Auschwitz. Auschwitz-I concentration camp

24-02-2016, 09:15

From a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz gradually turned into the site of the largest mass murder in history. 1.1 million people died here, including more than 200 thousand children. “One image crashed into my memory, crashed at the very moment it was described to me. It was an image of a "procession" of empty baby carriages - property stolen from the dead Jews, which was taken out of Auschwitz in the direction of the station, five in a row. A prisoner who saw this column says that she rode past him for a whole hour, ”writes Lawrence Rees.

In the spring of 1940, the construction of one of the first Nazi concentration camps near the town of Auschwitz began in the "New Reich". Only eight months ago it was Southwestern Poland, and now it is German Upper Silesia. In Polish, the town was called Auschwitz, in German - Auschwitz. It should be noted that the functions of the camps in the Nazi state were different. Concentration camps such as Dachau (established in March 1933, just two months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany) were very different from death camps such as Treblinka, which did not appear until the middle of the war. The story of Auschwitz is interesting, the most infamous of them, which became both a concentration camp and an extermination camp…

None of the Germans, even those who used to be fanatical Nazis, admitted to "welcome" the existence of the death camps, but many quite approved of the existence of concentration camps in the 1930s. After all, the first prisoners who got to Dachau in March 1933 were mostly political opponents of the Nazis. Then, at the dawn of the Nazi regime, Jews were vilified, humiliated and beaten, but left-wing politicians of the previous government were considered a direct threat.

The regime at Dachau was not just brutal; everything was arranged in such a way as to break the will of the prisoners. Theodor Eicke - the first commandant of the camp - elevated the violence, ruthlessness and hatred that the Nazis felt for their enemies into a certain system and order. Dachau is notorious for the physical sadism that prevailed in the camp: whippings and severe beatings were common. Prisoners could be killed, and their death attributed to "murder while trying to escape" - many of those who got to Dachau died there. But the real Dachau regime rested not so much on physical violence, no matter how terrible, no doubt, it was, but on moral humiliation.

Poland was despised by the Nazis for its "perpetual mess." In relation to the Poles, the Nazis had no disagreements. They despised them. The question was different - what to do with them. One of the main "problems" that the Nazis had to solve was the problem of the Polish Jews. Unlike Germany, where Jews made up less than 1% of the population and where most of them were assimilated, there were 3 million Jews in Poland, most of whom lived in communities; they were often easily recognizable by their beards and other "signs of their faith". After Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, immediately after the start of the war (under the terms of the secret part of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939), more than two million Polish Jews ended up in the German zone of occupation.

Another problem for the Nazis, which they themselves created, was finding housing for the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans who were then resettling in Poland. Under an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, ethnic Germans from the Baltic States, Bessarabia and other regions recently occupied by Stalin were allowed to emigrate to Germany - "to return home to the Reich", as the slogan of that time was. Obsessed with the notion of racial purity of "German blood", people like Himmler considered it their duty to enable all Germans to return to their homeland. But one difficulty arose: where, in fact, should they return?

By the spring of 1940, Poland was divided into two parts. There were areas that officially became "German" and entered the "New Reich" as new imperial districts - Reichsgau - Reichsgau West Prussia - Danzig (Gdansk); the Reichsgau Wartheland (also known as the Warthegau) in western Poland in the region of Posen (Poznan) and Lodz; and Upper Silesia in the Katowice region (it was this region that included Auschwitz). In addition, an entity called the General Government was created on the largest part of the former Polish territory, which included the cities of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin and was intended for the majority of Poles to live.

Over the course of a year and a half, about half a million ethnic Germans were settled in the new part of the Reich, while hundreds of thousands of Poles were evicted from there to make room for the arriving Germans. Many Poles were simply stuffed into boxcars and taken south to the General Government, where they were simply thrown out of the cars, left without food and without a roof over their heads. Not surprisingly, in January 1940, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Himmler is now engaged in the transfer of population. Not always successful.

With regard to the Jews, Himmler made a different decision: if the ethnic Germans needed living space, which was obvious, then they needed to take it away from the Jews and force them to live on a much smaller area than before. The solution to this problem was the creation of a ghetto. The ghettos, which became such a terrible sign of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Poland, were not originally created for the terrible conditions that eventually prevailed there. Like much else in the history of Auschwitz and the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the fatal changes that took place in the ghetto during its existence were not at first included in the plans of the Nazis.

The Nazis believed that, ideally, the Jews should simply be forced to “get away,” but since this was not possible at that time, they had to be isolated from everyone else: since, as the Nazis believed, Jews, especially Eastern Europeans, were carriers of all kinds of diseases. In February 1940, while the deportation of Poles to the General Government was in full swing, it was announced that all Jews of Łódź were to "relocate" to the ghetto area of ​​the city. Initially, such ghettos were planned only as a temporary measure, a place to imprison Jews before deporting them somewhere. In April 1940, the Lodz ghetto was taken under guard and Jews were forbidden to leave its territory without the permission of the German authorities.

Auschwitz was originally conceived as a transit concentration camp - in Nazi jargon "quarantine" - in which prisoners were to be held before being sent to other camps in the Reich. But just a few days after the camp was set up, it became clear that it would function independently as a place of permanent detention. The Auschwitz camp was designed to detain and intimidate Poles at a time when the entire country was being ethnically reorganized and the Poles as a nation were being intellectually and politically annihilated.

The first prisoners who arrived in Auschwitz in June 1940 were, however, not Poles, but Germans - 30 criminals transferred here from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They were to be the first kapos - prisoners to act as agents of SS control over Polish prisoners.

The first Polish prisoners of Auschwitz ended up in the camp for various reasons: on suspicion of working for the Polish underground, or because they were members of one of the social groups especially persecuted by the Nazis (such as priests and intellectuals), or simply because that some German did not like. Many of the first group of Polish prisoners transferred to the camp on June 14, 1940 from Tarnow Prison were university students. The very first task for all newly arrived prisoners was simple: they had to build their own camp. At this stage of the camp's existence, not many Jews were sent to Auschwitz, since the policy of creating ghettos throughout the country was still in full swing.

By the end of 1940, Rudolf Hess, the camp commandant, had already created the basic structures and principles according to which the camp would function for the next four years: kapos, who controlled every moment of the life of the prisoners; the cruelest regime, which allowed the guards to punish prisoners arbitrarily, at their discretion - often simply without any reason; the prevailing belief in the camp that if a prisoner failed to somehow elude a team sent to dangerous work, he would face a quick and unforeseen death.

By the end of 1940, Hess had already created the basic structures and principles according to which the camp would function for the next four years: the kapos, who controlled every moment of the life of the prisoners; the cruelest regime, which allowed the guards to punish prisoners arbitrarily, at their discretion - often simply without any reason; the prevailing belief in the camp that if a prisoner failed to somehow elude a team sent to dangerous work, he would face a quick and unforeseen death. But besides this, in those first months of the existence of the camp, another phenomenon was created that most clearly symbolized the Nazi camp culture - it was block 11. This block was a prison inside a prison - a place of torture and murder.

In 1941, Auschwitz, designed for 10 thousand prisoners, began to expand. Since July 1941, Soviet prisoners of war began to be sent to Osvents, mainly military political officers - commissars. From the moment they arrived at Auschwitz, the treatment of these prisoners was different from that of the rest. Incredible, but true - even considering the torture that was already happening in the camp: this group of prisoners was treated even worse. Jerzy Bielecki heard how they were being bullied even before he saw them themselves: “I remember terrible screams and groans ...” He and a friend approached a gravel quarry on the edge of the camp, and there they saw Soviet prisoners of war. “They were running wheelbarrows filled with sand and gravel,” says Beletsky. “It was not an ordinary camp work, but some kind of hell that the SS men specially created for Soviet prisoners of war.” The kapos beat the working commissars with sticks, and the SS guards watching all this cheered those up: “Come on, guys! Beat them!”

In 1941, Auschwitz prisoners became victims of a Nazi program called "adult euthanasia." At first, injections were used to kill the disabled, but then the use of carbon monoxide in cylinders became a favorite method. Initially, this took place in special centers, equipped mainly in former psychiatric hospitals. Gas chambers were built there, designed in such a way that they looked like showers.

Later, at the end of August or the beginning of September 1941, a more "effective way to destroy people" was found. The basement of unit 11 was hermetically sealed, and it naturally became the most suitable place to conduct an experiment with Zyklon B gas. By the beginning of 1942, "experiments" with the cyclone began to be carried out directly in the camp's crematorium, which was much more convenient... In the autumn of 1941, the deportation of German Jews began. Many of them ended up first in the ghetto, and then in Auschwitz and other camps. As part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", the gassing of "useless" Jews from the territories surrounding Auschwitz began.

In the autumn of 1941, 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war were sent to Auschwitz to build a new camp, Birkenau (Brzezinka). Polish prisoner Kazimierz Smolen witnessed their arrival. “It was already snowing, which is rare for October; they (Soviet prisoners of war) were unloaded from the wagons three kilometers from the camp. They were ordered to take off their clothes and plunge into vats of disinfectant solution, and they walked to Auschwitz (the main camp) already naked. They were completely exhausted. The Soviet prisoners were the first in the main camp to have camp numbers tattooed on their bodies.” It was another "improvement" invented at Auschwitz - the only camp in the Nazi state where the prisoners were identified in this way. The conditions of work and maintenance of our prisoners of war were so difficult that the average life expectancy of Soviet prisoners of war in Birkenau was two weeks ...

By the spring of 1942, Auschwitz began to emerge as a unique institution in the Nazi state. On the one hand, some prisoners were still taken into the camp, given a serial number and forced to work. On the other hand, there was now a whole category of people who were killed hours and sometimes minutes after they arrived. No other Nazi camp functioned in this way. There were death camps like Chełmno and concentration camps like Dachau; but nothing like Auschwitz.

After the defeat of the Germans near Moscow, Soviet prisoners of war were no longer sent to Auschwitz - they were sent to work in military factories, and their place in the camp was taken by deported Slovak Jews, and then French, Belgian and Dutch. In the spring of 1942, both women and children were sent to the camp, until that moment it had been a purely male institution. Jews arrived in trains, and if they were not fit for work, they were mercilessly disposed of. New gas chambers appeared in Auschwitz: "Red House", "White House". However, the process of extermination of people in Auschwitz remained inefficient and improvised. As a center of mass murder, Auschwitz was still far from "perfect" and its capacity was very limited...

In the history of Auschwitz and the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” 1943 marked a turning point. By the beginning of the summer of 1943, there were already four crematoria connected to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In total, these four crematoria were ready to destroy about 4,700 people daily. The crematoria and gas chambers of Birkenau became the center of a huge semi-industrial complex. Here, selected Jews were first sent to work in one of the many small camps nearby, and then, when they were deemed unfit for work after several months of horrendous treatment, they were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination zone, which was several kilometers from the work camps.

Over time, there were 28 subcamps operating around Auschwitz, which were located near various industrial facilities throughout Upper Silesia: from the cement factory in Holeszow to the weapons plant in Eintrachthutte, from the Upper Silesian power plant to the giant camp in Monowice, built to serve a chemical plant for the production of artificial rubber company I.G. Farben. About 10 thousand prisoners of Auschwitz (including the Italian scientist and writer Primo Levi, who after the war will try to comprehend the reasons for the cruelty of the Nazi regime in his books) were placed in Manowitz. By 1944, more than 40,000 prisoners were working as slaves in various industrial enterprises throughout Upper Silesia. It is roughly estimated that Auschwitz generated about 30 million marks in net income for the Nazi state by selling this forced labor to private concerns.

Auschwitz was famous for its medical experiments on prisoners. As part of the solution of the Jewish question, sterilization experiments were carried out. Auschwitz prisoners were even "sold" to Bayer, an affiliate of I.G. Farben as guinea pigs for testing new drugs. One of the messages from Bayer to the Auschwitz leadership reads: “A party of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain final results because they died during the experiments. We kindly ask you to send us another group of women in the same number and at the same price. These women, who died while testing experimental painkillers, cost the company 170 Reichsmarks each.

Auschwitz became the site of the largest massacres in history as a result of the events of 1944. Until the spring of that year, the number of victims in this camp was several hundred thousand people less than in Treblinka. But in the spring and early summer of 1944, Auschwitz began to operate at full capacity and even more, the period of the most monstrous and insane killings that this camp had ever seen began. Most of the Jews who suffered and died during this terrible time came from one country - Hungary.

The Hungarians have always tried to play a clever political game with the Nazis, consumed by two strong and conflicting feelings. On the one hand, they experienced a traditional fear of the power of Germany, and on the other, they really wanted to cooperate with the winning side, especially if the latter meant the opportunity to seize a piece of territory from their eastern neighbor, Romania.

In the spring of 1941, the Hungarians supported their ally - Germany in the capture of Yugoslavia, and later, in June, they sent troops to participate in the war against the Soviet Union. But when the promised "blitzkrieg" did not succeed, dragging on for a much longer period than expected, the Hungarians began to realize that they had taken the wrong side. In January 1943, the Red Army utterly defeated the Hungarian forces on the Eastern Front, causing catastrophic losses: Hungary lost about 150 thousand people killed, wounded or captured. The new "reasonable" position, decided the Hungarian leadership - to distance themselves from the Nazis.

In the spring of 1944, Hitler decided to send his troops into the territory of an unreliable ally. Hungary remained one of the few Eastern European countries that had not yet been plundered. This was a stunningly rich territory, and now, Hitler decided, it was time for the Nazis to seize this wealth. And of course, the local Jews became a special target of the Nazis. More than 760 thousand Jews lived in Hungary.

Due to the difficult military situation and the growing need for forced labor, the Nazis should have paid more attention to the selection of those Jews who could serve as physical labor for the German war economy, from those who were of no value to the Third Reich, and therefore had to be subjected to immediate destruction. Thus, from the point of view of the Nazis, Auschwitz became the ideal destination for the deportation of Hungarian Jews. It became a giant human sieve through which specially selected Jews could enter the Reich factories and factories that used slave labor. By July 1944, Auschwitz received 440,000 Hungarian Jews. In less than 8 weeks, more than 320 thousand people died here.

Everything was organized with German pedantry. The trains were unloaded in the basement of the crematorium. The gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 were located underground, so that the delivery of "cyclone B", when people were stuffed into the chamber and the door was closed behind them, was carried out almost directly. Standing outside, on the roof of the gas chamber, SS members opened the shutters, gaining access to the hidden pillars in the gas chamber. Then they placed canisters with Zyklon B in the columns and lowered them, and when the gas reached the bottom they again pushed and closed the shutters. The Sonderkommando was supposed to get the bodies out of the gas chamber, transport them using a small lift up to the crematorium ovens on the first floor. Then they went back into the cells, carrying powerful fire hoses, and washed away the blood and excrement that covered the floor and walls.

Even the hair of those killed in the prison camp was put into the service of the Reich. An order was received from the economic department of the SS: to collect human hair from two centimeters long so that threads could be spun from them. These threads were used to make "felt socks for submarine crews and felt hoses for the railway" ...

When the end came, everything happened incredibly quickly. In January 1945, the Nazis blew up the crematoria, and on January 27, Soviet soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front entered the camp complex. There were about 8 thousand prisoners in the camp, whom the Nazis did not have time to destroy, and 60 thousand were driven to the west. Rudolf Hess was executed at Auschwitz in April 1947. According to modern estimates, of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died in the camp. The staggering proportion of Jews amounted to 1 million people.

Despite the decision of the Nuremberg trials that the SS was, in general, a "criminal" organization, no one ever even tried to defend the position that, in itself, working in the ranks of the SS in Auschwitz was already a war crime, a position that would undoubtedly have been supported by the public opinion. The condemnation and sentencing, however mild, of every member of the SS from Auschwitz would no doubt convey the message very clearly to future generations. But that did not happen. Approximately 85% of the SS men who served in Auschwitz and survived the war escaped punishment.

Auschwitz and the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" represent the most heinous act in history. With their crime, the Nazis brought to the world an understanding of what educated, technically equipped people can do if they have a cold heart. The knowledge of what they did, once released into the world, must not be forgotten. It still lies there, ugly, heavy, waiting to be discovered by the next generation. A warning to us and to those who come after us.

The article is based on the book by Lawrence Rees “Auschwitz. The Nazis and the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, Moscow, Colibri, Azbuka-Anticus, 2014.

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This is the story of the triumph of blind cruelty, one and a half million deaths and silent human grief. Here, the last hopes crumbled to dust, in contact with hopelessness and terrible reality. Here, in a poisonous fog, shredded by pain and hardships of being, some said goodbye to relatives, loved ones, others to their own lives. This is the story of the Auschwitz concentration camp - the site of the most massacre in the history of mankind.

As illustrations, I use archival photographs of 2009. Unfortunately, many of them are of very poor quality.

Spring 1940. Rudolf Hess arrives in Poland. Then still the captain of the SS, Hess, was to create a concentration camp in the small town of Auschwitz (the German name for Auschwitz) located in the occupied territory.

It was decided to build a concentration camp on the site where once the barracks of the Polish army were located. Now they were in a neglected state, many were dilapidated.

The authorities set a difficult task for Hess - to create a camp for 10 thousand prisoners within a relatively short time. Initially, the Germans planned to keep Polish political prisoners here.

Since Hess had been working in the camp system since 1934, building another concentration camp was a matter of course for him. However, things did not go very smoothly at first. The SS did not yet consider the concentration camp in Auschwitz as a strategically important object and did not pay much attention to it. There were supply difficulties. Hess later wrote in his memoirs that once he needed a hundred meters of barbed wire and he just stole it.

One of the symbols of Auschwitz is a cynical inscription above the main gate of the camp. "Arbeit macht frei" - work makes free.

When the prisoners returned from work, an orchestra played at the entrance to the camp. This was necessary so that the prisoners kept their marching pace and so it was easier for the guards to count them.

The region itself was of considerable interest to the Third Reich, since the largest coal deposits were located 30 km from Auschwitz. Also, this region was rich in limestone reserves. Coal and limestone are valuable raw materials for the chemical industry, especially during times of war. Coal, for example, was used to produce synthetic gasoline.

The German syndicate IG Farbenindustrie decided to competently exploit the natural potential of the territory that had passed into the hands of the Germans. In addition, IG Farbenindustrie was interested in free labor, which could be provided by concentration camps packed to overflowing with prisoners.

It is important to note that the slave labor of the prisoners of the camps was used by many German companies, although some still prefer to deny this.

In March 1941, Himmler visited Auschwitz for the first time.

Nazi Germany subsequently wanted to build a model German city near Auschwitz with the money of IG Farbenindustrie. Ethnic Germans could live here. The local population, of course, would have to be deported.

Now in some barracks of the main Auschwitz camp there is a museum complex where photographs, documents of those years, things of prisoners, lists with surnames are stored.

Suitcases with numbers and names, artificial limbs, glasses, children's toys. All these things will keep the memory of the horror that happened here for several years for a long time to come.

People came here deceived. They were told they were being sent to work. Families took with them the best things, food. In fact, it was the road to the grave.

One of the most "difficult" elements of the exposition is a room where a huge amount of human hair is stored behind glass. I think I will remember the heavy smell in this room for the rest of my life.

In the photo - a warehouse where 7 tons of hair were found. The photo was taken after the camp was liberated.

By the onset of the summer of 1941, in the territory occupied by the invaders, execution campaigns assumed a large-scale character and began to be carried out constantly. Often the Nazis killed women and children at close range. Observing the situation, the highest ranks expressed concern to the leadership of the SS regarding the morale of the killers. The fact is that the execution procedure had a negative impact on the psyche of many German soldiers. There were fears that these people - the future of the Third Reich - were slowly turning into mentally unbalanced "beasts". The invaders needed to find an easier and less bloody way to effectively kill people.

Given the appalling conditions at Auschwitz, many quickly became incapacitated due to starvation, physical exhaustion, torture, and disease. For a certain time, prisoners unable to work were shot. Hess wrote in his memoirs about the negative attitude towards the shooting procedures, so the transition to a "cleaner" and faster method of killing people in the camp at that time would have been very helpful.

Hitler believed that the care and maintenance of mentally retarded and mentally ill people in Germany was an extra cost item for the Reich economy and it was pointless to spend money on this. Thus, in 1939, the murder of mentally retarded children was initiated. When the war began in Europe, adult patients began to be involved in this program.

By the summer of 1941, approximately 70,000 people had been killed as part of the adult euthanasia program. In Germany, the massacres of the sick were most often committed with the help of carbon monoxide. People were told that they had to undress to take a shower. They were brought into a room with pipes that were connected to gas cylinders, not to the water supply.

The adult euthanasia program is gradually expanding beyond Germany. At this time, the Nazis are faced with another problem - transporting carbon monoxide cylinders over long distances becomes a costly affair. The killers were given a new task - to reduce the cost of the process.

German documents of the time also mention experiments with explosives. After several terrible attempts to implement this project, when the German soldiers had to comb the area and collect the body parts of the victims scattered around the district, the idea was recognized as inappropriate.

Some time later, the negligence of one SS-Soviet, who fell asleep in a car with the engine running in the garage and almost suffocated with exhaust gases, prompted the Nazis to solve the problem of a cheap and quick way to kill the sick.

Doctors began to arrive in Auschwitz, who were looking for sick prisoners. For the prisoners, they specially invented a bike, according to which all the hype was reduced to the selection of patients to be sent for treatment. Many prisoners believed the promises and went to their deaths. Thus, the first prisoners of Auschwitz died in the gas chambers not at all in the camp, but in Germany.

In the early autumn of 1941, one of the deputy commandants of the Hess camp, Karl Fritsch, came up with the idea to test the effect of the gas on people. According to some reports, the first experiment with Zyklon B at Auschwitz was carried out in this room - a dark bunker converted into a gas chamber next to Hess's office.

An employee of the camp climbed onto the roof of the bunker, opened this hatch and poured powder into it. The chamber functioned until 1942. Then it was rebuilt into a bomb shelter for the SS-sheep.

This is what the interior of the former gas chamber looks like now.

Next to the bunker was a crematorium, where the corpses were taken on carts. As the bodies were burned, a greasy, gag-inducing, sweetish smoke billowed over the camp.

According to another version, Zyklon B was first used on the territory of Auschwitz in the 11th block of the camp. Fritsch ordered the basement of the building to be prepared for this purpose. After the first loading of Zyklon B crystals, not all the prisoners in the room died, so it was decided to increase the dose.

When Hess was informed about the results of the experiment, he calmed down. Now the SS soldiers did not have to stain their hands daily with the blood of executed prisoners. However, the gas experiment set in motion a terrifying mechanism that, in a few years, will turn Auschwitz into the site of the most mass murder of people in the history of mankind.

Block 11 was called a prison within a prison. This place had a bad reputation and was considered the most terrible in the camp. Zeki tried to bypass him. Here the delinquent prisoners were interrogated and tortured.

The cells of the block were always packed with people.

In the basement there was a punishment cell and solitary cells.

Among the measures of influence on prisoners in the 11th block, the so-called "standing punishment" was popular.

The prisoner was locked in a cramped, stuffy brick box, where he had to stand for several days. Prisoners were often left without food, so few people managed to get out of Block 11 alive.

In the courtyard of block 11 there is an execution wall and a gallows.

The gallows located here is not quite ordinary. It is a bar with a hook driven into the ground. The prisoner was hung up by his hands tied behind his back. Thus, the entire weight of the body fell on the everted shoulder joints. Since there was no strength to endure the hellish pain, many almost immediately lost consciousness.

At the execution wall, the Nazis shot the prisoners, usually in the back of the head. The wall is made of fibrous material. This is done so that the bullets do not ricochet.

According to available data, up to 8 thousand people were shot at this wall. Now flowers are lying here and candles are burning.

The territory of the camp is surrounded by a high barbed wire fence in several rows. During the functioning of Auschwitz, high voltage was applied to the wire.

The prisoners, who were unable to endure the suffering in the dungeons of the camp, threw themselves on the fences and thereby saved themselves from further torment.

Photographs of prisoners with dates of admission to the camp and death. Some did not manage to live here even for weeks.

In the next part of the story, we will talk about the giant death factory - the Birkenau camp located a few kilometers from Auschwitz, corruption in Auschwitz, medical experiments on prisoners and the "beautiful beast". I will show you a photo from the barracks in the women's part of Birkenau, the place where the gas chambers and the crematorium were located. I will also tell you about the life of people in the dungeons of the camp and about the further fate of Auschwitz and his superiors after the end of the war.

These photographs show the life and martyrdom of Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Some of these photos can be traumatic. Therefore, we ask children and mentally unstable people to refrain from viewing these photos.

Prisoners of the Flossenburg death camp after being liberated by the US 97th Infantry Division in May 1945. The emaciated prisoner in the center, a 23-year-old Czech, is sick with dysentery.

Ampfing concentration camp prisoners after their release.

View of the concentration camp at Grini in Norway.

Soviet prisoners in the Lamsdorf concentration camp (Stalag VIII-B, now the Polish village of Lambinovice.

The bodies of the executed SS guards at the observation tower "B" of the Dachau concentration camp.

View of the barracks of the Dachau concentration camp.

Soldiers of the US 45th Infantry Division show the bodies of prisoners in a wagon at the Dachau concentration camp to teenagers from the Hitler Youth.

View of the Buchenwald barracks after the liberation of the camp.

American generals George Patton, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower in the Ohrdruf concentration camp at the fire, where the Germans burned the bodies of prisoners.

Soviet prisoners of war in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war eating in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war near the barbed wire of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoner of war at the barracks of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

British prisoners of war on the stage of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp theater.

Captured British corporal Eric Evans with three comrades at the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Burnt bodies of prisoners of the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

Bodies of prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Women from the SS guards of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp unload the corpses of prisoners for burial in a mass grave. They were attracted to these works by the allies who liberated the camp. Around the moat is a convoy of English soldiers. Former guards are banned from wearing gloves as a punishment to put them at risk of contracting typhus.

Six British prisoners in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners are talking to a German officer in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Soviet prisoners of war change clothes in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Group photo of allied prisoners (British, Australians and New Zealanders) in the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

An orchestra of captured allies (Australians, British and New Zealanders) on the territory of the Stalag XVIIIA concentration camp.

Captured Allied soldiers play the game Two Up for cigarettes in the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

Two British prisoners at the wall of the barracks of the Stalag 383 concentration camp.

A German soldier-escort at the Stalag 383 concentration camp market, surrounded by captured allies.

Group photo of allied prisoners in the Stalag 383 concentration camp on Christmas Day 1943.

The barracks of the Vollan concentration camp in the Norwegian city of Trondheim after liberation.

A group of Soviet prisoners of war outside the gates of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad after liberation.

SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber on vacation in the commandant's quarters of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

Commandant of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Hauptscharführer Karl Denk (left) and SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber (right) in the commandant's room.

Five released prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp at the gate.

Prisoners of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) on vacation during a break between work in the field.

SS-Oberscharführer Erich Weber, an employee of the Falstadt concentration camp

SS non-commissioned officers K. Denk, E. Weber and Luftwaffe sergeant R. Weber with two women in the commandant's office of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad.

An employee of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad, SS Oberscharführer Erich Weber in the kitchen of the commandant's house.

Soviet, Norwegian and Yugoslav prisoners of the Falstad concentration camp on vacation at the logging site.

The head of the women's block of the Norwegian concentration camp Falstad (Falstad) Maria Robbe (Maria Robbe) with the police at the gates of the camp.

Captured Soviet soldiers in the camp at the beginning of the war.

The word Auschwitz (or Auschwitz) in the minds of many people is a symbol or even the quintessence of evil, horror, death, the concentration of the most unimaginable inhuman fanaticism and torture. Many today dispute what former prisoners and historians say happened here. This is their personal right and opinion. But having been to Auschwitz and seeing with my own eyes huge rooms filled with... glasses, tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, tons of cut hair and... children's things... You have an emptiness inside. And the hair is moving in horror. The horror of realizing that this hair, glasses and shoes belonged to a living person. Maybe a postman, maybe a student. An ordinary worker or a merchant in the market. Or a girl. Or a seven year old. Which they cut off, removed, thrown into a common pile. To another hundred of the same. Auschwitz. A place of evil and inhumanity.

Young student Tadeusz Uzhinsky arrived in the first echelon with prisoners As I said in yesterday's report, the Auschwitz concentration camp began to function in 1940, being a camp for Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners of Auschwitz were 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow. At the time of its foundation, there were 20 buildings in the camp - former Polish military barracks. Some of them were converted for mass detention of people, and 6 more buildings were additionally built. The average number of prisoners ranged from 13-16 thousand people, and in 1942 it reached 20 thousand. The Auschwitz camp became the base camp for a whole network of new camps - in 1941, the Auschwitz II - Birkenau camp was built 3 km away, and in 1943 - Auschwitz III - Monowitz. In addition, in the years 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, built near metallurgical plants, factories and mines, which were subordinate to the Auschwitz III concentration camp. And the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau camps have completely turned into a plant for the destruction of people.

In 1943, a tattoo of the prisoner's number was introduced on the arm. Infants and young children were most often numbered on the thigh. According to the Auschwitz State Museum, this concentration camp was the only Nazi camp in which prisoners were tattooed with numbers.

Depending on the reasons for the arrest, the prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, together with the numbers, were sewn onto camp clothes. Political prisoners were supposed to have a red triangle, criminals - green. Gypsies and anti-social elements received black triangles, Jehovah's Witnesses - purple, homosexuals - pink. The Jews wore a six-pointed star, consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for the arrest. Soviet prisoners of war had a patch in the form of the letters SU. The camp clothes were quite thin and provided little protection from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even once a month, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies

Prisoners in the Auschwitz I camp lived in brick blocks, in Auschwitz II-Birkenau - mainly in wooden barracks. Brick blocks were only in the women's section of the Auschwitz II camp. During the entire existence of the Auschwitz I camp, about 400 thousand prisoners of various nationalities, Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of corps No. 11, who were awaiting the conclusion of the Gestapo police tribunal, were registered here. One of the disasters of camp life was verification, which checked the number of prisoners. They lasted for several, and sometimes more than 10 hours (for example, 19 hours on July 6, 1940). The camp authorities very often announced penal checks, during which the prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were verifications when they had to keep their hands up for several hours.

Living conditions in different periods were very different, but they were always catastrophic. The prisoners, who were brought in at the very beginning by the first echelons, slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor.

Later, hay bedding was introduced. They were thin mattresses stuffed with a small amount of it. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people.

With the increase in the number of prisoners in the camp, it became necessary to compact their accommodation. There were three-tiered bunks. There were 2 people on one level. In the form of bedding, as a rule, there was rotten straw. The prisoners were covered with rags and what was. In the Auschwitz camp, the bunks were wooden, in Auschwitz-Birkenau both wooden and brick with wooden flooring.

The toilet of the Auschwitz I camp, compared with the conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, looked like a real miracle of civilization.

toilet hut in Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

Washroom. The water was only cold and the prisoner had access to it for only a few minutes a day. The prisoners were allowed to wash extremely rarely, and for them it was a real holiday.

The plate with the number of the residential block on the wall

Until 1944, when Auschwitz became an extermination factory, most of the prisoners were sent to grueling labor every day. At first they worked on the expansion of the camp, and then they were used as slaves in the industrial facilities of the Third Reich. Every day columns of emaciated slaves left and entered through the gate with the cynical inscription "Arbeit macht Frei" (Work makes free). The prisoner had to do the work by running, without a second of rest. The pace of work, meager portions of food and constant beatings increased mortality. During the return of prisoners to the camp, dead or exhausted, who could not move on their own, were dragged or carried in wheelbarrows. And at this time, a brass band consisting of prisoners played for them near the gates of the camp.

For every inhabitant of Auschwitz, Block 11 was one of the scariest places. Unlike other blocks, its doors were always closed. The windows were completely walled up. Only on the first floor there were two windows - in the room where the SS men were on duty. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the emergency police court, which came to the Auschwitz camp from Katowice once or twice a month. Within 2-3 hours of his work, he passed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.

The cramped cells, in which there were sometimes a huge number of people awaiting sentence, had only a tiny barred window right up to the ceiling. And from the side of the street, near these windows, there were tin boxes that blocked these windows from the influx of fresh air.

Those sentenced before being shot were forced to undress in this room. If there were few of them that day, then the sentence was carried out right here.

If there were many sentenced, they were taken to the "Wall of Death", which was located behind a high fence with blank gates between buildings 10 and 11. Large digits of their camp number were applied with an ink pencil on the chest of the undressed people (until 1943, when tattoos appeared on the arm), so that later it would be easy to identify the corpse.

Under the stone fence in the courtyard of Unit 11, a large wall of black insulating boards was built, sheathed with absorbent material. This wall became the last facet of the lives of thousands of people sentenced to death by the Gestapo court for their unwillingness to betray their homeland, attempted flight and political "crimes".

The fibers of death. The condemned were shot by the reporter or members of the political department. To do this, they used a small-caliber rifle so as not to attract too much attention with the sounds of shots. After all, not far away was a stone wall, beyond which there was a highway.

In the Auschwitz camp there was a whole system of punishments for prisoners. It can also be called one of the fragments of their deliberate destruction. The prisoner was punished for picking an apple or finding a potato in the field, defecation while working, or for working too slowly. One of the most terrible places of punishment, often leading to the death of a prisoner, was one of the basements of the 11th building. Here, in the back room, there were four narrow vertical sealed punishment cells measuring 90x90 centimeters in perimeter. In each of them there was a door with a metal bolt at the bottom.

Through this door, the punished was forced to squeeze inside and closed it with a bolt. In this cage, a person could only be standing. So he stood without food and water for as long as the SS wanted. Often this was the last punishment in the prisoner's life.

Directions of punished prisoners to standing punishment cells

In September 1941, the first attempt was made to mass exterminate people with gas. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital were placed in small batches in airtight cells in the basement of building 11.

Copper pipelines with valves have already been laid along the walls of the chambers. Gas entered the chambers through them ...

The names of the destroyed people were entered in the "Book of the Daily Status" of the Auschwitz camp

Lists of people sentenced to death by the Emergency Police Court

Found notes left by those sentenced to death on scraps of paper

In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp with their parents. These were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most of the Jewish children perished in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. The rest, after a strict selection, were sent to the camp, where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults.

Children were registered and photographed in the same way as adults and were labeled as political prisoners.

One of the most terrible pages in the history of Auschwitz was medical experiments by SS doctors. Including over children. So, for example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method for the biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10. Dr. Josef Mengele, within the framework of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities. In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and preparations, toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin grafts were performed, etc.

Conclusion on the results of X-rays carried out during experiments with twins by Dr. Mengele.

Letter from Heinrich Himmler ordering the start of a series of sterilization experiments

Maps of records of anthropometric data of experimental prisoners in the framework of Dr. Mengele's experiments.

Pages of the register of the dead, which indicate the names of 80 boys who died after being injected with phenol as part of medical experiments

List of released prisoners admitted to a Soviet hospital for treatment

Since the autumn of 1941, a gas chamber began to function in the Auschwitz camp, in which Zyklon B gas is used. It was produced by the Degesch company, which in the period 1941-1944 received about 300 thousand marks of profit from the sale of this gas. To kill 1,500 people, according to the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, about 5-7 kg of gas were needed.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, a huge number of used Zyklon B cans and cans with unused contents were found in the camp warehouses. For the period 1942-1943, according to documents, about 20 thousand kg of Zyklon B crystals were delivered to Auschwitz alone.

Most of the Jews doomed to death arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the conviction that they were being taken "to a settlement" in Eastern Europe. This was especially true of Jews from Greece and Hungary, to whom the Germans even sold non-existent building plots and land or offered work in fictitious factories. That is why people sent to the camp for destruction often brought with them the most valuable things, jewelry and money.

Upon arrival at the unloading platform, all things and valuables were taken away from people, SS doctors selected the deported people. Those who were deemed incapacitated were sent to the gas chambers. According to Rudolf Goess, there were about 70-75% of those who arrived.

Things found in the warehouses of Auschwitz after the liberation of the camp

Model of the gas chamber and crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau. People were convinced that they were being sent to the bathhouse, so they appear relatively calm.

Here, the prisoners are forced to take off their clothes and are taken to the next room, which imitates a bathhouse. Shower holes were located under the ceiling, through which water never flowed. About 2,000 people were brought into a room of about 210 square meters, after which the doors were closed and gas was supplied to the room. People were dying within 15-20 minutes. Gold teeth were pulled out from the dead, rings and earrings were removed, women's hair was cut off.

After that, the corpses were transported to the crematorium ovens, where the fire hummed continuously. In the event of an overflow of the ovens or at a time when the pipes were damaged by overloading, the bodies were destroyed in the places of burning behind the crematoria. All these actions were carried out by prisoners belonging to the so-called Sonderkommando group. At the peak of the activity of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, its number was about 1000 people.

Photo taken by one of the members of the Sonderkommando, which shows the process of burning dead people.

In the Auschwitz camp, the crematorium was located behind the camp fence. Its largest room was the mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber.

Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the ghetto located on the territory of Upper Silesia were exterminated.

In the second hall there were three double furnaces, in which up to 350 bodies were burned during the day.

In one retort, 2-3 corpses were placed.

wrote February 6 at 14:44

Yes, remember that it is no longer there, like the USSR. To fall apart is a common property of empires, sooner or later.

Lara, you constantly always and everywhere write that the USSR collapsed, since all empires are disintegrating. I agree, there is nothing eternal in the world. I’m not sure that you even need my comment here, it’s impossible to convince anyone on the Internet, but I’ll write it anyway.

The collapse of the USSR was not due to a collapse in oil prices. No, this, of course, also played a role, but this is rather the tenth case, if not the twentieth. In 1990 There was a referendum in which 70% of the country's population voted for the Union. Yeltsin repeatedly stated that Russia would never leave the Union, even if it remained alone in it.

So what happened? It is no longer a secret that our American friends have invested a lot of money in the project of dismembering the USSR.
Where did they go? In such cases, the press is necessarily hired, which begins to distort history, hammering people into the right opinion.
Secondly, their own people in the economy are beginning to engage in sabotage. Here, the products are hidden, and the goods are no longer shipped where they need to be shipped. Gorbachev himself once stated that in the autumn of 1991. about 20 echelons with meat could not get to Moscow.
What about Gorbachev. My uncle worked as a truck driver then. So, he is going to Moscow from Belgorod, carrying meat. For 100 km. in front of Moscow at the traffic police post he is stopped by incomprehensible people and asked what he is carrying. Upon learning, they are ordered to return back. And the police stand nearby and just watch.

So was there a conspiracy? No one will write anywhere at the present time - I am such and such a spy, I participated in the dismemberment of the USSR. American money is gone, isn't it just in the sand?!
Even Dostoevsky in "Demons" described how five revolutionaries can make a complete mess in the city. Dostoevsky was in a revolutionary circle and he took all this from life. If there were secret societies then, why couldn't they reappear in the 80s in the USSR?
However, you deny the conspiracy theory, and to prove something to you here is simply unrealistic.

Now about history. About how historical documents are forged, I already wrote to you. In any case, you remained of your opinion - Stalin and everything connected with him is bad and terrible. I don't see the point in returning to this topic.
I propose to consider how people are brainwashed by the topic of Afghanistan - today is just the day for the withdrawal of troops.

Why did an empire called the USSR send troops there? To nip in the bud the processes that are now going on throughout the East, from Kyrgyzstan to Tanzania, and from China to Mauritania. The USSR wanted to put Afghanistan on a peaceful footing. There were just not very many of these same Mujahideen, but here, again, the Good Empire helped. We fought with them, or rather not with them, but with their mercenaries - everything is clear here.
The war lasted for almost 10 years, although in a good way it still cannot be called a real war. In any case, the USSR withdrew its troops.

Have we lost the war? I would not say so, because then Najibula was firmly seated there for almost 4 years.

From the Kremlin, they promise to the last, pull rubber, and then they simply throw their faithful ally. Although, in a good way, Najibula would have found fuel himself. So was there a betrayal from Moscow? Definitely! But at present, the media somehow do not like to discuss this topic, because here a thinking person will begin to spin the thread further. Why did the Russian government suddenly decide to saw off one leg on a stool by a chair?.... It was after this that we got Chechnya with the Wahabis and Dagestan?.... There can be no emptiness in the world. Either you advance and dictate your own rules, or you will live by someone else's rules. Lara, you live in Israel, I think you understand this like no one else.

No one will ever say - I'm a fool, I was fooled from the TV. At the same time, many people do not know a lot of things, but in an aggressive form they submit their own opinion. How to call them? Only zombies - they honestly and sincerely think that they lived not under Brezhnev, but under Stalin. Zombies think only in a given direction, repeating like a mantra: Stalin, Beria, Gulag .....