Effective killing, it was the task of the largest of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Here people are not just killed like in many areas of execution by SS death squads in occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death factories in occupied Poland. In Auschwitz the victims before it was exploited all unimaginable ways. Who else was able to work, he was forced to do it in the most difficult conditions until, until from it (or from it) has nothing more to squeeze. Then they entered the gas chambers, which had already destroyed all those who were too young or too old, too weak or too sick to ensure that their General “worth” to register.
Because in the camp Auschwitz, located in annexed East Upper Silesia, the mass murder committed by a new, until then unimaginable, to some extent industrially, this place has become a symbol of the entire Holocaust. And so recently deceased Roman Herzog (Roman Herzog) announced in 1996, being the President of Germany, 27 January Day of commemoration in memory of the victims of national socialism.
In the middle of the day in 1945 advance units of the red Army almost simultaneously reached the main camp on the river Ash and the giant camp of the barracks of Birkenau. Here they came across terribly emaciated prisoners and corpses did not have time to burn tens of thousands of prisoners were driven, from 20 January 1945, in the columns row to the West. Images shot almost without exception one or two days later, went around the world and have a clear memory of mankind.
Auschwitz was the center of the Holocaust, despite the fact that here was forcibly put to death “only” about every sixth victim of Nazi racial madness. At three sites the murder of “Operation Reinhard” in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka was killed, apparently, from 1.7 to 2 million people. Death squads shot and killed in the gas chambers at least three quarters of a million people, about the same number were killed during the punitive actions of the German police or the Eastern auxiliary units.
For example, in the Baltic States and in Romania, the local anti-Semites killed and without German participation after it was announced that Jews must be destroyed. From 1.3 to two million Jews died because of unbearable living conditions in the ghetto and other concentration camps, or in shelters, where they first escaped.
All of this represents a Auschwitz, a fairly well preserved main camp and Birkenau. Here, in addition to gates, the well preserved fences, watchtowers, and the remains of barracks and also the infamous rails of the platform and the remains of the crematoria and the gas chambers.
According to documents in the archives of the memorial complex for the period from may 1940 to January 1945 in Auschwitz were deported not less 1.084.457 Jews from more than a dozen European countries. At least this much, since almost every one of overcrowded trains, people die on the way there from starvation or by suicide. Sometimes a number of corpses were recorded, to establish whether it would be possible to run any of the deportees.
In addition to them, there has been delivered 140 thousand poles who were not Jews, 21 thousand Sinti and Roma, as well as 40 thousand persons of other nationalities. Of these, a total of 1.3 million arrived at Auschwitz people were officially registered slightly more than 40 thousand. And others immediately upon arrival was destroyed in one of the seven complexes in the gas chambers. More than 220 thousand prisoners of Auschwitz were sent to the SS to 1945 in other concentration camps, including marches, bombings in January, 1945.
The peak of his terrible destruction of people reached in may 1944. 31 days to a new platform Birkenau arrived 228.674 person. Here the doctors of the SS or regular security guards “were breeding”, who immediately sent to the gas chamber, and who, as a prisoner, is a slave, actually will be sent to a concentration camp.
90% of deported this month was from Hungary, where a group of experts of the SS under the leadership of Adolf Eichmann (Adolf Eichmann) has organized a real hunt for people. In may 1944, the murder took place so often that it was soon overwhelmed as the gas chambers and crematoria.
At the end of this month or the beginning of June 1944, were also made famous photos of Auschwitz, which is now kept in the Israeli memorial complex Yad Vashem (Yad Vashem) and gives some indication about the orders in Birkenau. This album of photographs taken, apparently, one of the German SS, contains 193 photographs of the arrival of the deportation of Hungary. Anywhere else a nightmare of selection is not depicted so clearly as here. More than a dozen people was identified, and for most it was the last photo.
The exact distribution by month data on the deportation shows the consistency of the mass murders in Auschwitz. Since then, in March of 1942, Birkenau was put into operation the first temporary gas chamber (in the main camp in the autumn of 1941 carried out the killing gas, Zyklon B), but within two months was deported less than five thousand people. In most cases it was between eight and thirty thousand, some months, until may 1944, it was almost 60 thousand. Specially designed, especially “effective” four death factories was launched in 1943.
For the future the experts on the burning of the Erfurt firm Topf & Söhne has prepared a completely new development in order to quickly allow almost completely destroy the remains of dead people: a continuously running furnace of the crematorium, which was supposed to operate on the principle of firing bricks.
For Auschwitz, in contrast to factories of death “Operation Reinhard”, which was destroyed in the 1943-44 years were contemplated for the long term. Here was supposed to be SS the city, which was also a labor camp for slaves and objects for mass destruction. Some of these detailed plans suddenly appeared in 2008 and was presented to the public on the joint exhibition of Newspapers “Welt” and “Bild”, the originals are in Yad Vashem.
In the eyes of the SS selected the destruction of people on the model of Auschwitz itself. It is supposed to be in Nazi Europe after the “final victory” of the Third Reich. This has not happened, as the allies crushed Hitler’s Germany. And yet on the Day of the liberation of Auschwitz commemorate the six million victims of the Holocaust.
