In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Allies' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.Īs the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss. Others were killed during medical experiments.Īt least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 others. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The first gassings-of Soviet and Polish prisoners-took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941.Ĭonstruction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. Auschwitz Birkenau, German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)Īfter Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp.
0 kommentar(er)
