Auschwitz -History, characteristics, location and exhibition.The Nazi Holocaust is one of the most terrible episodes in world history, although not eloquent.Today we will enter the history of Auschwitz, the countryside of concentration most famous for the tragedy that more than a million people lived there.
Index of the article
Auschwitz concentration camp
Before you start reading this article, I recommend that you start your poorest reading, « Nazism «, as it will allow you to place yourself correctly within this historical framework and the role of the Auschwitz concentration camp .How much more one immerses in this part of the story, in the mind human and the ability to reach extremes that seem unsuspected, more questions are generated.
In Ausch witz is the most famous concentration camp for the extermination of people and the rest of the events, tragic and terrible situations that were lived in this place.Today you can visit, as a piece of living history that remains there surviving the passage of time, as an imperishable reminder of the suffering that human beings can cause.
Characteristics of the Auschwitz concentration camp
It is understood by a concentration camp a fenced or bounded land where prisoners are detained who can be of different kind.In the case of the Nazi Germany , these types of concentration camps were carried out but they were differentiated between transit camp and prison, labor camp, concentration camp, concentration camp and extermination.
The co field The concentration of Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) would be found within the latter category.It was a complex formed by different concentration camps, built in 1940, and which had three different concentration camps :
- Auschwitz I: original field
- Auschwitz II Birkenau: concentration and extermination camp
- Auschwitz III Monowitz: work camp for a group of chemical companies united under the name IG Farben.
Specifically, Auschwitz is located in the Oświęcim population, which is about 43 km west of Krakow (Poland). 1,100 were carried out here.000 murders in a systematic and industrialized manner, between 1940 and 1945.One million of those people are considered Jewish, regardless of nationality, and 100,000 people were regime dissidents, prisoners of war, etc.At the time of murder there were no distinctions between children and adults, who died dehumanized .
It seems that it would have happened a long time ago, but the reality is that it is recent history.One of the things that most surprise and remove consciences is how it was possible that the world knew of its existence and let Nazism grow little by little, observing the rest of the countries what happened without anyone doing anything.Approximately, it is estimated that there were 6 million people killed in the Holocaust before the allied countries put an end to it.
History of Auschwitz
The Nazi concentration camps began to be built in 1933, in the case of the Auschwitz concentration camp it was inaugurated on May 20, 1940 and it was not until January 27 of 1945 when it was closed by the Soviet army.I get to occupy a territory of 4 0 square km .
Heinrich Himmler , senior officer and one of the main leaders of the Nazi Party, was the supervisor of the three three men who were leading This concentration camp: Rudolf Hoss, Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer.
Auschwitz I
Auschwitz I, as we have indicated previously, was the original concentration camp, which I build from a barracon abandoned by the army Polish .
At first, the idea they had about this place was a concentration camp for 30,000 Polish prisoners, but then it was expanded to all levels, both in size and evolution instead of tortures, exterminations and forced labor .At the main entrance it read Arbeit macht frei , «work makes free».
The June 14, 1940 came the first transport of political prisoners to Auschwitz.Then, he was receiving all kinds of prisoners: common prisoners, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses...All those who were considered undesirable elements for the regime.
Punishments were taken held in block 11 , a room or cell of 1 square meter where 4 or 5 people were introduced at a time and s left there for days.In this same block the tests of the Zyklon B gas were also carried out, where more than 800 people died, so it seemed so granexito that they built the gas chamber and the crematorium.
In block 10 of Auschwitz experiments of sterilization to Jewish women were carried out, being on March 26, 1942 when the first woman arrived at said concentration camp.In 1943 I create a brothel camp in block 29, formed by Polish women selected by the guards and women who agreed to it in exchange for better food; all of them were used to reward prisoners with privileges.
The mortality rate was extremely high since they were not only directly killed, but gradually: malnutrition, forced labor, lack of hygiene.
Auschwitz II Birkenau
In the fall of 1941 the construction of the Auschwitz II complex began in Birkenau (3 km from the original), in order to become a space for extermination and annihilation of Jews .This is the area of the concentration camp that everyone associates with the name of Auschwitz, since this place was intended to kill Jews and other prisoners.
For this, four crematoriums with gas chambers were built in an area of 2.5 km by 2 km.To give you an idea, in each crematorium they could enter a 2,500 people to be killed.This place became a mass extermination concentration camp, especially after 1943 after the Wannsee conference that only lasted 90 minutes and in it the solution to the Jewish question was decided.
In turn, the people who were there were also overcrowded, in 1944 they reached the 90,000 simultaneous prisoners housed in more than 300 barracks.
The guards made selection of the people who were going to die.These were taken to the gas chamber under the pretext that they were going to showering and receiving a disinfectant treatment , but what they received was not water but Zyclon B gas.
At the end of 1944, on November 24, the SS (Schutzstaffel-organization Nazi paramilitary) destroyed the gas chambers of Birkenau in order to prevent the Soviets from discovering their actions.A crude attempt to hide the Nazi tragedy.
Auschwitz III Monowitz
Auschwitz III is the third construction of the concentration camp, which began to be active in October 1942.It was designed as a field dedicated to forced labor in the service of IG Farben , a factory that was dedicated to the construction of synthetic rubber and liquid fuels.
Monowitz came to contain 12,000 prisoners , Jews and prisoners of war who received fair food to try to stay alive, even if weakened.These conditions, plus forced labor, made it habitual for them to die of hunger or exhaustion, so it was common for some prisoners will be replaced by others quite frequently.
In turn, medical work reviews were also made and those who were going to be sent to Auschwitz II to the gas chamber were selected .Although, as we mentioned before, it had been devised as a labor camp, it also led to a concentration camp and extermination.
Who releases the Jews
In 1944 the beginning of the end begins, of a long and expected end that for many must have seemed impossible to imagine if it was not with his own death.It is at the end of this year when the Red Army , the Soviets, maintain an unstoppable offensive against Germany that leads them to act tried to eliminate all the evidence of the atrocities committed in Auschwitz.
Already on January 27, 1945 The liberation of this concentration and extermination camp takes place.Upon arrival they found famelic survivors, prisoners who had survived the death marches (between January 17 and 21 the prisoners were forced to walk towards the Reich, devoid of water and food, faint) and, no doubt, evidence of what had happened there.
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