Auschwitz-Birkenau During The Holocaust

Auschwitz-Birkenau was a concentration camp during the Holocaust, during WWII. The camp opened in 1940. It was the largest concentration camp. It included three main camps. One million Jewish men, women, and children were deported, and 960,000 of them died. The SS and police deported millions to the camp. There were three main camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, Auschwitz III. Auschwitz I was a labor camp and the main camp of the facility. Auschwitz II was mostly holding of the Prisoners, there they held most of the prisoners. There were three sections in Auschwitz II for men, women and children. Auschwitz III was also known as Buna or Monowitz was established in 1942. It contained prisoners that were working on rubber. “Auschwitz III also had …show more content…
It was here where they executed thousands of prisoners. Auschwitz also had a crematorium and a gas chamber to make killing more easy. They had many gas chambers, but they soon put up a bigger permanent one that is still there. Auschwitz was a killing ground and had the most prisoners to execute. (Holocaust Memorial Museum 1-2). Auschwitz was used for many reasons. They killed million using crematoriums, gas chambers, or just put them up against a wall and shot them. They also did terrible experiments including pseudo scientific experiments on twins, dwarves, and infants. But it wasn't just the Jews they killed and Executed. They also killed Catholics, Homosexuals, and African Americans. Auschwitz's first commander was known as Rudolf Hoss.At the main gate of Auschwitz, Jews and other prisoners saw a sign that said “Arbeit Macht Frei, which meant “Work Will Set You Free”. Before Auschwitz was a concentration and death camp, it was a former military base. These concentration camps were set up by Hitler to eradicate “The Jewish problem”. He called it the “Final solution”. The only way for him to solve this problem was to set up these concentration camps to kill all the …show more content…
The Soviets entered the camp and found disaster including emaciated detainees. Mostly Jews were the ones to enter Auschwitz and when they did they were examined by doctors who were also Jews. These doctors are different than the other German doctors who performed messed up experiments. People survived the gas chambers, they died from overworking, diseases, and having not enough nutrition. Acts of execution and torture happened on a daily basis in front of other prisoners to make an example of them to influence other prisoners or workers to not disobey. When the Soviets invaded, 7,600 people, that were sick, were left behind. The majority of the Jews lost their lives at Auschwitz. As the Soviets were coming up on Auschwitz it was evacuated and the people to survive were to be moved to different concentration camps, a lot died before making their way to the next camp. They had to eat snow during the walk to survive. Mengele “The Angel of Death” also experimented on Jews and other prisoners in effort to study eye color (History.com Staff