An official UNESCO World Heritage Site, Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted of two camps where almost every stone touched, and all areas are open to visitors.
The first camp, Auschwitz I, is where you'll find the infamous' Arbeit Macht Frei "(Work Makes You Free) sign that the detainee is running under on the way to and from the forced labor camp. Here you can view the location of execution in Individual pages where inmates are placed in front of a reinforced wall and shot.
The first concentration camp Auschwitz museum also houses a very large number of items taken from the victim. Koper household appliances, and even shoes stockpiled by the Nazis. One particularly gruesome display case that stretches almost 100 ft long filled to the top with a human hair collected both before and after the victim died.
The second camp, Auschwitz II, better known as Birkenau, is where most of the horrors the Holocaust occurred. A staggering 960,000 Jews, 150,000 Poles, and 23,000 Gypsies exterminated at the plant killed, mostly with Zyklon B gas industry. Stem regions, crematoria and gas chambers can all be visited in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but keep in mind that they are very sad even if you feel well prepared for the visit.
Among the prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp Anne Frank was 15 years old, is known worldwide for her diary about living with his family in a hidden room behind the office in Amsterdam to avoid persecution. Her story is just one of over a million tragedies tied to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Transported to the camp in September 1944, Anne was forced to strip for disinfection, had his head shaved and numbers tattooed on his arm before he was put into forced labor. If he had only a few months younger, he was gassed upon arrival like all children under the age of fifteen years.
Anne then moved to another concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen where she died along with his brother during an outbreak of typhoid fever. These are just a few weeks before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. This date is now marked each year as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Camp Auschwitz FotoPetaTeka puzzle
When Pergike camp Auschwitz
The most practical way to see the Auschwitz concentration camp is to stay in the city of Krakow (one of the most beautiful in Poland) and a trip to the camp from there. Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum is located 30 miles away on the outskirts of a small town called Oswiecim. You can also get a 90-minute train from Krakow to Oswiecim and then take a local bus, or take a bus straight to Auschwitz from Krakow. Krakow's main train and bus station located on the same site.
Odds n 'Ends
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum is open daily all year except Christmas Day, New Year and Easter Sunday. Given that it is visited by 700,000 people every year, consider traveling to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the off-peak seasons, like spring or autumn, when the hotel also offers a lower rate. Krakow tourist office recommends not taking anyone under the age of 14 years to the Museum.
There are several food outlets sell-style cafes and fast food around the edges of the Museum site. This is useful for anyone for a full day tour.
Want a guide?
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tours
State Museum is dedicated to those who died in the camp offers a number of different options for tours, public tours of 3.5 hours for one or two days of guided study tours. Prices start at $ 80 for groups of 1-10 people. Licensed guides are also available to serve groups of guests in 14 languages - it must be booked in advance.
Auschwitz Tours
The company offers a six-hour tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau through the English language, including tickets and hotel transfer bus for $ 56 per person. other languages available on request. Ordered online.
Cracow Tours
Offers an eight-hour tour of the Auschwitz Museum in English, with a bus transfer tickets and hotel included for $ 57 per person.
Eating places
Pod Sloncem
This restaurant in the main square of Krakow offers a variety of Polish dishes as well as domestic and international beverages. The main program of about $ 8.
Arenda Cafe
This restaurant combines traditional dishes with Polish regions other European fare. Electricity of about $ 13.
Taco Mexicano - La Cantina
For something completely different, why not try a colorful basement eaterie that only Latin restaurant downtown? Power of only $ 7.
Recommended Places to Stay
There's Hostel
Offering two locations in central Krakow, Hostel There have single rooms in the off-season for $ 25 per night, with cheap fares for people to share.
DJ Hostel
Located right next to the train station and buses, DJ Hostel presents a practical choice to visit Auschwitz. Single room is $ 33 in high season, with lower levels to higher levels of share but on the weekends.
Hotel Alexander II
The new boutique hotel located in central Krakow Old Town and railway stations and bus. Single rooms $ 70 per night in the off season.
