Next, we suggest going on a virtual tour of a terrible place - the German Majdanek death camp, which was built on Polish territory during the Second World War. Currently, there is a museum on the camp grounds.
From Warsaw to the museum at the site of the “death camp” (outskirts of Lublin) it takes two and a half hours by car. Admission is free, but few people want to visit. Only in the crematorium building, where five ovens turned prisoners into ashes every day, is a school field trip crowded with a Catholic priest. Preparing to celebrate Mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest lays a tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out the Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, and go out to smoke. “Do you know who liberated this camp?” - I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "English?" – the blonde girl says hesitantly. "No, Americans!" - a thin guy interrupts her. - “It seems there was a landing party here!” “Russians,” the priest says quietly. The schoolchildren are amazed - the news for them is like a bolt from the blue. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we cannot wait for the liberation of the concentration camps, not even gratitude - just basic respect.
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double fencing with barbed wire, SS guard towers and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with the gas chamber there is a sign screwed on - “Washing and disinfection.” Fifty people were brought here at a time, supposedly “to go to the bathhouse” - they were given soap and asked to fold their clothes carefully. Victims entered the cement shower room, the door was locked and gas was leaking from holes in the ceiling. The peephole in the door is amazing - some bastard from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, as if in a cemetery. A girl from Israel cries, burying her face in her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports: 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? – I’m surprised. “After all, at the Nuremberg trials the figure of 300 thousand appeared, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991, the number of victims has been constantly decreasing - at first it was decided that 200 thousand people were tortured in Majdanek, and recently they “knocked it down” to eighty: they say, more precisely, they recounted it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years the Polish authorities begin to claim with such standards that no one died in Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent health procedures,” says Maciej Wisniewski, editor-in-chief of the Strajk Internet portal, indignantly. - My father, who was a partisan during the war, said: “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and ovens stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to silence the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.
It only takes a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barracks filled to the brim with old, half-rotten shoes. I look at her for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one even made of snakeskin), men's boots, children's boots. There are more of them - but in 2010, one museum barrack burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntedankfest” (harvest festival), the SS shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in ditches on top of each other, “in a layer,” and then were shot in the back of the head. 611 people then spent a week sorting the property of the executed, including these very shoes. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room nearby there is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: rows of light bulbs shrouded in balls of barbed wire are burning. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, people ask God to save their lives.
The current museum occupies only a quarter of the actual territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the “SS special zone” were 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war; after just a month and a half (!), three quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. The museum's exhibition does not focus on this fact. By January 1942, all the remaining prisoners had died - the camp stood empty until March, when 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope with the burning of bodies - a second one had to be built.
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the wood became coal black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each one, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves walked into the bullets just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek discovered boxes of ashes, which the guards prepared for disposal. The crematorium ovens are smoked by fire; they cannot be cleaned of the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal. One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!), a native of the Vitebsk region, Alexander Petrov, said that Jewish preschool children were burned alive in these ovens. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They boredly tried to kill as many people as possible while doing their job. Of all the trees in the camp, only one survived. On the rest, the prisoners, dying of terrible hunger, ate the bark and chewed off the roots.
Looking at this camp even now makes me feel uneasy. And people lived there for almost 3 years. In the photo - Majdanek itself, the gas chamber, barracks, crematorium.
In 1940, the Auschwitz-Brzezinka concentration camp, also known by its German name Auschwitz-Birkenau, was established in the small town of Auschwitz, 70 kilometers west of Krakow. Of the many camps built by the Nazis, Auschwitz was the largest and most terrible: two million people died here, of which 85-90% were Jews.
How to get to Auschwitz?
There are regular buses from Krakow to Oswiecim station (1 hour 30 minutes). From the station you can take a local bus to the camp gate, and several buses drop off visitors right at the entrance. Shuttle buses leave every hour from the Auschwitz car park to Birkenau. Alternatively, you can take a taxi or walk 3 kilometers.
Martyrs' Museum and Birkenau Camp
Most of the buildings of Auschwitz have been preserved on the territory of the Martyrs' Museum (daily June-August 8.00-19.00, May and September 8.00-18.00, October-April 8.00-17.00, March and November - mid-December 8.00-16.00, mid-December - February 8.00-15.00; the entrance is free). First, they show a dark film filmed during the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops in May 1945. Part of the camp barracks is given over to “exhibits” found after liberation - these are rooms filled with clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, glasses, shoes and piles of women’s hair.
In other barracks there are national memorials, and the exhibition ends with gas chambers and ovens where the bodies of the victims were burned. The huge Birkenau camp (same opening hours) is visited less frequently than Auschwitz. Birkenau's gas chambers were damaged but not destroyed by the Germans when they fled in 1945. The victims were transported in closed carriages directly to the gas chambers (the railway line and platforms were preserved as they were).
In contact with
On April 27, 1940, the first Auschwitz concentration camp was created, intended for the mass extermination of people.
Concentration camp - a place for the forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, political regime, etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created by special decrees during the war, the aggravation of political struggle.
In Nazi Germany, concentration camps were an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, there were actually several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them.
Other types of camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.
By the beginning of World War II, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turning them into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.
Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. For this purpose, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.
(Military encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. in 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)
There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.
Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.
Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks.
They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects. Among the “unreliable” were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied people, etc.
There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.
All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, including a serial number and a colored triangle (“Winkel”) on the left side of the chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals wore a green triangle, “unreliables” wore a black triangle, homosexuals wore a pink triangle, and gypsies wore a brown triangle.
In addition to the classification triangle, Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed “Star of David.” A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial desecrator") was required to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.
Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" - a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “fool”. Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.
The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means, is 14,033 points.
Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.
The concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, and was condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.
Currently, the Federal Republic of Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and “other places of forced confinement, under conditions equivalent to concentration camps,” in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.
The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external commands).
On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as “other places”, on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).
On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of forced detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as “other places”.
List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)
1.Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)
3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
4. Buchenwald (Germany)
5. Warsaw (Poland)
6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)
7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)
8. Dachau (Germany)
9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)
10. Krakow-Plaszczow (Poland)
11. Sachsenhausen (GDR-FRG)
12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)
13. Mauthausen (Austria)
14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)
15. Natzweiler (France)
16. Neuengamme (Germany)
17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)
18. Ravensbrück (Germany)
19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)
20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)
21. Flossenburg (Germany)
22. Stutthof (Poland).
Largest Nazi concentration camps
Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ordruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAU projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 About 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.
The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the US 80th Division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to Buchenwald was opened. to the heroes and victims of the concentration camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz 3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps set up in factories and mines around general complex).
More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, including more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Auschwitz-Brzezinka) was opened in Auschwitz.
Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; About 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).
In 1960, a monument to the victims was unveiled in Dachau.
Majdanek - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Trawniki (near Wiepsze), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.
Treblinka - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.
In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for victims of fascist terror was opened: 17 thousand tombstones made of irregular stones, a monument-mausoleum.
Ravensbruck - a concentration camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively women's camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet army.
Mauthausen - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 - an independent camp. In 1940 it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), there were about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.
After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, including the Soviet Union, created a memorial museum and erected monuments to those who died in the camp.
Auschwitz is a city that has become a symbol of the mercilessness of the fascist regime; the city where one of the most senseless dramas in human history unfolded; a city where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally murdered. In the concentration camps located here, the Nazis built the most terrible conveyor belts of death, exterminating up to 20 thousand people every day... Today I begin to talk about one of the most terrible places on earth - the concentration camps at Auschwitz. I warn you, the photographs and descriptions left below may leave a heavy mark on the soul. Although I personally believe that every person should touch and let through these terrible pages of our history...
There will be very few of my comments on the photographs in this post - this is too sensitive a topic, on which, it seems to me, I do not have the moral right to express my point of view. I honestly admit that visiting the museum left a heavy scar on my heart that still refuses to heal...
Most of the comments on the photos are based on the guidebook (
The concentration camp at Auschwitz was Hitler's largest concentration camp for Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, whom Hitler's fascism doomed to isolation and gradual destruction by hunger, hard work, experimentation, and immediate death through mass and individual executions. Since 1942, the camp has become the largest center for the extermination of European Jews. Most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz died in gas chambers immediately after arrival, without registration or identification with camp numbers. That is why it is very difficult to establish the exact number of those killed - historians agree on a figure of about one and a half million people.
But let's return to the history of the camp. In 1939, Auschwitz and its surroundings became part of the Third Reich. The city was renamed Auschwitz. In the same year, the fascist command came up with the idea of creating a concentration camp. The deserted pre-war barracks near Auschwitz were chosen as the site for the creation of the first camp. The concentration camp is named Auschwitz I.
The education order dates back to April 1940. Rudolf Hoess is appointed camp commandant. On June 14, 1940, the Gestapo sent the first prisoners to Auschwitz I - 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow.
The gate leading to the camp is with the cynical inscription: “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free), through which the prisoners went to work every day and returned ten hours later. In a small square next to the kitchen, the camp orchestra played marches that were supposed to speed up the movement of prisoners and make it easier for the Nazis to count them.
At the time of its founding, the camp consisted of 20 buildings: 14 one-story and 6 two-story. In 1941-1942, with the help of prisoners, one floor was added to all one-story buildings and eight more buildings were built. The total number of multi-story buildings in the camp was 28 (except for the kitchen and utility buildings). The average number of prisoners fluctuated between 13-16 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 reached over 20 thousand. Prisoners were placed in blocks, also using attics and basements for this purpose.
Along with the increase in the number of prisoners, the territorial volume of the camp increased, which gradually turned into a huge plant for exterminating people. Auschwitz I became the base for a whole network of new camps.
In October 1941, after there was no longer enough space for the newly arrived prisoners at Auschwitz I, work began on the construction of another concentration camp, called Auschwitz II (also known as Bireknau and Brzezinka). This camp was destined to become the largest in the system of Nazi death camps. I .
In 1943, in Monowice near Auschwitz, another camp was built on the territory of the IG Ferbenindustrie plant - Auschwitz III. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, which were subordinate to Auschwitz III and were located mainly near metallurgical plants, mines and factories that used prisoners as cheap labor.
Arriving prisoners were taken away from their clothes and all personal items, they were cut, disinfected and washed, and then they were given numbers and registered. Initially, each of the prisoners was photographed in three positions. Since 1943, prisoners began to be tattooed - Auschwitz became the only Nazi camp in which prisoners received tattoos with their number.
Depending on the reasons for their arrest, prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, along with their numbers, were sewn onto their camp clothes. Political prisoners were given a red triangle; Jews wore a six-pointed star consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for their arrest. Black triangles were given to gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered antisocial elements. Jehovah's Witnesses received purple triangles, homosexuals received pink triangles, and criminals received green triangles.
The scanty striped camp clothing did not protect the prisoners from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even at monthly intervals, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of various diseases, especially typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies.
The hands of the camp clock mercilessly and monotonously measured the life of the prisoner. From the morning to the evening gong, from one bowl of soup to the next, from the first count until the moment when the prisoner's corpse was counted for the last time.
One of the disasters of camp life was the inspections at which the number of prisoners was checked. They lasted for several, and sometimes over ten hours. Camp authorities very often announced penalty checks, during which prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were also cases when they were ordered to hold their hands up for several hours.
Along with executions and gas chambers, grueling labor was an effective means of exterminating prisoners. Prisoners were employed in various sectors of the economy. At first they worked during the construction of the camp: they built new buildings and barracks, roads and drainage ditches. A little later, the industrial enterprises of the Third Reich began to increasingly use the cheap labor of prisoners. The prisoner was ordered to do the work at a run, without a second of rest. The pace of work, the meager portions of food, as well as constant beatings and abuse increased the mortality rate. During the return of prisoners to the camp, the dead or wounded were dragged or carried on wheelbarrows or carts.
The prisoner's daily caloric intake was 1300-1700 calories. For breakfast, the prisoner received about a liter of “coffee” or a decoction of herbs, for lunch - about 1 liter of lean soup, often made from rotten vegetables. Dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and a small amount of other additives (for example, 30 g of sausage or 30 g of margarine or cheese) and a herbal drink or “coffee.”
At Auschwitz I, most prisoners lived in two-story brick buildings. Living conditions throughout the camp's existence were catastrophic. The prisoners brought in by the first trains slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor. Later, hay bedding was introduced. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people. The three-tier bunks installed later did not improve living conditions at all. Most often there were 2 prisoners on one tier of bunks.
The malarial climate of Auschwitz, poor living conditions, hunger, scanty clothing that was not changed for a long time, unwashed and unprotected from the cold, rats and insects led to mass epidemics that sharply reduced the ranks of prisoners. A large number of patients who came to the hospital were not admitted due to overcrowding. In this regard, SS doctors periodically carried out selections both among patients and among prisoners in other buildings. Those who were weakened and had no hope of a quick recovery were sent to death in gas chambers or killed in a hospital by injecting a dose of phenol directly into their hearts.
That is why the prisoners called the hospital “the threshold of the crematorium.” At Auschwitz, prisoners were subjected to numerous criminal experiments carried out by SS doctors. For example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted criminal sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10 of the main camp. Dr. Josef Mengele, as part of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities.
In addition, various kinds of experiments were carried out in Auschwitz using new drugs and preparations: toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin transplants were carried out... During these experiments, hundreds of prisoners died.
Despite the difficult living conditions, constant terror and danger, the camp prisoners carried out secret underground activities against the Nazis. It took different forms. Establishing contacts with the Polish population living in the area around the camp made possible the illegal transfer of food and medicine. Information was transmitted from the camp about crimes committed by the SS, lists of names of prisoners, SS men and material evidence of crimes. All parcels were hidden in various objects, often specially intended for this purpose, and correspondence between the camp and the centers of the resistance movement was encrypted.
In the camp, work was carried out to provide assistance to prisoners and explanatory work in the field of international solidarity against Hitlerism. Cultural activities were also carried out, which consisted of organizing discussions and meetings at which prisoners recited the best works of Russian literature, as well as secretly holding religious services.
Check area - here the SS men checked the number of prisoners.
Public executions were also carried out here on a portable or common gallows.
In July 1943, the SS hanged 12 Polish prisoners on it because they maintained relations with the civilian population and helped 3 comrades escape.
The yard between buildings No. 10 and No. 11 is fenced with a high wall. Wooden shutters placed on the windows in block No. 10 were supposed to make it impossible to observe the executions carried out here. In front of the “Wall of Death,” the SS shot several thousand prisoners, mostly Poles.
In the dungeons of building No. 11 there was a camp prison. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the military court, which came to Auschwitz from Katowice and, during a meeting that lasted 2-3 hours, imposed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.
Before execution, everyone had to undress in the washrooms, and if the number of those sentenced to death was too small, the sentence was carried out right there. If the number of those sentenced was sufficient, they were taken through a small door to be shot at the “Wall of Death.”
The system of punishment that the SS administered in Hitler's concentration camps was part of a well-planned, deliberate extermination of prisoners. A prisoner could be punished for anything: for picking an apple, relieving himself while working, or for pulling out his own tooth to exchange it for bread, even for working too slowly, in the opinion of the SS man.
Prisoners were punished with whips. They were hung by their twisted arms on special poles, placed in the dungeons of a camp prison, forced to perform penalty exercises, stances, or sent to penalty teams.
In September 1941, an attempt was made here to mass exterminate people using the poisonous gas Zyklon B. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital died then.
The cells located in the basements housed prisoners and civilians who were suspected of having connections with prisoners or assisting in escapes, prisoners sentenced to starvation for the escape of a cellmate, and those whom the SS considered guilty of violating camp rules or against whom an investigation was underway. .
All the property that the people deported to the camp brought with them was taken away by the SS. It was sorted and stored in huge barracks in Auszewiec II. These warehouses were called “Canada”. I will tell you more about them in the next report.
The property located in the warehouses of the concentration camps was then transported to the Third Reich for the needs of the Wehrmacht.Gold teeth that were removed from the corpses of murdered people were melted down into ingots and sent to the SS Central Sanitary Administration. The ashes of the burned prisoners were used as manure or they were used to fill nearby ponds and river beds.
Items that previously belonged to people who died in gas chambers were used by SS men who were part of the camp staff. For example, they appealed to the commandant with a request to issue strollers, things for babies and other items. Despite the fact that looted property was constantly being transported by trainloads, the warehouses were overcrowded, and the space between them was often filled with piles of unsorted luggage.
As the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz, the most valuable things were urgently removed from warehouses. A few days before the liberation, the SS men set fire to warehouses, erasing traces of the crime. 30 barracks burned down, and in those that remained, after liberation, many thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses, dentures were found...
While liberating the camp at Auschwitz, the Soviet Army discovered about 7 tons of hair packed in bags in warehouses. These were the remains that the camp authorities did not manage to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis showed that they contain traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special toxic component of drugs called “Cyclone B”. German companies, among other products, produced hair tailor's beads from human hair. Rolls of beading found in one of the cities, located in a display case, were submitted for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made from human hair, most likely women's hair.
It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that played out every day in the camp. Former prisoners - artists - tried to convey the atmosphere of those days in their work.
Hard work and hunger led to complete exhaustion of the body. From hunger, prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photographs were taken after liberation; they show adult prisoners weighing from 23 to 35 kg.
In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp along with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most Jewish children died in gas chambers immediately after arriving at the camp. A few of them, after careful selection, were sent to a camp where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults. Some of the children, such as twins, were subjected to criminal experiments.
One of the most terrible exhibits is a model of one of the crematoria in the Auschwitz II camp. On average, about 3 thousand people were killed and burned in such a building per day...
And this is the crematorium in Auschwitz I. It was located behind the camp fence.
The largest room in the crematorium was the morgue, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners and Jews from the ghetto organized by the Germans in Upper Silesia were killed.
The second part contains two of the three ovens, reconstructed from preserved original metal elements, in which about 350 bodies were burned during the day. Each retort housed 2-3 corpses at a time.
