Auschwitz. Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. Auschwitz (concentration camp)

Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland (Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp) is a mourning page in the history of World War II. In five years, 4 million people were killed here.

I traveled to Auschwitz by bus. A regular bus runs from Krakow to the Auschwitz Open Air Museum, which brings passengers to the very entrance to the camp. The concentration camp is now a museum. It is open daily all daylight hours: from 8.00 to 15.00 in winter, until 16/17/18.00 in March, April, May and until 19.00 in summer. Entrance to the museum is free if you visit it on your own. Having ordered a tour, as part of a multinational group, I went for a tour. Photography is prohibited in buildings, so the pictures will only be taken from the street. The visit is very well organized. Visitors are given a receiver and headphones, with which you listen to the voice of the guide. At the same time, you can be far away from him and not walk in a crowd. As part of the tour, we were told facts that I did not find in the vastness of the Russian-speaking Internet, so there will be a lot of text. Yes, and photographs cannot convey the feeling that arises in this place.

Above the entrance to the first of the camps of the complex (Auschwitz-1), the Nazis placed the slogan: "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free"). Through this gate the prisoners went to work every day and returned ten hours later. In a small square, the camp orchestra played marches that were supposed to invigorate the prisoners and make it easier for the SS men to count them. The cast-iron inscription was stolen on the night of Friday, December 18, 2009, and was found three days later sawn into three pieces and prepared for shipment to Sweden. A museum was created on the territory of the camp in 1947, which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

1. The gates depicted in many documentaries and photographs with the infamous inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) lead to the museum of the Auschwitz death camp.

After this area of ​​Poland was occupied by German troops in 1939, Auschwitz was renamed Auschwitz, the name used in Austrian times. The Nazis began to build chemical plants in the city, and soon they set up a concentration camp here.

The first concentration camp in Auschwitz was Auschwitz 1, which later served as the administrative center of the entire complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 on the basis of brick two- and three-story buildings of the former Polish, and earlier Austrian barracks. In connection with the fact that it was decided to create a concentration camp in Auschwitz, the Polish population was evicted from the territory adjacent to it. Initially, Auschwitz was used for the mass extermination of Polish political prisoners. Over time, the Nazis began to send people from all over Europe here, mainly Jews, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and gypsies. The idea of ​​creating a concentration camp was justified by the overcrowding of prisons in Silesia and the need for mass arrests among the Polish population.

The first group of prisoners, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners, arrived at the camp on June 14, 1940. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13,000 to 16,000, and by 1942 reached 20,000 prisoners. The SS selected some prisoners, mostly Germans, to spy on the rest. The prisoners of the camp were divided into classes, which was visually reflected by the stripes on their clothes. 6 days a week, except Sunday, the prisoners were required to work. An exhausting work schedule and meager food caused numerous deaths.

In the Auschwitz 1 camp, there were separate blocks that served various purposes. In blocks 11 and 13, punishments were made for violators of the rules of the camp. People were placed in groups of 4 in so-called "standing cells" measuring 90 cm x 90 cm, where they had to stand all night. More severe measures meant slow killings: the guilty were either put in a sealed chamber, where they died from a lack of oxygen, or simply starved to death. The “pillar” punishment was also practiced, which consisted in the fact that the prisoner was hung up by his hands twisted behind his back. The details of life in Auschwitz were reproduced thanks to the drawings of artists who were prisoners of the concentration camp. Between blocks 10 and 11 there was a torture yard, where prisoners were simply shot at best. The wall near which the shooting was carried out was reconstructed after the end of the war.

2. Under high voltage

At the time of its foundation, the camp consisted of 20 buildings - 14 one-story and 6 two-story. During the functioning of the camp, 8 more buildings were built. The prisoners were placed in blocks, using attic and basement rooms for this purpose. Now these barracks house a museum exposition of the general history of the Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as stands dedicated to individual countries. All buildings look intimidating, the only exception is a quite decent house in which the guards lived. The exposition dedicated to individual countries mainly contains documents, photographs, maps of military operations. It is much scarier where the history of the entire camp is presented.

Each building of the museum has its own theme: "Destruction", "Material Evidence", "Prisoner's Life", "Housing Conditions", "Death Corps". These barracks also have documents, for example, pages from the register of the dead, indicating the time and causes of death: the intervals were 3-5 minutes, and the reasons were fictitious. The main attention of the creators of the exposition was given to physical evidence.

Mountains of children's shoes and clothes, human hair (and these are just the remnants that the Nazis did not have time to send to the factories of the Third Reich, where the cloth was made from the hair), as well as huge pyramids of empty cans from under Cyclone B, make a terrible impression. into cells that were equipped as showers. Unsuspecting people were allegedly sent to wash themselves, but instead of water, cyclone B crystals fell from the shower holes. People died within 15-20 minutes. In the period 1942-1944. about 20 tons of crystal gas were used in Auschwitz. It took 5-7 kilograms to kill 1500 people. Gold teeth were pulled out from the dead, their hair was cut off, rings and earrings were removed. Then the corpses were transported to the crematorium ovens. Jewels were melted down into ingots.

3. On the territory of the Auschwitz concentration camp

On September 3, 1941, on the orders of the camp's deputy commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the first test of gas etching with Zyklon B in block 11 was carried out, as a result of which about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners, mostly sick, died. The test was deemed a success and one of the bunkers was converted into a gas chamber and crematorium. The chamber functioned from 1941 to 1942, and then it was rebuilt into an SS bomb shelter. Subsequently, the chamber and crematorium were recreated from the original parts and exist to this day as a monument to Nazi brutality.

4. Crematorium at Auschwitz 1

Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, or Brzezinka) is what is usually meant when talking about Auschwitz itself. In it, in one-story wooden barracks, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities were kept. The number of victims of this camp amounted to more than a million people. The construction of this part of the camp began in October 1941 in the village of Brzezinka, located 3 km from Auschwitz.

There were four construction sites in total. In 1942, section I was commissioned (male and female camps were located there); in 1943-44 the camps located on construction site II (gypsy camp, men's quarantine camp, men's camp, men's hospital camp, Jewish family camp, storage facilities and "Depotcamp", that is, a camp for Hungarian Jews) were put into operation. In 1944, construction began on building site III; Jewish women lived in unfinished barracks in June and July 1944, whose names were not entered in the camp registration books. This camp was also called "Depotcamp", and then "Mexico". Section IV was never built up.

In 1943, in Monowitz near Auschwitz, on the territory of the IG Farbenindustrie plant, which produced synthetic rubber and gasoline, another camp was built - Auschwitz 3. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz concentration camp were built, which were subordinate to Auschwitz 3 and were located near metallurgical plants, mines and factories that use prisoners as cheap labor.

5. Auschwitz2 (Birkenau)

The maintenance of the gas chambers was carried out by people from the Sonderkommando, who were recruited from the healthiest and most physically strong prisoners - men. In case of refusal to work, they were subject to destruction (either in gas chambers or by execution). The Zondekomanda prisoners who served the cells did not survive much longer than ordinary prisoners. They "worked" from a few weeks to one and a half to two months and died from slow poisoning with Zyklon-B gas. From among the newly arrived prisoners, they quickly found a replacement.

In the winter of 1944-1945, the gas chambers and crematoria II and III, located directly above them on the surface of the earth, were blown up in order to hide the traces of the crimes committed in the Birkenau camp. They began to destroy all documentary evidence and archives. The lists of the Sonderkommando were also destroyed.

During the emergency evacuation of the camp in January 1945, the surviving members of the Sonderkommando were able to get lost among other prisoners taken to the West. Only a few managed to survive until the end of the war, but thanks, among other things, to their "live" testimonies of the crimes and atrocities of the Nazis, all people in all countries of the world became aware of another terrible page of World War II.

6.

The order to create a concentration camp appeared in April 1940, and in the summer the first transport of prisoners was brought here. Why Auschwitz? Firstly, this is an important railway junction, where it was convenient to deliver the doomed. In addition, the empty barracks of the Polish army came in handy, where they set up the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was not only the largest. It is not for nothing that it is called a death camp: of the approximately 7.5 million people who died in Nazi concentration camps from 1939 to 1945, 4 million fall to its share. If in the other camps, according to researchers, only one in ten survived, then in Auschwitz only those who did not have time to destroy waited for victory. In the summer of 1941, the Nazis tested poison gas on sick Poles and six hundred Soviet prisoners of war. These were the first of the 2.5 million victims of Cyclone B.

It is assumed that about 4 million people died in the camp: they were tortured, poisoned in gas chambers, died of starvation and as a result of barbaric medical experiments. Among them are citizens of different countries: Poland, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Italy, the Soviet Union, as well as Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Great Britain and the United States of America . Jews in Auschwitz, according to the latest data, killed at least 1.5 million. This is a place of sadness for people all over the world, but it is especially tragic for Jews and Gypsies, who were subjected to merciless total destruction here.

On the territory of the former Birkenau camp in April 1967, an international monument to the victims of fascism was opened. The inscriptions on it were made in the language of the peoples whose representatives were martyred here. There is also an inscription in Russian. And in 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Oswiecim-Brzezinka) was opened here, which is also included in the list of objects of world importance under the protection of UNESCO. Since 1992, an information center has been operating in the city, where materials about the concentration camp and its ideologists are collected. Numerous international meetings, discussions, symposiums and worship services are organized here.

7. Birkenau. Monument to the victims of fascism.

The calorie content of the prisoner's daily ration was 1300-1700 calories. For breakfast, 1/2 liter of herbal decoction was given, for lunch - a liter of lean soup and for dinner - 300 grams of black bread, 30 grams of sausage, cheese or margarine and herbal decoction. Hard work and hunger led to complete exhaustion of the body. Adult prisoners who managed to survive weighed from 23 to 35 kg.

In the main camp, the prisoners slept two by two on bunks with rotten straw, covered with dirty and torn blankets. In Brzezinka - in barracks without a foundation, right on the marshy ground. Poor living conditions, hunger, dirty cold clothes, an abundance of rats and lack of water led to massive epidemics. The hospital was overcrowded, so prisoners who did not show promise of a quick recovery were sent to the gas chambers or killed in the hospital by injecting a dose of phenol into the heart.

By 1943, a resistance group had formed in the camp, which helped some of the prisoners escape, and in October 1944, the group destroyed one of the crematoria.

In the entire history of Auschwitz, there were about 700 escape attempts, 300 of which were successful, but if someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape. In 1996, the German government declared January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, an official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.

8. Women's barracks in Birkenau

New prisoners arrived daily by train at Auschwitz 2 from all over occupied Europe. Most Jews arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp with the belief that they were being taken "to a settlement" in eastern Europe. The Nazis sold them non-existent plots for construction, offered them work in fictitious factories. Therefore, people often brought their most valuable things with them.

The travel distance reached 2400 km. Most often, people traveled this road in sealed freight wagons, without food or water. The wagons, crowded with people, went to Auschwitz for 7, and sometimes 10 days. Therefore, when the bolts were opened in the camp, it turned out that some of the deportees - especially the elderly and children - were dead, and the rest were in a state of extreme exhaustion. The arrivals were divided into four groups.

The first group, which accounted for about ¾ of all those brought, went to the gas chambers for several hours. This group included women, children, the elderly and all those who did not pass the medical examination for full fitness for work. Such people were not even registered, which is why it is very difficult to establish the exact number of those killed in the concentration camp. More than 20,000 people could be killed in the camp each day.

Auschwitz 2 had 4 gas chambers and 4 crematoria. All four crematoria went into operation in 1943. The average number of corpses burned in 24 hours, taking into account a three-hour break per day to clean the ovens in 30 ovens of the first two crematoria, was 5,000, and in 16 ovens of crematoria I and II - 3,000.

The second group of prisoners was sent to work as slaves in industrial enterprises of various companies. From 1940 to 1945, about 405 thousand prisoners were assigned to factories in the Auschwitz complex. Of these, more than 340,000 died from disease and beatings, or were executed. There is a famous case when the German magnate, Oskar Schindler, saved about 1000 Jews by buying them to work in his factory and taking them from Auschwitz to Krakow.

The third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, went to various medical experiments, in particular to Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the "angel of death."

The fourth group, predominantly women, were selected in the "Canada" group for personal use by the Germans as servants and personal slaves, as well as for sorting the personal property of prisoners arriving at the camp. The name "Canada" was chosen as a mockery of the Polish prisoners - in Poland the word "Canada" was often used as an exclamation at the sight of a valuable gift. Previously, Polish emigrants often sent gifts home from Canada. Auschwitz was partially serviced by prisoners who were periodically killed and replaced with new ones. About 6,000 members of the SS watched everything.

The arrivals were taken away clothes and all items of personal use. The issued linen was changed every few weeks, and it was not possible to wash it. This led to epidemics, especially typhus and typhoid fever.

When registering, prisoners were given triangles of different colors, which, along with numbers, were sewn onto camp clothes. Political prisoners received a red triangle, Jews received a six-pointed star consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle corresponding to the color of the reason for arrest. Black triangles were received by gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered asocial. The followers of the Holy Scripture were given purple triangles, homosexuals were given pink ones, and criminals were given green ones.

9. Dead-end railway, along which future prisoners were brought to Birkenau.

April 27 marked the 75th anniversary of the opening of the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz (Auschwitz), which destroyed about 1,400,000 people in less than five years of its existence. This post will once again remind us of the crimes committed by the Nazis during the Second World War, which we have no right to forget.

The Auschwitz camp complex was created by the Nazis in Poland in April 1940 and included three camps: Auschwitz-1, Auschwitz-2 (Birkenau) and Auschwitz-3. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13 thousand to 16 thousand, and by 1942 it reached 20 thousand people

Simone Weil, Honorary President of the Shoah Memorial Foundation, Paris, France, former prisoner of Auschwitz: “We worked more than 12 hours a day on heavy earthworks, which, as it turned out, were mostly useless. We were hardly fed. But still our fate was not the worst. In the summer of 1944, 435,000 Jews arrived from Hungary. Immediately after they left the train, most of them were sent to the gas chamber. Six days a week, everyone, without exception, had to work. About 80% of the prisoners died from the harsh working conditions in the first three to four months.

Mordechai Tsirulnitsky, former prisoner No. 79414: “On January 2, 1943, I was enlisted in the team for dismantling the belongings of prisoners arriving at the camp. Some of us were engaged in dismantling the arriving things, others - sorting, and the third group - packaging for shipment to Germany. The work went on continuously around the clock, day and night, and yet it was impossible to cope with it - there were so many things. Here, in a bale of children's coats, I once found the coat of my youngest daughter, Lani.
Property was confiscated from all those arriving in the camp, up to dental crowns, from which up to 12 kg of gold was smelted per day. A special group of 40 people was created to extract them.

Pictured are women and children on the Birkenau railway platform, known as the "ramp". The deported Jews were selected here: some were immediately sent to death (usually those who were deemed unfit for work - children, the elderly, women), others were sent to the camp.

The camp was created on the orders of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler (pictured). He came to Auschwitz several times, inspecting the camps, as well as giving orders for their expansion. So, it was on his orders that the camp was expanded in March 1941, and five months later an order was received to “prepare a camp for the mass extermination of European Jews and develop appropriate methods of killing”: on September 3, 1941, gas was used for the first time to exterminate people. In July 1942, Himmler personally demonstrated its use on the prisoners of Auschwitz II. In the spring of 1944, Himmler arrived at the camp with his last inspection, during which it was ordered to kill all incapacitated gypsies.

Shlomo Venezia, a former prisoner of Auschwitz: “The two largest gas chambers were designed for 1450 people, but the SS drove 1600-1700 people there. They followed the prisoners and beat them with sticks. Those in the back pushed those in front. As a result, so many prisoners got into the cells that even after death they remained standing. There was nowhere to fall"

Various punishments were provided for violators of discipline. Some were placed in cells where one could only stand. The offender had to stand like that all night. There were also sealed chambers - those who were there suffocated from a lack of oxygen. Torture and demonstrative executions were widespread.

All concentration camp prisoners were divided into categories. Each had its own patch on their clothes: political prisoners were designated with red triangles, criminals with green ones, Jehovah's Witnesses with purple ones, homosexuals with pink ones, Jews, among other things, had to wear a yellow triangle.

Stanisława Leszczynska, Polish midwife, former Auschwitz prisoner: “Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp were brutally murdered: they were drowned in a barrel. After the birth, the baby was taken to a room where the child's cry was interrupted and the splash of water was heard before the women in labor, and then ... the woman in labor could see the body of her child, thrown out of the barracks and torn apart by rats.

David Sures, one of the prisoners of Auschwitz: “About July 1943, I and ten other Greeks with me were put on some kind of list and sent to Birkenau. There we were all stripped and sterilized with X-rays. One month after the sterilization, we were called to the central department of the camp, where all the sterilized people underwent a castration operation.

Auschwitz became infamous largely due to the medical experiments that Dr. Josef Mengele conducted within its walls. After the monstrous "experiments" in castration, sterilization, irradiation, the life of the unfortunate ended in gas chambers. Mengele's victims were tens of thousands of people. He paid special attention to twins and dwarfs. Of the 3,000 twins who went through the Auschwitz experiments, only 200 children survived.

By 1943, a resistance group had formed in the camp. She, in particular, helped many to escape. Over the entire history of the camp, about 700 escape attempts were made, 300 of which were successful. To prevent new escape attempts, it was decided to arrest and send to the camps all the relatives of the escapee, and kill all the prisoners from his block.

In the photo: Soviet soldiers communicate with children released from a concentration camp

About 1.1 million people were killed on the territory of the complex. At the time of liberation on January 27, 1945, 7 thousand prisoners remained in the camps by the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, whom the Germans did not manage to transfer during the evacuation to other camps.

In 1947, the Sejm of the Polish People's Republic declared the territory of the complex a monument to the martyrdom of the Polish and other peoples, on June 14 the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum was opened.

This is the story of the triumph of blind cruelty, one and a half million deaths and silent human grief. Here, the last hopes crumbled to dust, in contact with hopelessness and terrible reality. Here, in a poisonous fog, shredded by pain and hardships of life, some said goodbye to relatives, loved ones, others - to their own lives. This is the story of the Auschwitz concentration camp - the site of the most massacre in the history of mankind.

As illustrations, I use archival photographs of 2009. Unfortunately, many of them are of very poor quality.

Spring 1940. Rudolf Hess arrives in Poland. Then still the captain of the SS, Hess, was to create a concentration camp in the small town of Auschwitz (the German name for Auschwitz) located in the occupied territory.

It was decided to build a concentration camp on the site where once the barracks of the Polish army were located. Now they were in a neglected state, many were dilapidated.

The authorities set a difficult task for Hess - to create a camp for 10 thousand prisoners within a relatively short time. Initially, the Germans planned to keep Polish political prisoners here.

Since Hess had been working in the camp system since 1934, building another concentration camp was a matter of course for him. However, things did not go very smoothly at first. The SS did not yet consider the concentration camp in Auschwitz as a strategically important object and did not pay much attention to it. There were supply difficulties. Hess later wrote in his memoirs that once he needed a hundred meters of barbed wire and he just stole it.

One of the symbols of Auschwitz is a cynical inscription above the main gate of the camp. "Arbeit macht frei" - work makes free.

When the prisoners returned from work, an orchestra played at the entrance to the camp. This was necessary so that the prisoners kept their marching pace and so it was easier for the guards to count them.

The region itself was of considerable interest to the Third Reich, since the largest coal deposits were located 30 km from Auschwitz. Also, this region was rich in limestone reserves. Coal and limestone are valuable raw materials for the chemical industry, especially during times of war. Coal, for example, was used to produce synthetic gasoline.

The German syndicate IG Farbenindustrie decided to competently exploit the natural potential of the territory that had passed into the hands of the Germans. In addition, IG Farbenindustrie was interested in free labor, which could be provided by concentration camps packed to overflowing with prisoners.

It is important to note that the slave labor of the prisoners of the camps was used by many German companies, although some still prefer to deny this.

In March 1941, Himmler visited Auschwitz for the first time.

Nazi Germany subsequently wanted to build a model German city near Auschwitz with the money of IG Farbenindustrie. Ethnic Germans could live here. The local population, of course, would have to be deported.

Now in some barracks of the main Auschwitz camp there is a museum complex where photographs, documents of those years, things of prisoners, lists with surnames are stored.

Suitcases with numbers and names, artificial limbs, glasses, children's toys. All these things will keep the memory of the horror that happened here for several years for a long time to come.

People came here deceived. They were told they were being sent to work. Families took with them the best things, food. In fact, it was the road to the grave.

One of the most "difficult" elements of the exposition is a room where a huge amount of human hair is stored behind glass. I think I will remember the heavy smell in this room for the rest of my life.

In the photo - a warehouse where 7 tons of hair were found. The photo was taken after the camp was liberated.

By the onset of the summer of 1941, in the territory occupied by the invaders, execution campaigns assumed a large-scale character and began to be carried out constantly. Often the Nazis killed women and children at close range. Observing the situation, the highest ranks expressed concern to the leadership of the SS regarding the morale of the killers. The fact is that the execution procedure had a negative impact on the psyche of many German soldiers. There were fears that these people - the future of the Third Reich - were slowly turning into mentally unbalanced "beasts". The invaders needed to find an easier and less bloody way to effectively kill people.

Given that the conditions of detention in Auschwitz were terrible, many quickly became incapacitated due to hunger, physical exhaustion, torture and disease. For a certain time, prisoners unable to work were shot. Hess wrote in his memoirs about the negative attitude towards the execution procedures, so the transition to a "cleaner" and faster method of killing people in the camp at that time would have been very helpful.

Hitler believed that the care and maintenance of mentally retarded and mentally ill people in Germany was an extra cost item for the Reich economy and it was pointless to spend money on this. Thus, in 1939, the murder of mentally retarded children was initiated. When the war began in Europe, adult patients began to be involved in this program.

By the summer of 1941, approximately 70,000 people had been killed as part of the adult euthanasia program. In Germany, the massacres of the sick were most often committed with the help of carbon monoxide. People were told that they had to undress to take a shower. They were brought into a room with pipes that were connected to gas cylinders, not to the water supply.

The adult euthanasia program is gradually expanding beyond Germany. At this time, the Nazis are faced with another problem - transporting carbon monoxide cylinders over long distances becomes a costly business. The killers were given a new task - to reduce the cost of the process.

German documents of the time also mention experiments with explosives. After several terrible attempts to implement this project, when the German soldiers had to comb the area and collect the body parts of the victims scattered around the district, the idea was recognized as inappropriate.

Some time later, the negligence of one SS-Soviet, who fell asleep in a car with the engine running in the garage and almost suffocated with exhaust gases, prompted the Nazis to solve the problem of a cheap and quick way to kill the sick.

Doctors began to arrive in Auschwitz, who were looking for sick prisoners. For the prisoners, they specially invented a bike, according to which all the hype was reduced to the selection of patients to be sent for treatment. Many prisoners believed the promises and went to their deaths. Thus, the first prisoners of Auschwitz died in the gas chambers not at all in the camp, but in Germany.

In the early autumn of 1941, one of the deputy commandants of the Hess camp, Karl Fritsch, came up with the idea to test the effect of the gas on people. According to some reports, the first experiment with Zyklon B at Auschwitz was carried out in this room - a dark bunker converted into a gas chamber next to Hess's office.

An employee of the camp climbed onto the roof of the bunker, opened this hatch and poured powder into it. The chamber functioned until 1942. Then it was rebuilt into a bomb shelter for the SS-sheep.

This is what the interior of the former gas chamber looks like now.

Next to the bunker was a crematorium, where the corpses were taken on carts. As the bodies were burned, a greasy, gag-inducing, sweetish smoke billowed over the camp.

According to another version, Zyklon B was first used on the territory of Auschwitz in the 11th block of the camp. Fritsch ordered the basement of the building to be prepared for this purpose. After the first loading of Zyklon B crystals, not all the prisoners in the room died, so it was decided to increase the dose.

When Hess was informed about the results of the experiment, he calmed down. Now the SS soldiers did not have to stain their hands daily with the blood of executed prisoners. However, the gas experiment set in motion a terrifying mechanism that, in a few years, will turn Auschwitz into the site of the most mass murder of people in the history of mankind.

Block 11 was called a prison within a prison. This place had a bad reputation and was considered the most terrible in the camp. Zeki tried to bypass him. Here the delinquent prisoners were interrogated and tortured.

The cells of the block were always packed with people.

In the basement there was a punishment cell and solitary cells.

Among the measures of influence on prisoners in the 11th block, the so-called "standing punishment" was popular.

The prisoner was locked in a cramped, stuffy brick box, where he had to stand for several days. Prisoners were often left without food, so few people managed to get out of Block 11 alive.

In the courtyard of block 11 there is an execution wall and a gallows.

The gallows located here is not quite ordinary. It is a bar with a hook driven into the ground. The prisoner was hung up by his hands tied behind his back. Thus, the entire weight of the body fell on the everted shoulder joints. Since there was no strength to endure the hellish pain, many almost immediately lost consciousness.

At the execution wall, the Nazis shot the prisoners, usually in the back of the head. The wall is made of fibrous material. This is done so that the bullets do not ricochet.

According to available data, up to 8 thousand people were shot at this wall. Now flowers are lying here and candles are burning.

The territory of the camp is surrounded by a high barbed wire fence in several rows. During the functioning of Auschwitz, high voltage was applied to the wire.

The prisoners, who were unable to endure the suffering in the dungeons of the camp, threw themselves on the fences and thereby saved themselves from further torment.

Photographs of prisoners with dates of admission to the camp and death. Some did not manage to live here even for weeks.

In the next part of the story, we will talk about the giant death factory - the Birkenau camp located a few kilometers from Auschwitz, corruption in Auschwitz, medical experiments on prisoners and the "beautiful beast". I will show you a photo from the barracks in the women's part of Birkenau, the place where the gas chambers and the crematorium were located. I will also tell you about the life of people in the dungeons of the camp and about the further fate of Auschwitz and his superiors after the end of the war.

On January 27, 1945, soldiers of the Red Army liberated the prisoners of Auschwitz, the most famous concentration camp of the Second World War, built to exterminate Jews from all over Europe.

The exact number of victims of Auschwitz is still unknown. At the Nuremberg trials, a rough estimate was made - five million. The former commandant of the camp, Rudolf Hess, claimed that there were half as many killed. And today's European historians believe that "only" a little more than a million prisoners did not get freedom.

Well, it is quite possible that the Nazis would have managed to hide the traces of their crimes, but thanks to the quick actions of the Soviet army, the Nazis did not have time to destroy not only the witnesses of the atrocities, but also the murder weapons. Crematoriums and gas chambers, instruments of torture, thousands of kilograms of human hair and ground bones, prepared for shipment to Germany, appeared before the eyes of the soldiers-liberators.

Medical experiments and experiments were widely practiced in the camp. The effects of chemicals on the human body were studied. The latest pharmaceutical preparations were tested. Prisoners were artificially infected with malaria, hepatitis and other dangerous diseases as an experiment. Nazi doctors were trained to perform surgical operations on healthy people. Castration of men and sterilization of women, especially young women, was common, accompanied by the removal of the ovaries.

But above all, Auschwitz was a real enterprise for the Third Reich, a “factory of death”, bringing the state not only the corpses of “subhumans”, but also serious profits. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was even proud that every month the "death factory" brought two million marks of net profit to the German treasury. Nothing was lost here that could be used for the benefit of the "thousand-year Reich."

Most of all valuable things, gold and money were collected from trains that brought deported Jews. Every day, the SS seized almost 12 kilograms of gold - basically, these were dental crowns that they pulled out from corpses, and personal belongings of Jews became a reward for the soldiers of the Third Reich.

"Istoricheskaya Pravda" publishes archival photographs of how the Soviet liberators saw this "factory of death".

Railway gate of the camp.

The history of the creation of Auschwitz has its own intrigue. It was conceived as a camp for political prisoners - Poles. The author of the idea is one of the people closest to Himmler, SS Gruppenfuhrer Erich Bach-Zalewski (during the Great Patriotic War he would lead punitive operations against Belarusian partisans, then the suppression of the Polish uprising in Warsaw in 1944. Ironically, already at the end of 50 -x will be released).

Bach-Zalewski proposed the establishment of such a camp in Poland shortly after the outbreak of World War II. His subordinate, SS Oberführer Wigand, at the end of 1939, found a place near Auschwitz. There were already military barracks quite suitable for barracks. An important argument for choosing the site of the future camp was the developed system of railway communication.

The main gate of the camp with the inscription "Work sets you free".

By the beginning of 1941, the Nazis had created 3 categories of camps. To the 3rd, the most terrible, for those who are not fit for "correction" was Mauthausen in Austria. The second category included Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and some other camps in Germany (for those whose "correction is unlikely").

The future Auschwitz-2 fell into the same category. Finally, Auschwitz-1 was assigned to the first category “for the less spoiled”. Initially, the prisoners were really planned to be released into the wild - after the war.

Auschwitz. Photo from the cockpit of an American bomber.

The actual concentration camp for prisoners included 33 barracks (blocks). On the territory of the camp, the construction of industries for various firms and industries for the needs of the Wehrmacht began. Auschwitz was supposed to be profitable...

Auschwitz did not immediately become a "factory of death". Historians call the first period of its functioning (until mid-1942) "Polish". At this point, most of the prisoners were indeed Poles. Some were sent here from Gestapo prisons and other concentration camps to be sentenced to death.

Poles massively fell into Auschwitz and later. So, only 2 months after the defeat of the Warsaw uprising in 1944, 13,000 people were sent here. In total, about 150,000 Poles passed through this camp.

In the summer of 1942, a new plan for the development of the camp was approved, designed for 300,000 prisoners and including a special section for the mass extermination of Jews. According to this plan, in March-July 1943, 4 crematoria and gas chambers were built in Birkenau. Inside, 4 mini-camps were created, which by May 1944 were connected by railroad tracks.

Sending Slovak Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Auschwitz had two functions: a concentration camp for people of different nationalities and a place of extermination. The number of its prisoners constantly grew. On March 26, 1942, a women's camp appears. In February 1943 - a gypsy. By January 1944, there were about 81,000 prisoners in Auschwitz. In July - more than 92 thousand. In August - more than 145 thousand.

Hungarian Jews at the train after arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp

Jews from Transcarpathia near the train after arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

From the Jews arriving in Auschwitz, they began to select able-bodied people for other concentration camps. This took place after the so-called selection. In total, at least 1 million 100 thousand Jews passed through Auschwitz.

A column of Hungarian prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp at the railroad cars.

Since February 1943, gypsies began to enter Auschwitz. In Birkenau-2, the so-called. family camp for 23,000 gypsies from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Most of them died from disease and starvation.

Arrival of prisoners.

Auschwitz was one of 6 death camps in Poland. But only it was intended to exterminate Jews from all over Europe. The rest worked according to the territorial principle: in Majdanek, Sobibór, Treblinka and Belzec, they exterminated mainly Polish Jews living in the so-called. General Government. In Chełmno - Jews from western Poland, annexed to the Reich. All of them ceased to exist as centers of extermination in 1943.

Arrival of prisoners.

Arrival of the echelon with new prisoners

Children prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp show camp numbers on their hands.

Of the 1,300,000 prisoners of Auschwitz, about 234,000 were children. Of these, 220,000 were Jewish children, 11,000 were Gypsies; several thousand Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish. Some children were born in the camp. They also wore the number on the prisoner's striped clothing.

By the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, 611 (!) children remained in the camp.

Prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp at the construction of a chemical plant.

Chemical plant.

Many prisoners also worked at the factory. From 1940 to 1945, about 405 thousand prisoners were assigned to factories in the Auschwitz complex. Of these, more than 340,000 died from disease and beatings, or were executed. There is a known case when the German industrialist Oskar Schindler saved about 1,000 Jews by buying them to work in his factory. 300 of the women on this list ended up in Auschwitz by mistake. Schindler managed to rescue them and take them to Krakow.

Rabbis at the Auschwitz concentration camp

Portrait of prisoners.

Women's bar.

Camp security.

In total, Auschwitz was guarded by about 6,000 SS men. Their personal information has been preserved. Three-quarters had a complete secondary education. 5% are university graduates with advanced degrees. Almost 4/5 identified themselves as believers. Catholics - 42.4%; Protestants - 36.5%.

SS men on vacation

Glasses taken from executed Jews.

The "death factory" in Auschwitz worked with German punctuality and thrift for miraculous property. In total, there were 35 warehouse barracks in the camp, which were full of things taken from the Jews; they were not taken out.

Clothes of the destroyed prisoners.

The Nazis didn't just throw anything away. When Soviet soldiers occupied Auschwitz, they found about 7.5 thousand prisoners there who they did not have time to take away, and in the partially surviving warehouse barracks - 1,185,345 men's and women's suits, 43,255 pairs of men's and women's shoes, 13,694 carpets, a huge number of toothbrushes and shaving brushes, as well as other small household items.

The bodies of the prisoners.

Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss testified:

“Various functionaries of the party and the SS were sent to Auschwitz so that they could see for themselves how the Jews were being exterminated. All of them were deeply impressed. Some of those who had previously ranted about the need for such destruction were left speechless at the sight of the "final solution of the Jewish question". I was constantly asked how I and my people can be witnesses to how we are able to endure all this. To this I always replied that all human impulses must be suppressed and give way to the iron determination with which the orders of the Fuhrer must be carried out. Each of these gentlemen declared that he would not want to receive such a task ... "

Auschwitz is a city that has become a symbol of the ruthlessness of the fascist regime; the city where one of the most senseless dramas in the history of mankind unfolded; a city where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally murdered. In the concentration camps located here, the Nazis built the most terrible death conveyors, destroying up to 20 thousand people every day ... Today I begin to talk about one of the most terrible places on earth - the concentration camps in Auschwitz. I warn you, the photos and descriptions below can leave a heavy mark on the soul. Although I personally believe that every person should touch and pass through these terrible pages of our history...

There will be very few of my comments on the photos in this post - this is too delicate a topic, to express my point of view on which, it seems to me, I have no moral right. I honestly admit that visiting the museum left a heavy scar on my heart, which still does not want to heal...

Most of the comments on the photos are based on the guidebook (

The concentration camp in Auschwitz was the largest Nazi concentration camp for Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, whom Hitler's fascism doomed to isolation and gradual destruction by hunger, hard work, experiments, and also to immediate death as a result of 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 the gas chambers immediately after their arrival, without being registered or marked 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 back to the history of the camp. In 1939, Auschwitz and its environs 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 empty pre-war barracks near Auschwitz were chosen as the place for the creation of the first camp. The concentration camp is named Auschwitz I.

The education order is dated April 1940. Rudolf Goess is appointed commandant of the camp. On June 14, 1940, the Gestapo sends the first prisoners to Auschwitz I - 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow.

The camp is entered by a gate with a cynical inscription: "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes free), through which the prisoners went to work daily and returned ten hours later. In a small square next to the kitchen, the camp band 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 foundation, the camp consisted of 20 buildings: 14 one-story and 6 two-story. In 1941-1942, one floor was added to all one-story buildings by the forces of prisoners and eight more buildings were built. The total number of multi-storey 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 it reached over 20 thousand. The prisoners were placed in blocks, using attic and basement rooms for this purpose.

Along with the growth in the number of prisoners, the territorial volume of the camp increased, which gradually turned into a huge plant for the destruction of people. Auschwitz I became the base for a whole network of new camps.

In October 1941, after there was no longer enough room for newly relocated prisoners in Auschwitz I, work began on the construction of another concentration camp, called Auschwitz II (it is also known as Biereknau and Brzezinka). This camp was destined to become the largest in the system of Nazi death camps. I .

In 1943, another camp, Auschwitz III, was built in Monowitz near Auschwitz on the territory of the IG Ferbenindustrie plant. In addition, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built in 1942-1944, which were subordinate to Auschwitz III and were located mainly near metallurgical plants, mines and factories that use prisoners as cheap labor.

The clothes and all personal items were taken away from the arriving prisoners, 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 were tattooed with their number.

Depending on the reasons for the arrest, the prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, along with the numbers, were sewn onto camp clothes. Political prisoners were supposed to have 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 the arrest. Black triangles were received by gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered anti-social elements. Purple triangles were sewn on for Jehovah's Witnesses, pink ones for homosexuals, and green ones for criminals.

The scanty striped camp clothes 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 ruthlessly and monotonously measured the time of the prisoner's life. From the morning to the evening gong, from one bowl of soup to the next, from the first check to the moment when the prisoner's corpse was counted for the last time.

One of the disasters of camp life was verification, which checked the number of prisoners. They lasted for several, and sometimes more than a dozen hours. The camp authorities very often announced penal checks, during which the prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were also cases when they were ordered to keep their hands up for several hours.

Along with executions and gas chambers, hard work was an effective means of exterminating prisoners. Prisoners were employed in various sectors of the economy. At first, they worked in the construction of the camp: they built new buildings and barracks, roads and drainage ditches. A little later, the cheap labor of prisoners increasingly began to be used by the industrial enterprises of the Third Reich. The prisoner was ordered to do the work by running, without a second of rest. The pace of work, meager portions of food, as well as constant beatings and mockery increased mortality. During the return of the prisoners to the camp, the dead or wounded were dragged or carried on wheelbarrows or carts.

The calorie content of the prisoner's daily ration 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 boiled from rotten vegetables. Dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and a small amount of other toppings (eg 30g sausage or 30g margarine or cheese) and a herbal drink or "coffee".

In Auschwitz I, most of the prisoners lived in two-story brick buildings. Housing conditions at all times of the existence of the camp were catastrophic. The prisoners brought in by the first echelons slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor. Hay bedding was later introduced. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that could barely fit 40-50 people. Three-tiered bunks installed later did not improve living conditions at all. Most often, 2 prisoners lay on one tier of bunks.

The malarial climate of Auschwitz, poor living conditions, hunger, scanty clothing, unchangeable for a long time, unwashed and unprotected from the cold, rats and insects led to massive epidemics that drastically reduced the ranks of prisoners. A large number of patients who applied to the hospital were not accepted due to its overcrowding. In this regard, SS doctors periodically carried out selection among both patients and prisoners located in other buildings. Weakened, and not promising a quick recovery, they were sent to death in the gas chambers or killed in the hospital by injecting a dose of phenol directly into their hearts.

That is why the prisoners called the hospital "the threshold of the crematorium." In Auschwitz, the prisoners were subjected to numerous criminal experiments conducted by SS doctors. So, for example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a rapid method for the biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted criminal sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10 of the main camp. Dr. Josef Mengele, within the framework of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities.

In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and preparations: toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin grafting was performed ... During these experiments, hundreds of prisoners and prisoners died.

Despite the difficult living conditions, constant terror and danger, the prisoners of the camp carried out secret underground activities against the Nazis. She 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. From the camp, information was transmitted about the crimes committed by the SS, lists of prisoners by name, SS men, and material evidence of crimes. All parcels were hidden in different, often specially designed objects, and correspondence between the camp and the centers of the resistance movement was encrypted.

In the camp, work was carried out to help prisoners and explanatory work in the field of international solidarity against Nazism. Cultural activities were also carried out, consisting in the organization of discussions and meetings, at which the prisoners recited the best works of Russian literature, as well as in secret worship.

Verification 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 for maintaining relations with the civilian population and helping 3 comrades escape.

The courtyard between buildings No. 10 and No. 11 is fenced with a high wall. Wooden shutters put on the windows in Block 10 were supposed to make it impossible to observe the executions taking place 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 field court, which came to Auschwitz from Katowitz and, during a meeting that lasted 2-3 hours, passed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.

Before being shot, 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 to the "Wall of Death".

The system of punishment that the SS applied in Hitler's concentration camps was one of the fragments of a well-planned deliberate extermination of prisoners. A prisoner could be punished for everything: for picking an apple, urinating while working, or for pulling out his own tooth to exchange it for bread, even for work that was too slow, according to the SS man.

Prisoners were punished with whips. They were hung by their twisted arms on special poles, placed in the dungeons of the camp prison, forced to perform penalty exercises, racks, or sent to penalty teams.

In September 1941, an attempt was made here to mass exterminate people with the poisonous gas Zyklon B. Then about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital died.

In the cells located in the basements, prisoners and civilians were placed who were suspected of having connections with prisoners or assisting with escapes, prisoners sentenced to starvation for escaping a cellmate and those whom the SS considered guilty of violating camp rules or against whom an investigation was conducted. .

All the property that the people deported to the camp brought with them was taken away by the SS. It was sorted and stacked in huge barracks in Aušivce II. These warehouses were called "Canada". I'll talk more about them in my next post.

The property located in the warehouses of concentration camps was then exported to the Third Reich for the needs of the Wehrmacht.Gold teeth, which were removed from the corpses of dead people, were melted down into ingots and sent to the SS Central Sanitary Directorate. The ashes of the burned prisoners were used as manure or they were covered with nearby ponds and riverbeds.

Items that previously belonged to people who died in the gas chambers were used by SS men who were part of the camp staff. For example, they turned to the commandant with a request to issue prams, things for babies and other items. Despite the fact that the loot was constantly taken out by entire trains, the warehouses were overflowing, and the spaces between them were often filled with piles of unsorted luggage.

As the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz, the most valuable things were urgently removed from the warehouses. A few days before the liberation, the SS men set fire to the warehouses, erasing the traces of the crime. 30 barracks burned down, and in those that remained, after the liberation, many thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses, prostheses were found ...

While liberating the Auschwitz camp, the Soviet Army found about 7 tons of hair packed in bags in the warehouses. These were the remnants that the camp authorities did not have time to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis carried out showed that they contained traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special poisonous component of drugs called Zyklon B. From human hair, German firms, among other products, produced a hair tailor's bead. Found in one of the cities, the rolls of beading, which are in the window, were given for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made of human hair, most likely female.

It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that were played out daily 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, the prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photos were taken after the release; 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 with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most of the Jewish children perished in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. A few of them, after careful selection, were sent to the 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 scariest 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 mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners and Jews from the ghettos organized by the Germans in Upper Silesia were killed.

In the second part, there are two out of three furnaces reconstructed from preserved genuine metal elements, in which about 350 bodies were burned during the day. In each retort, 2-3 corpses were placed at the same time.