Question: Account for the historical centrality and symbolic weight of 'Auschwitz'.
The historical centrality and symbolic weight of Auschwitz are a result of its infamous working conditions and death toll, its massive size and high-tech killing facilities, and that its survivors ensured that its harrowing stories were known. The largest and most high-tech of the Nazi extermination camps, its facilities are illustrative of genocide and concentration on an industrial scale; attributes which certainly contribute to its placing at the forefront of historical atrocities. Auschwitz's extermination facilities at its sub camp Birkenau are estimated to have murdered at least one million individuals, and its network of labour-exploitive sub camps tens …show more content…
In the summer of 1941, however, Heinrich Himmler requested Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss to Berlin to verbally inform him of his future plans for Auschwitz:
'Yes. In the summer of 1941 1 was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect--I do not remember the exact words--that the Fuhrer had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, must carry out that order. [...] He had chosen Auschwitz on account of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site offered space for measures ensuring …show more content…
For a period of time Auschwitz was effectively the only centre specifically oriented towards the mass murder of Jews. With its expanded killing facilities, Auschwitz is estimated to be responsible for approximately one in six Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. However, most Soviet and Polish Jews had already been murdered before Auschwitz became a major site of extermination. Moreover, three quarters of the Jews who would be murdered in the Holocaust were already dead before the main gas chamber and crematoria were operational at Birkenau in 1943. But groups of Jews deported to the other extermination camps, such as Treblinka and Bełżec, were entirely murdered, and the camps themselves dismantled and hidden prior to the Soviet advance. With no survivors to speak of their experiences, and little physical remains of the camps, their names are far less often
The historical centrality and symbolic weight of Auschwitz are a result of its infamous working conditions and death toll, its massive size and high-tech killing facilities, and that its survivors ensured that its harrowing stories were known. The largest and most high-tech of the Nazi extermination camps, its facilities are illustrative of genocide and concentration on an industrial scale; attributes which certainly contribute to its placing at the forefront of historical atrocities. Auschwitz's extermination facilities at its sub camp Birkenau are estimated to have murdered at least one million individuals, and its network of labour-exploitive sub camps tens …show more content…
In the summer of 1941, however, Heinrich Himmler requested Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss to Berlin to verbally inform him of his future plans for Auschwitz:
'Yes. In the summer of 1941 1 was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect--I do not remember the exact words--that the Fuhrer had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, must carry out that order. [...] He had chosen Auschwitz on account of its easy access by rail and also because the extensive site offered space for measures ensuring …show more content…
For a period of time Auschwitz was effectively the only centre specifically oriented towards the mass murder of Jews. With its expanded killing facilities, Auschwitz is estimated to be responsible for approximately one in six Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. However, most Soviet and Polish Jews had already been murdered before Auschwitz became a major site of extermination. Moreover, three quarters of the Jews who would be murdered in the Holocaust were already dead before the main gas chamber and crematoria were operational at Birkenau in 1943. But groups of Jews deported to the other extermination camps, such as Treblinka and Bełżec, were entirely murdered, and the camps themselves dismantled and hidden prior to the Soviet advance. With no survivors to speak of their experiences, and little physical remains of the camps, their names are far less often