BigSoccer - Auschwitz: never again.

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UN commemorates Auschwitz liberation in special session

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Neo-Nazis snub Auschwitz debate

Auschwitz is the name used for a group of concentration camps, derived from the Germanized form of the nearby Polish town of Oświęcim, situated about 60 km southwest of Krakow. Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area, which at the time had been annexed by Germany. The camps were a major constituent of the Holocaust. There were three main camps, and thirty-nine subcamps.

The three main camps were:

Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative centre for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 Polish intellectuals and Soviet Prisoners of War
Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp and the site of the deaths of roughly 1 million Jews and some 19,000 Roma
Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the IG Farben company
See List of subcamps of Auschwitz for others. The total number of casualties is still under debate, but most modern estimates are around 1-1.5 million.

Like all Nazi concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by Heinrich Himmler's SS. The commandants of the camp were the SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Höß (sometimes transliterated in English as "Hoess") until Summer 1943, and later Artur Leibehenschel and Richard Baer. Höß provided a detailed description of the camp's workings during his interrogations after the war and also in his autobiography. He was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium of Auschwitz I.

About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, with about 300 attempts successful. 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.

Knowledge of the Allies
From 1940, Witold Pilecki, soldier of Armia Krajowa who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, allowed a considerable body of intelligence information to be smuggled out of the camp to Warsaw. From there it was conveyed to London.

The allies fighting Germany were in possession of detailed air photographs of all camps since May 31, 1944. Two escaped prisoners (Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler) had compiled precise descriptions and maps which reached the allies in the summer of 1944. On September 13, 1944, American bombers flew an attack on the Buna Werke factory associated to Auschwitz III, partly destroying it.

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Evacuation and liberation
The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the Germans in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; most of the prisoners were marched West. Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind; about 7500 prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are also open to the public. The Auschwitz concentration camp is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II read mass on the grounds of Auschwitz II to some 500 000 people. 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. A short while later, a Star of David appeared at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols there; eventually they were removed.

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'.*

* here.