Concentration Camps

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of Krakow, Poland, Auschwitz was home to both the greatest number of forced
laborers and deaths.
The history of the camp began on April 27, 1940 when Heinrich Himmler,
the head of the SS and Gestapo, ordered the construction of the camp in
northeast Silesia, a region captured by the Nazis in September 1939. The camp
was built by three-hundred Jewish prisoners from the local town of Oswiecim
and its surrounding area. In June of 1940 the camp opened for Polish
political prisoners. By 1941 there were about 11,000 prisoners, most of whom
were Polish. From May 1940 to the end of 1943, Rudolf Hess was head
commander of Auschwitz. Under his leadership, Auschwitz quickly became known
as the harshest prison camp in the Nazi regime. Polish prisoners were forced
to stand at attention for roll call for hours on end naked in the cold, snowy
tundra of Polish winter. Following its first year of existence, Heinrich
Himmler visited Auschwitz and told Hess that its labor resource ...

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upon by Hess as
expendable labor due to their inferior abilities and physical weakness. Of
the 12,000 prisoners who were sent to Birkenau in 1941, only 150 survived to
the following summer. Some prisoners were assigned to the most gruesome
task -- that of the Sonderkommando. These prisoners were forced to work in
the crematoria, burning the Jews who had just been gassed. All prisoners who
were selected for forced labor were tattooed with numbers on their left arms.
Any slip, outburst, or failure to comply with the guards resulted in
immediate death. Because executions by gunfire were inefficient, expensive,
and potentially identifiable, intoxication by poison gas--a ...

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