Where is birkenau concentration camp

Experimental gas vans had been used to kill mentally disabled people in Poland as early as Poisonous fumes were pumped into a sealed compartment to suffocate those inside.

By the winter of , the Nazis had constructed gas chambers at Auschwitz. Nazi leaders met in January at the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the industrial slaughter - what they called a "final solution to the Jewish question" - killing the entire European Jewish population, 11 million people, by extermination and forced labour.

Auschwitz was originally a Polish army barracks in southern Poland. Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland in September , and by May turned the site into a jail for political prisoners.

This area - with the infamous lie Arbeit Macht Frei written above the entrance in German - meaning work sets you free - became known as Auschwitz I. But as the war and the Holocaust progressed, the Nazi regime greatly developed the site. The first people to be gassed were a group of Polish and Soviet prisoners in September Work began on a new camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the following month.

This became the site of the huge gas chambers where hundreds of thousands were murdered prior to November , and the crematoria where their bodies were burned. Other private companies like Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert also ran factories nearby, to use the prisoners as slave labour. When Auschwitz was eventually liberated, it had more than 40 camps and subcamps. How Auschwitz became centre of Nazi Holocaust. People from all over Europe were crammed into cattle wagons without windows, toilets, seats or food, and transported to Auschwitz.

There they were sorted into those who could work and those who were to be immediately killed. The latter group were ordered to strip naked and sent to the showers for "delousing" - a euphemism used for the gas chambers.

Some Auschwitz prisoners were subjected to inhumane medical experimentation. The chief perpetrator of this barbaric research was Josef Mengele , a German physician who began working at Auschwitz in For example, in an effort to study eye color, he injected serum into the eyeballs of dozens of children, causing them excruciating pain. He also injected chloroform into the hearts of twins to determine if both siblings would die at the same time and in the same manner.

As came to a close and the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces seemed certain, the Auschwitz commandants began destroying evidence of the horror that had taken place there.

Buildings were torn down, blown up or set on fire, and records were destroyed. Before the end of the month, in what came to be known as the Auschwitz death marches, an estimated 60, detainees, accompanied by Nazi guards, departed the camp and were forced to march to the Polish towns of Gliwice or Wodzislaw, some 30 miles away. Countless prisoners died during this process; those who made it to the sites were sent on trains to concentration camps in Germany.

When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz on January 27, they found approximately 7, sick or emaciated detainees who had been left behind barbed wire. The liberators also discovered mounds of corpses, hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing and pairs of shoes and seven tons of human hair that had been shaved from detainees before their liquidation.

According to some estimates, between 1. An estimated 70, to 80, Poles perished at the camp, along with 19, to 20, Romas and smaller numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and other individuals. It tells the story of the largest mass murder site in history and acts as a reminder of the horrors of genocide.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Since , the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the ideological and systematic state-sponsored In fewer than four years, more than 1. Everyone who visits Auschwitz remembers the hair: almost two tons of it, piled behind glass in mounds taller than a person. When I first visited the camp, in , the hair was still black and brown, red and blond, gray and white—emotionally overwhelming evidence of the lives extinguished there.

When I returned this past autumn, the hair was a barely differentiated mass of gray, more like wool than human locks. Only the occasional braid signaled the remnants of something unprecedented and awful—the site where the Third Reich perpetrated the largest mass murder in human history. At least 1. The Nazis operated the camp between May and January —and since , the Polish government has maintained Auschwitz, which lies about 40 miles west of Krakow, as a museum and memorial.

It is a Unesco World Heritage site, a distinction usually reserved for places of culture and beauty. But Auschwitz—with its buildings and hundreds of thousands of artifacts—is deteriorating. It is a conservation challenge like no other. Banas introduces me to conservators working to preserve evidence of camp life: fragments of a mural depicting an idealized German family that once decorated the SS canteen, floor tiles from a prisoners barrack.

In one room, a team wielding erasers, brushes and purified water clean and scan 39, yellowing medical records written on everything from card stock to toilet paper. The Auschwitz camp itself covers 50 acres and comprises 46 historical buildings, including two-story red brick barracks, a kitchen, a crematorium and several brick and concrete administration buildings.

In addition, Birkenau, a satellite camp about two miles away, sprawls over more than acres and has 30 low-slung brick barracks and 20 wooden structures, railroad tracks and the remains of four gas chambers and crematoria. In total, Banas and her staff monitor buildings and more than ruins at the two sites.

Water from leaking roofs has damaged wood bunks where prisoners once slept. At the same time, public interest in the camp has never been higher. Visits have doubled this decade, from , in to more than 1 million in Since Poland joined the European Union in , Krakow has become a popular destination for foreign tourists, and Auschwitz is a must stop on many itineraries.

A visit is also part of education programs in Israel, Britain and other countries. Auschwitz officials had not received a U. Cywinski is just His office is on the first floor of a former SS administration building directly across from a former gas chamber and crematorium.

He tells me that Auschwitz is about to slip into history. The last survivors will soon die, and with them the living links to what happened here.

Preserving the site becomes increasingly important, Cywinski believes: younger generations raised on TV and movie special effects need to see and touch the real thing. But the effort to preserve the site is not without its critics. One is Robert Jan van Pelt, a cultural historian in the school of architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and the leading expert on the construction of Auschwitz. But van Pelt views the Birkenau site in a different light.

For one thing, 80 to 90 percent of the original structures are gone or in a state of ruin. He says letting Birkenau disintegrate completely would be a more fitting memorial than constantly repairing the scant remains. A million people literally disappeared. Seal it up. I arrived on the September day the camp counted its millionth visitor of the year. Tour group members wearing headphones stood shoulder to shoulder with their guides speaking into wireless microphones.

At the Birkenau camp, a five-minute shuttle-bus ride from the Auschwitz visitor center, the scene was so peaceful it was almost impossible to imagine the sea of stinking mud that survivors describe. The vast expanse was covered in neatly mowed grass. Flocks of Israeli teenagers in matching white-and-blue hoodies wandered from ruin to ruin. KL Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers.

Over 1. The authentic Memorial consists of two parts of the former camp: Auschwitz and Birkenau. A visit with an educator allows better understanding of this unique place. There is no way to understand postwar Europe and the world without an in-depth confrontation between our idea of mankind and the remains of Auschwitz.

In the official Auschwitz Memorial podcast "On Auschwitz," we discuss the details of the history of the German Nazi Auschwitz camp as well as our contemporary memory of this important and special place. Events commemorating the 81st anniversary of this event took place under the National Patronage of Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland as well as the Honorary Patronage of Prof.