Lookouts, barbed wire, barracks ... We all have images of Auschwitz in mind. But how was this extermination camp created?
April 1940: Himmler, the commander of the SS, orders to set up a camp in Oswiecim, in the south of Poland. In German, this city is called Auschwitz.
In June 1940, the first transport of Polish prisoners arrived. A year later, the camp brought together 11,000 detainees. At the same period, Himmler asked for its extension and ordered the construction of a second camp on the site of the neighboring village of Birkenau.
Originally, it was intended to accommodate prisoners of war. But a few months later, Birkenau was designated to become the assembly and extermination camp for Jews from Western Europe. This started in early 1942.
A planned death enterprise
At least 1.3 million people are deported to Auschwitz: Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. They are men, women, children, old people ... In total, 1.1 million people are murdered, 90% of them Jews.
Most of them died in the gas chambers using Zyklon B. Nazi doctors also carried out medical experiments on deportees.
Others are selected for forced labor. A third camp is created, that of Monowitz around the IG Farben factory. The prisoners try to survive at the whim of the SS soldiers or the kapos charged with supervising them.
Faced with the advance of the Red Army, Himmler decided at the end of 1944 to stop the gassing operations. The killing facilities are dismantled.
The camp is evacuated in an emergency. On January 17, 1945, the death marches began. Nearly 60,000 prisoners are trained on the roads in the middle of winter. The camp was finally liberated on January 27 by soldiers of the Red Army. Inside, they discover only 7,000 survivors.
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