1. Auschwitz

Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the German National Socialistics. It didn’t include only a concentration camp, but also an extermination camp and a forced-labor camp. Auschwitz camp was in operation for five years (between the years 1940 and 1945).


Location:
The camp was / is located near Cracow in Poland.


Construction:
There were three large camps which belonged to Auschwitz, and they called Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz).

Occupants:
The majority of people who had to stay in the camp were Jews. The typical occupant of the Auschwitz camp had shaved hair and wore a white-blue striped uniform. They couldn’t such change their clothes every day as we can. They had to work and to sleep in the same clothes and so you can imagine how unhygienic and filthy it must have been. Because of the missed hygienic requirements, many people got ill and some even died.
So each day was a struggle for survival with those terrible conditions.
The prisoners were housed in small barracks without any windows or bathrooms. They had few place and most of the time they had to sleep compressed because there was an enormous amount of people there.
To eat, they always had a watery soup of old vegetables and meat, a bit bread and maybe a cup of tea or bitter coffee. So the inmates were always hungry and dehydrated. Many of them had to work hard also, for example as laborers, in the kitchen or as barbers, and some people had to work outside the camp as servants in the houses of rich families.
Most of their personal belongings were shipped back to Germany to use there.
Some prisoners were also used for “medical experiments”.

So life in Auschwitz can be described as brutal, terrible and life-threatening. The people were punished and treated as they were subjects. Nearly no one who tried to escape from Auschwitz was successful – everywhere there were guards with guns and around the camp there was an electricity fence.

Victims: Many people died because of hunger, dehydration or illness, but that’s just nothing compared with the number of victims who were killed in the gas chamber. Only one gas chamber could kill 2000 people at once. Altogether, more than one Million people lost their lives at Auschwitz.
Those who were too ill or too weak to work were killed immediately, and some committed suicide also.


2. The Prisoners of the camp


Who?
As already said, most of the people in the camp were Jewish. The others were, for example, people of other ethnic groups like Sinti and Roma, but also homosexual people or people with mental or physical disabilities. Political prisoners like communists were there as well. On their uniform there was a Number and a triangle with a special color, with which the guards could easily identify their background (For example if it’s a Jew, or a homosexual,…)

Victims:
Altogether there were over three Million People who were killed by the German national socialistics.
The German wanted to have one great race, the so called Aryans, and because of this they tried to make a systematic extinction of other ethnic groups as Jews and Roma. But political prisoners, for example, were in the concentration camp only for punishment. All the people who were too ill and too weak were killed immediately. Other people survived only some weeks until they died because of illness, bad treatment, in the gas chamber and, in some cases also suicide.


Important Dates:

May the 20th, year: 1940: Auschwitz I Camp opens
October, year: 1941/42: Auschwitz II and III open

January the 27th, year: 1945: The Soviet Army liberates Auschwitz: The Army enteres in the camp and 
 liberates all remaining the prisoners. During this, the SS guards shot at 
 everyone who was around, so even then there were killed many people.