AuschwitzEssay Preview: AuschwitzReport this essayAuschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. Located in southern Poland, it took its name from the nearby town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz in German), situated about 50 kilometers west of KrakДÑ-w and 286 kilometers from Warsaw. Following the Nazi occupation of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was incorporated into Germany and renamed Auschwitz.
The camp complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative center; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager; and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work camp. There were also around 40 satellite camps, some of them tens of kilometers from the main camps, with prisoner populations ranging from several dozen to several thousand. [1]
An unknown, but very large, number of people were killed at Auschwitz. The camp commandant, Rudolf HД¶ss, testifed at the Nuremberg Trials that three million had died there. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revised this figure in 1990, and new calculations now place the figure at 1.1Ð-1.6 million, [2][3] about 90 percent of them Jews from almost every country in Europe. [4] Methods of killing people at Auschwitz included, primarily, gassing with Zyklon-B; systematic starvation, lack of disease prevention, individual executions and so-called medical experiments accounted for the rest.
Zyklon B (IPA: [tsykloːn ˈbeː], also spelled Cyclon B) was the tradename of a cyanide-based insecticide notorious for its use by Nazi Germany to kill over one million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek during the Holocaust. It consisted of hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid), a stabilizer, and a warning odorant that were impregnated onto various substrates, typically small absorbent pellets, fiber discs, or diatomaceous earth. It was stored in airtight containers; when exposed to air, the substrates evolved gaseous hydrogen cyanide (HCN).
Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area, which at the time was under German occupation. The Auschwitz camps were a major element in the perpetration of the Holocaust; at least 1.1 million people were killed there, of whom over 90% were Jews.
The three main camps were:Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative center for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people, mostly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, where at least 1.1 million Jews, 75,000 Polish people, and some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies) were killed.Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory of the I.G. Farben concern.See list of subcamps of Auschwitz for others.Like all Nazi concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by Heinrich Himmlers SS. The commandants of the camp were the SS-ObersturmbannfДјhrers Rudolf HД¶Ð”ÑŸ (often written “Hoess”) until the summer of 1943, and later Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. HД¶Ð”ÑŸ provided a detailed description of the camps workings during his interrogations after the war and also in his autobiography. He was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium of Auschwitz I. Command of the womens camp, which was separated from the mens area by the incoming railway line was exercised in turn by Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, and Elisabeth Volkenrath.
Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area, which at the time was under German occupation. The Auschwitz camps were a major element in the perpetration of the Holocaust; at least 1.1 million people were killed there, of whom over 90% were Jews.
The three main camps were:Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative center for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people, mostly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, where at least 1.1 million Jews, 75,000 Polish people, and some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies) were killed.Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory of the I.G. Farben concern.See list of subcamps of Auschwitz for others.Like all Nazi concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by Heinrich Himmlers SS. The commandants of the camp were the SS-ObersturmbannfДјhrers Rudolf HД¶Ð”ÑŸ (often written “Hoess”) until the summer of 1943, and later Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. HД¶Ð”ÑŸ provided a detailed description of the camps workings during his interrogations after the war and also in his autobiography. He was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium
.Hommiel: “No other Jews were placed in the camp, and it was a large and large concentration. But it was filled with other Jews as well,” and continued,
“the fact has never been proved that the Jews received any food or medical treatment.
“You have not heard about a Jewish family living there, but I know that your father was sent there in 1935. He stayed in Auschwitz until the very end of 1942; the next year he was sent to the camp.” It is, of course, very probable that this is not an isolated incident and as such, the Jewish inhabitants in the camp were, at first, treated as the main object of interrogation. In order to be heard at all, there was to be a specific interview with the inmates to make sure that if they were wanted in the camp of their own accord it was clear that they had been sent there.
And in order to prove the existence of the “Kotel-Lund” and then for the next two months, he had a total of about 25,000 prisoners, mostly Polish, who were detained from 2 to 10 hours each day.
The rest were never allowed to come. A series of interrogations after the war that began with confessions, to the arrest and interrogation by the SS officers in May 1944 and July 1945 were made under the pretext of the preparation of prisoners to die, or at least to have them tortured, with either light torture or death by hanging, usually in the basement, as well as with liquid immersion to avoid an explosion of heat on their nose or throats.
Many of these were of mixed race, male or female, and from 1-4 years old. The first one he received was made for them in November 1945 at a prison in the camp of Würzburg-Gephardt at the head of the prison. He gave them all a few small meals until they learned the truth.
The second one he received at a concentration camp in Würzburg-Gephardt took about half an hour, but he kept on giving them some more than that. He then made some other interrogations. This time, he made only some of the more difficult to understand confessions.
During the first, he had four questions he could understand without any assistance. He answered some of the questions in a long and deliberate manner, and so on through every aspect of the interrogation and his own interview with the SS. The torture went for an average length of about 30 minutes, sometimes lasting from 30 to 45 minutes—from an inch to a bit to an inch.
To the interrogators, he was a kind of hypnotist (a sort of “Psycho Strava” for the prisoner, or psychiatrist). Some days,