On Auschwitz

The Auschwitz II-Birkenau gas chambers and crematoria never became targets for Allied bombing, despite reports about their existence forwarded both by the Polish resistance movement and some people who escaped from the camp. Instead, American bombers carried out several strikes against the IG Farben petrochemical installations located at the distance of seven kilometers from Auschwitz.  Dr. Piotr...

One of the groups of witnesses to the crimes perpetrated at the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz were British prisoners of war who were forced to work on the construction of the IG Farbenindustrie factory. The building site was located in the immediate vicinity of the Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp and a few kilometers from the Auschwitz I main camp. British prisoners of war were also e...

On 27 January 1945, Red Army soldiers liberated over 7,000 prisoners of the Auschwitz. The 1,689-day history of this concentration and extermination camp came to an end. Dr Jacek Lachendro of the Museum Research Centre tells us what the last days of Auschwitz looked like and what happened immediately after the liberation. See also our online lesson about evacuation, liquidation and liberation of A...

In the second half of 1944, due to the Red Army successes and the advancing Eastern Front, the SS authorities in Auschwitz decided to evacuate some 65,000 prisoners to camps in the German Reich interior. At the same time, they began to destroy the evidence of the crimes committed in the camp. Dr. Jacek Lachendro from the Research Center of the Museum talks about the last period of the operation of...

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Heinrich Himmler gave the order to create a "German settlement area" around the occupied Polish town of Zamość. The population of that region was to be expelled and replaced by German settlers. The area was chosen for its agricultural character. It consisted of five towns and 696 villages. The displaced population was sent to transit camps, whe...

Listen to the interview with Dr. Maria Zalewska who is the editor of a unique cookbook "Honey Cake & Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors". "More than a cookbook, this collection of heirloom recipes conveys Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors’ stories through the mnemonic lens of cooking and food. Collected and edited during the pandemic, this book—in the words of Ro...

The camp orchestra played for the first time at the German camp Auschwitz at the beginning of January 1941. Initially there were seven musicians there, but the ensemble grew very quickly. The main task was to play military marches to the rhythm of which the prisoners marched as they left for work and returned to the camp. The orchestra also gave concerts for the SS garrison members and prisoners....

It might seem that we already know everything about the history of places such as Auschwitz, because several decades have passed since the events and we have access to a great many documents and thousands of testimonies. However, this is not true. We are constantly learning new facts about the history of the camp, as Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of the Memorial Research Centre, explains in our p...

At the end of July 1941 the camp commander Karl Fritzch selected 10 hostages from among the prisoners in Block 14 in retaliation for the escape of a prisoner. He condemned them to death by starvation in the bunker of Block 11. During the selection, a Polish prisoner who was a Franciscan monk and missionary, Maksymilian Kolbe (no. 16670), stepped out of link and asked the camp commander to take him...

The Archives of the Auschwitz Memorial collect, preserve, and provide access to documents and materials connected mainly with the history of the Auschwitz camp. The collection includes original German camp records, copies of documents obtained from other institutions in Poland and abroad, source material of postwar provenance (memoirs, accounts by survivors, material from the trials of Nazi war cr...

On October 7, 1944 a revolt took place at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, in the Sonderkommando - the special work unit that consisted mainly of Jewish prisoners whom the Germans forced to work in gas chambers, burning pits areas and crematoria. Dr. Igor Bartosik of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center talks about the background of resistance of the Sonderkommando and the revolt itself. In the p...

“Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human” is a new book by the Auschwitz Museum Director Dr. Piotr Cywiński. It is the first attempt - on a global scale - to delve so deeply into human emotions inside the camp. It is a must-read for those seeking to understand what Auschwitz was all about. The gathering of materials and work on the publication took almost six years. Piotr Cywiński analysed nearly 250...

During the time of operation of Auschwitz, some 8,100-8,200 SS men worked there as part of the camp garrison. In our podcast Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, the head of Research Center of the Auschwitz Memorial, talks about functioning of the SS garrison in the Auschwitz camp complex, its organizational structure and everyday work in the management, functioning, and isolation of the camp. We also recommend...

In the thousands of preserved registration photographs of Auschwitz prisoners, we can see faces of the men and women imprisoned in the camp.  Dr Wojciech Płosa, the head of Auschwitz Memorial Archives, talks about the history of these photographs.

The Auschwitz concentration camp had almost 50 sub‑camps. The largest of them had extensive administrative structures, separate hospital barracks, showers and even small crematoria. In the smaller ones, prisoners were locked up for the night in rooms or cellars—there were no fences or guard towers there and meals were delivered from the main camp. The majority of prisoners were employed in the arm...

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...