When Allied forces entered the Auschwitz camp complex on January 27, 1945, they discovered a scene of mass extermination unlike anything the world had witnessed before. After Germany invaded Poland and sparked World War II, the SS converted Auschwitz I into a prisoner of war camp. Construction soon began on Auschwitz II–Birkenau, which would become the site of countless atrocities.
Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, approximately 1.1 million were killed. The scale of the horror was difficult to grasp, but the world would soon learn even more shocking details from survivors who reported the ghastly truth of what had occurred.
When Adolf Hitler assumed control of Germany as chancellor from 1933 to 1945, he implemented a policy of mass extermination. This Nazi ideology became known as the Final Solution to the Jewish question. Before the start of World War II, Germany already operated multiple concentration camps that served as detention centers for Jews, political prisoners, and other enemies of the Nazi state. These early camps were only a foreshadowing of what was to come.
As the Nazis invaded Poland, they established concentration camps in former Polish army barracks. Rudolf Höss oversaw the development of the initial camp and served as its first commandant. Auschwitz was likely chosen because it sat at a junction of 44 parallel railway lines, which could easily transport prisoners of war.
Höss ordered the construction of a crematorium, initially intended to burn the bodies of executed prisoners or those who had died. By May 1942, three ovens had been installed that could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours. These ovens soon began to be used to kill prisoners who were still alive. The crematoriums became a symbol of the ruthlessness of the Nazi regime and its disregard for human life. The Nazis would eventually construct a total of five such facilities.
When Heinrich Himmler visited the camp in March 1941, he ordered that it be expanded to accommodate even more victims. This led to the construction of a second camp in close proximity to the original, called Auschwitz II–Birkenau, which was completed in October 1941. The original camp could hold about 15,000 prisoners of war, while Birkenau could hold more than 90,000. This expansion ensured that Birkenau would become the site of countless atrocities.
The prisoners included a majority of Jews, who composed nearly 1.1 million of the 1.3 million total prisoners. The other 200,000 prisoners were predominantly non-Jewish Poles, Roma people, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, and those deemed mentally unfit for Hitler’s grand plan for Europe.
When the Soviet Red Army finally reached Auschwitz, they found a giant pile of shoes left behind by the victims. The photograph of that pile remains powerful and haunting, exemplifying the brutality of a regime for which human life meant nothing.
Prisoners arrived at Auschwitz crammed into cattle wagons in the worst conditions imaginable. Upon arrival, they were given triangular pieces of cloth sewn into their jackets above their prisoner numbers. By July 1942, a large portion of those sent to the camps were of Jewish descent. These victims were examined by Nazi doctors, and those considered unfit for work were immediately sent to take a shower in bathrooms that were actually disguised gas chambers.
These lethal showers were used to reduce the number of unfit prisoners, including young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the mentally or physically infirm. Once inside the gas chambers, prisoners were exposed to a lethal poison gas called Zyklon B. One of the greatest tragedies of this process was that these prisoners were never registered in the Nazi database, making it impossible to determine the true extent of the atrocities committed against the weak and the old.
Political prisoners wore red triangles sewn into their shirts, while German criminals wore green. Prostitutes, gypsies, and Roma people wore black, and homosexuals wore pink. Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge in the design of the Star of David. Nationality was indicated by a letter stitched into the clothing. This system created a racial hierarchy, with German prisoners at the top, followed by non-Jewish prisoners from various countries, and Jewish prisoners at the bottom.
Those who survived the initial gas chambers were forced into a life of slavery. Many died from over-exhaustion, disease, and lack of nutrition. For the men, the day began at 4:30 a.m., with women rising even earlier. A block supervisor would ring a gong signaling the start of daily labor, then go around beating inmates with a stick to make them use the latrine quickly. The sanitary arrangements were horrible and led to many infections and diseases.
For breakfast, prisoners received only 500 milligrams of coffee substitute. A second gong would call all inmates outside to stand in neat rows of ten for counting. They would be forced to stand outside for hours until SS officers completed the count. Work would then commence, with no rest periods allowed. Even latrine breaks were recorded so officers could control every free second of the inmates’ lives.
Lunch was served at midday and consisted of a watery soup reported to be disgusting and unhygienic. The evening meal was a measly 300 grams of bread, mostly moldy and unfit for eating. After the day’s work ended, a second roll call would take place where floggings and hangings were common. If any prisoner was missing, the rest would be forced to stand in roll call until the missing prisoner was found.
At night, exhausted prisoners would go to rest and receive their mail. Jewish prisoners were not allowed any mail and were kept deprived of any family news. For sleep, thousands of prisoners were forced into a single wooden or brick barrack. As soon as the nighttime curfew gong sounded, Auschwitz would go completely silent.
In the darkness of night, one man continued his experiments. Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death, conducted crude and inhumane experiments on Jewish prisoners. He experimented on babies no older than a few months old, and his genocidal nature prolonged the suffering of hundreds of thousands of victims.
In 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, finding approximately 7,800 sick detainees. An estimated 60,000 had been sent on a grueling death march, where many more lost their lives. More than a million people died in this horrific tragedy. The pain and sacrifices of those people should never be forgotten, lest the world face another tragedy like it.