Facts about Auschwitz
When the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found about 7,600 survivors abandoned there.
In 1943, the Kampf Gruppe Auschwitz was organized with the aim to send out as much information about what was happening in Auschwitz as possible.
Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area of Auschwitz, which at the time was under German occupation.
Construction on Auschwitz II (Birkenau) began in October 1941 to ease congestion at the main camp.
The Auschwitz concentration camp is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
By 1994, some 22 million visitors—700,000 annually—had passed through the iron gate of Auschwitz I crowned with the cynical motto, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work will set you free").
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revised this figure in 1990, and new calculations now place the figure at 1.1–1.6 million, about 90 percent of them Jews from almost every country in Europe.
In 1947, in remembrance of the victims, Poland founded a museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Located in southern Poland, it took its name from the nearby town of O?wi?cim (Auschwitz in German), situated about 31 miles west of Krakуw and 178 miles from Warsaw.
The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative center; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager; and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work camp.
Approximately 40 more satellite camps were established around Auschwitz.
Today, the Auschwitz I museum site combines elements from several periods into a single complex.
Auschwitz I served as the administrative center for the whole complex.
The Australasian continental plate defines a region adjacent to Southeast Asia, politically separated from the countries of Southeast Asia.
The camp commandant, Rudolf Hцss, testified at the Nuremberg Trials that up to 2.5 million people had died at Auschwitz.
In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the grounds of Auschwitz II to some 500,000 people.
The exact number of victims at Auschwitz is impossible to fix with certainty.
After the pope had announced that Edith Stein would be beatified, some Catholics erected a cross near bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been gassed.
Following the German occupation of Poland in September 1939, the town was incorporated into Germany and renamed Auschwitz.
A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others.
Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in daily convoys.
Some information regarding Auschwitz reached the Allies during 1941–1944, such as the reports of Witold Pilecki and Jerzy Tabeau, but the claims of mass killings were generally dismissed as exaggerations.
Soviet and Polish authorities maintained a figure "between 2.5 and 4 million," which was used on the original Auschwitz memorial.
In 1996, Germany made January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the official day for the commemoration of the victims of "National Socialism."
A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnуw became the first prisoners at Auschwitz on June 14 that year.
Like all German concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by Heinrich Himmler's SS.
About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, with about 300 attempts successful.
Starting with a plea from the Slovakian rabbi Weissmandl in May 1944, there was a growing campaign to convince the Allies to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it.
Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are also open to the public.
The camp commandant, Rudolf Hцss, testified at the Nuremberg Trials that up to 2.5 million people had died at Auschwitz.
Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area of Auschwitz, which at the time was under German occupation.
Block 11 of Auschwitz was the "prison within the prison," where violators of the numerous rules were punished.
The kapos and sonderkommandos were supervised by members of the SS; altogether 6,000 SS members worked at Auschwitz.
AUSCHWITZ WAS ONE of the largest concentration camps from the Holocaust during World War Two. Lessons from Auschwitz. A WOMAN aged 91 has been charged over the murders of 260,000 innocent Jews in Nazi death camp Auschwitz. WOMAN AGED 91 'HELPED NAZIS MURDER 260,000' Auschwitz aide is charged.
The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been stolen. The wrought iron sign, whose words mean "Work Sets You Free", was unscrewed and pulled down from its position above the gate in the early hours of Friday.Dec 18, 2009
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps. All three camps used prisoners for forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center.
9 out of 10 were Jews. In addition, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers. Between May 14 and July 8,1944, 437,402 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 148 trains. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust.