My Story:The Camps:Auschwitz
A Brief History of Auschwitz - Birkenau
The Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz - Birkenau was founded by the SS in June of 1940 in the suburbs of Oswiecim, the territory of Poland incorporated within the Third Reich. Prisoners were housed in the pre-war Polish Army barracks (Auschwitz I). The construction of the second part of the camp (Auschwitz II) began at the end of 1941.
Initially, the camp was used for Polish political prisoners; after 1942 it became the largest camp of annihilation of Jews and Gypsies. Transports with the deported Jews arrived here from all Nazi controlled European countries. Most of the Jews found by the SS doctors to be unfit for work were immediately sent to gas chambers and killed with Cyclone B gas. Those who were sent to the camp as prisoners were forced to perform back-breaking labor for the German industry and the camp itself. Prisoners died of hunger, disease, in executions, medical experiments and through tortures during interrogations by the camp Gestapo. Their bodies were cremated in crematoria furnaces or on cremation pyres. Their luggage was sorted in the camp warehouses called ‘Canada’ and then taken to the Reich proper.
On January 27th 1945, the camp was liberated by the Russian troops. Before the liberation, those prisoners who were still alive were evacuated and a small group of them, not fit for evacuation, was left behind. The gas chambers and crematoria buildings were destroyed by the SS-men leaving the camp, and the camp warehouses with the victims' belongings were set on fire.
The exact number of victims is hard to establish, since most of them were not registered, it is estimated that one and a half million people of various nationalities, mostly Jews, perished here. In 1947 the area of the camp became the State Museum Auschwitz - Birkenau.
This information was provided by the State Museum in Oswiecim