No jokes or funny stories today. We went to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.
Auschwitz was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. When the camp became too full, they started the extermination of prisoners from September 1941, initially by shooting. But that left too much evidence, and so they built the gas chambers. Then when Auschwitz couldn’t cope with the numbers arriving, they built Birkenau nearby. Birkenau held 90,000 prisoners, which is as many as can fit into the MCG on Grand Final day.
From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp’s gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to Birkenau, of whom at least 1.1 million died. Another estimated 800,000 were killed at Auschwitz.
I had always thought that the concentration camps were for Jews, and certainly around 90 percent of those were Jews; approximately one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. But there were many others sent to Auschwitz, including 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and tens of thousands of others of diverse nationalities. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labour, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.
Birkenau was liberated by the Red Army at around 3:30 p.m. on 27 January 1945, and Auschwitz two hours later. Soldiers found 7,500 prisoners barely alive.
Arbeit Macht Frei
Auschwitz Entrance
Arbeit Macht Frei
The Original Auschwitz Camp Huts
The Facts
Zyklon B Containers
Auschwitz
Auschwitz
Crematorium
Crematorium
90,000 People Were Interred at Birkenau
Wagon at Birkenau
Jakub’s Place in Krakow