On Auschwitz

Activities by the Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned in the Third Reich in 1933 because of the Witnesses’ religious principles and pacifistic views, as well as their organization’s international connections. As a result, many of them were imprisoned in concentration camps. Teresa Wontor-Cichy from the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center talks about the history and fate of some 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses...

The historians of the Memorial today estimate, that the Germans murdered around 1,1 million out of 1,3 million people deported to Auschwitz. Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of the Museum Research Centre, talks about the history of research on the number of Auschwitz victims.

The fate children who were registered in Auschwitz as prisoners was no different in principle from that of adults. Just like them, they suffered from hunger and cold, were used as laborers, and were punished, put to death, and used as subjects in criminal experiments by SS doctors. Dr. Wanda Witek-Malicka from Memorial’s Research Center talks about the Auschwitz camp through the eyes of a child. -...

Two extremely important factors in the exhaustion, deprivation and destruction of prisoners at Auschwitz were hunger and hard slave labour. Dr. Jacek Lachendro of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre talks in our podcast about this aspect of the camp's functioning. --- Listen also to the podcast about living and sanitary conditions as well as camp clothing: https://anchor.fm/auschwitz-memorial/e...

One of the darkest chapters of the history of Auschwitz is undoubtedly the story of the Sonderkommando - a group of prisoners, mainly Jews - forced by the Germans to work in gas chambers and crematoria of the camp. Prisoners assigned to this unit, employed in places of mass extermination, could not refuse to do their work or ask to be transferred to perform other tasks in the camp. Failure to carr...

During its entire existence, slightly over 400 thousand people were registered at Auschwitz as prisoners - including 131 thousand women. The two largest groups of prisoners were Jews - about 200 thousand - and Poles, some 140 thousand. Since Germans established the camp in spring 1940 with the members of Polish resistance and intelligentsia in mind, Poles dominated in the camp at first. This situa...

The term "sport" in KL Auschwitz was distorted by using it to refer to the exhausting exercises combined with the drill and singing applied on a mass scale. This form of sport, referred to after the war as pseudo-sport, was usually a way of enforcing discipline and punishing prisoners. However, among people deported by the Germans to Auschwitz, there were pre-war sportsmen and sportswomen: Olympia...

The horrible living conditions created by the SS authorities in the block and barracks in all parts of the Auschwitz complex as well as the appalling sanitary conditions contributed to the exhaustion and death of many prisoners. The clothing which was completely inadequate for the weather conditions also had negative effect on the condition and health of the prisoners. Dr. Jacek Lachendro of the A...

The Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp was established in October 1942 on the site of the displaced and expelled Polish village of Monowice, located 6 km from the Auschwitz I camp. It was connected with the construction of the synthetic rubber and fuel plant by a German chemical company IG Farbenindustrie. Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, head of the Memorial Research Center, talks about the history of the third pa...

Using only estimates based on the examination of the existing incomplete documentation, it can only be acknowledged that there were around 232,000 children aged under 15 and youth aged under 18 among the at least 1.3 million people deported to the German Nazi Auschwitz camp during the almost 5-year period of its operation. This number includes around 216,000 children and youth of Jewish origin, 11...

At least 23,000 Roma and Sinti people - including 11 thousand children were deported by the Nazi German regime to Auschwitz. After the Jews and Poles they are the third largest groups of the victims of the camp. The vast majority lost their lives as a result of hunger, brutal treatment, pseudo-medical experiments or were murdered in gas chambers. According to the documentation over 91 percent of t...

From the beginning of the existence of the German Auschwitz camp, the bodies of murdered prisoners were incinerated. The first crematorium on the grounds of the camp was opened in August 1940 and, of course, prisoners of the camp had to work there. The situation of this work group changed when the killing of people in gas chambers began in the camp. The Sonderkommando was then formed. Paweł Sawick...

A particularly drastic example of betrayal of medical ethics is the participation of many German doctors in the criminal pseudo-medical experiments carried out on concentration camp prisoners. Paweł Sawicki spoke to Teresa Wontor-Cichy from the Memorial Research Centre about the experiments conducted in Auschwitz.

In planning the construction of Auschwitz, the Germans assumed that the camp would eventually hold some 30,000 prisoners. As late as the beginning of 1941, there were no indications that, over the next few months, both the plans for employment and the number of prisoners, as well as the function of the camp itself, would change dramatically. In this podcast we talk about the role played by the Ger...

Recent years have seen an increased interest among writers in the subject of Auschwitz. Their books are set in the realities of the camp - with very mixed results. Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka talks to Wanda Witek-Malicka from the Research Center of the Memorial about whether it is worth reaching for these books and how to distinguish between valuable and less valuable literature.

The Auschwitz camp complex had an extensive organizational structure, which also included a separate department responsible for protecting the health of both the SS garrison and - at least in theory - the prisoners of the camp. Paweł Sawicki talks about medicine in Auschwitz with Teresa Wontor-Cichy, a historian at the Research Center of the Auschwitz Memorial.

The German Nazi Auschwitz camp was established by the SS in the occupied city of Oświęcim, on the Polish territory annexed by the Third Reich at the beginning of World War II. Paweł Sawicki talks to Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, head of the Museum Research Center, about the details of the decision-making process which led to the creation of the camp and about its first prisoners.