Auschwitz-Birkenau
A brief introduction
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination camp the Nazis built. It is also the best known. However Auschwitz is in many ways atypical for the extermination camps, because not only was it an extermination camp, it was also a labour camp called Birkenau which held around 120,000 prisoners, whereas most of the other etermination camps simply killed all Jews transferred to them.
When a group of Jews arrived at the ramp in Birkenau, they went through a selection process, which meant that those fit for labour were sorted out, and sent to the camp. Those unfit for labour were gassed immediately. Normally this group consisted of about 70-95% of a transport.
For those sent into to labour camp, the average period of survival was 3-4 months before they succumbed to hunger, disease or overworking.
In Auschwitz the gassing was performed with an insecticide called “Zyklon-B”. A highly poisonous cyanide gas, which was already being used to disinfect clothing.
The first homicidal gassing was performed in a cellar in the main camp (Auschwitz I – located a few kilometres from Birkenau or Auschwitz II) in the beginning of December 1941, and was performed on a group of Russian prisoners of war.
In the spring and summer of 1942 the massive gassing of Jews begins in two converted farmhouses in Birkenau called “Bunker 1” and “Bunker 2” the bodies of the gassed Jews are placed in mass graves and not cremated.
The capacity of the "Bunkers" is clearly not enough, therefore in the summer of 1942 the construction of 4 new crematoria (Kremas II-V) is initiated. These crematoria or "Kremas" are designed for both being able to gas Jews and to dispose of the bodies via a massive set of furnaces.
By the end of September 1942 the camp commander Rudolf Ferdinand Höss orders the corpses of the Jews gassed in the Bunkers exhumed and cremated under open air. The gigant pyres burn day and night until the beginning of November - by that time ca. 50,000 bodies have been reduced to ashes.
In March of 1943 Krema II is finished, and is immediately put in use by gassing 1,492 Jews from the Krakow ghetto. The rest of the Kremas are put to use shortly after. The Nazis estimated that the capacity of the crematoria to be 4,756 bodies a day, however due to construction failures and massive overload, the real capacity varies between 2,500 and 3,250.
In the summer of 1944 the deportation of the Hungarian Jews begins. The crematoria are unable to cope with the massive strain of up to 6,000 bodies a day, and therefore huge ditches are dug in the ground, and the bodies burned there. 432,000 Hungarian Jews are deported to Auschwitz 320,000 of them are gassed immediately upon arrival. Of the remaining most succumb to starvation, overworking and maltreatment.
In October 1944 members of the Jewish forced workers in Krema IV, the Sonderkommando, intiates a desperate revolt in which the Krema is set on fire, and about 30 SS-men are killed, including the leader of the Krema, August Brück, who is thrown into one of of the furnaces. The revolt is quickly beaten down, and all the Sonderkommando's killed.
In December 1944 Himmlers orders the gassings stopped and the Kremas dismantled.The camp is evacuated on the 18-19th of January, forcing all remaining prisoners onto so called "death-marches" back into camps in Germany, to avoid that the prisoners should fall into the hands of the quickly advancing Red Army. The prisoners are forced to walk in their ordnary uniforms, often bare-footed, in the freezing January cold. Many dies from the cold, and the SS shoots everyone not keeping the pace.
Before leaving the camp the SS blows up the remains of the Kremas on the 20-22th of January 1945, and kills as many as possible of the prisoners in the sick-bay.
On the 27th of January after heavy fighting in the nearby area, the camp is liberated by the Red Army. At that time around 4000 prisoners remains, either in the hospitals or having hid from the Germans. Though the Red Army does everything in their power to nurture them back to health, many are so emancipated that they dies within days of their liberation.It is estimated that ca. 1,000,000 were killed in the Auschwitz complex.
For more info on the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp see:
Nizkor’s Auschwitz FAQ
Sources:
Jean-Claude Pressac; Krematoriene i Auschwitz
Rudolf Höss; Kommandant i Auschwitz
Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jewry