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http://www.holocaust-trc.org/theholocaust-education-program-resourceguide/auschwitz-the-camp-of-death/
Auschwitz was regarded as the most effective concentration camp
established by the Nazi regime in pursuit of the Final Solution.
Unknown numbers of people of various nationalities perished in the
camp. Even today the name holds a cold and somber connotation.
In September 1939, the town of Oswiecim and its surrounding areas in
Poland joined to become Auschwitz. During that same year, Gestapo
Inspector SS-Oberfuhrer Wiegand initiated the idea of transforming
Auschwitz into a major concentration camp. Auschwitz was located at
the center crossroads of many Polish cities, and, therefore it was an
ideal location for the shipping of incoming prisoners from German
occupied Europe.
Rudolf Hoss was promptly named the commandant of the camp. He
designated as its main goal the extermination and elimination of all the
prisoners admitted to the camp.
The concentration camp at Auschwitz had a total camp area of 40
square kilometers with a surrounding radius of five kilometers for
isolation. The 28 two-story buildings which made up the camp were
divided into three sections: Auschwitz I (the base camp and central
office), Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monoscwitz with the
sub-camp and buna).
When first entering the camp of Auschwitz I, the prisoners saw over the
main entrance the words; Arbeit Macht Frei (work will give you
freedom). These words were to promote the false hope that hard work
by the prisoners would result in their freedom: however, the sad truth
was that the prisoners were doomed to slave labor and death was the
only real escape.
Auschwitz I was the main base and smallest part of the camp. It held
Directly after breakfast, another roll call was announced with a siren.
The prisoners combined together into their work groups and they were
escorted to their sites by SS guards armed with automatic weapons
and attack dogs to ensure that no prisoner escaped.
One such site was called Canada which was a slang name given
because this was the land of plenty. It was a huge, open compound,
containing many sheds and covered areas. These buildings held the
possessions taken from the incoming prisoners after entering
Auschwitz.
The goods were to be sorted for the Nazis. The prisoners were taken
into the sheds, given scissors, and told to cut the lining of fur coats to
look for items hidden inside. This job was considered to be a privilege,
but the workers found it deeply depressing to be sorting out the
belongings of the deceased and to be looking at the photographs of
broken and ended families. It was a shock to realize that their relatives
were lost forever and that they would only be reunited in heaven.
The workers labored about 11 or 12 hours daily. At noon, a soup was
given to the prisoners that consisted of a quart of water with a few
carrots and rutabagas. The inmates resumed working until dusk when
they were escorted back to the camp for the four-hour evening roll call.
The final meal was bread with rotten salami or margarine and jam.
Sometimes a piece of rotten skim cheese was included.
The camps had no heat or running water and only a few toilets which
the inmates could only use for a monitored 10 seconds. After retreating
into the barracks, the prisoners lay 10 per bed and each person had to
lay sideways to fit.
Insects and vermin also shared the beds. Particular menaces were bed
bugs that landed on the prisoner and sucked his or her blood. Lice and
rats also plagued prisoners. The prisoners slept on their possessions,
such as a bowl, a cup, or a cap to prevent them from being stolen by
other inmates. Many times a prisoner woke up to find his or her bedmate dead.
The entire function of the Auschwitz camp was the extermination of the
prisoners within its fences. Every part of the camp functioned to that
end. Everyone from the SS guard separating the workers from the
doomed, to the kitchen workers serving unhealthy, rotten food worked
to that end. The prisoners were tattooed with a number and afterwards
their identity was lost.
The inmates were treated more like animals than humans by the Nazis.
The worst atrocities were revealed within Auschwitz, and this was
illustrated when the Nazis tried to hide their actions by destroying a
crematorium. However, the Nazis were eventually defeated, and the
few survivors were rescued. The memory of those who perished in the
death camp live on.
from the collection of the Virginia War Museum Newport News, Virginia