The first Concentration Camps were built immediately after the Nazis' rise to power. They were initially built to house Communists and political prisoners who opposed the Nazi regime. The camps were not extermination camps but many people died as a result of maltreatment and the harsh regime that was inflicted upon them during their stay.
As the policy of full time extermination was gradually adopted after the 'Wannsee Conference' in January 1942, existing camps were either adapted or specifically built to accommodate mass murder.
As the policy of full time extermination was gradually adopted after the 'Wannsee Conference' in January 1942, existing camps were either adapted or specifically built to accommodate mass murder.
Built within the pre-war boarders of Poland, at Majdenek and Auschwitz, both labour and extermination camps were combined within those of an extermination camp.
Auschwitz - 1941-1945
Bełżec - 1942
Chelmno - 1941-1943
Majdenek - 1942-1944
Sobibor - 1942-1943
Treblinka - 1942-1943
The Building and Expansion of Auschwitz Concentration Camp
The basis for Auschwitz consisted of 22 pre-war brick barracks buildings. As the first Polish prisoners were bought into the camp - these original block houses were sealed off and the Polish prisoners sent out to gather the barbed wire for the enclosures. Other buildings were modified and turned into prison barracks. A steel gate was installed with the maxim 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (work makes you free), identical to that on the gates of Dachau.
The Building and Expansion of Auschwitz Concentration Camp
The basis for Auschwitz consisted of 22 pre-war brick barracks buildings. As the first Polish prisoners were bought into the camp - these original block houses were sealed off and the Polish prisoners sent out to gather the barbed wire for the enclosures. Other buildings were modified and turned into prison barracks. A steel gate was installed with the maxim 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (work makes you free), identical to that on the gates of Dachau.
Over time, the camp expanded steadily in both organizational and spatial terms. At its peak in the summer of 1944, Auschwitz covered about 40 sq. km. in the core area, and more than 40 branch camps dispersed within a radius of several hundred kilometres. At this time, there were about 135 thousand people (105 thousand registered prisoners and about 30 thousand unregistered) in the Auschwitz complex, which accounted for 25% of all the people in the entire concentration camp system.
Considering the functions of the camp, it is plain that it underwent significant evolution in the almost 5 years of its existence: from the concept of a quarantine camp, which was the starting point for the decision to found the camp in 1940 (the concept was never implemented), through concentration camp (a place for the annihilation of all prisoners by depriving them of the basic prerequisites for life), to a new type of camp combining a Dachau- or Gross-Rosen-type concentration camp with a centre for immediate killing on the model of Treblinka or Bełżec.
In view of the basic functions of Auschwitz, its history may be divided into two basic periods:
from its founding in 1940 to the first months of 1942, when it functioned exclusively as a concentration camp—that is, predominantly a place of slow killing as the result of deliberately created, inhuman conditions, above all starvation.
From the first months of 1942 to October 1944, when the camp continued to function as a concentration camp for prisoners of various ethnic backgrounds (from mid-1942 mainly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies), while simultaneously functioning as the largest centre for the immediate, mass killing of Jews brought here within the framework of the campaign for the destruction of the entire Jewish population of Europe.
In the last two months of its existence, after the closing of the gas chambers in October 1944 in connection with the critical military situation of the Third Reich and the expected Soviet offensive, the camp entered the phase of final liquidation, which ended with the evacuation of the prisoners.
The division of the Auschwitz camp
Auschwitz I, the main camp in Oświęcim. In August 1944, it held about 16 thousand prisoners (roughly 10 thousand Jews, 4 thousand Poles, and 3 thousand prisoners from other ethnic groups). This was the location of the SS garrison administration (SS Standortverwaltung), the commander of the local garrison, and the commandant of Auschwitz I, who enjoyed the formal prerogative of “senior” service status in relation to the other two commandants (“Der Lagerkommandant des KL Auschwitz I ist dienstältester Lagerkommandant und SS-Standortältester des SS-Standortes Auschwitz”). Auschwitz I was also the seat of the main offices of the political department and the prisoner labor department. Here, too, were the main supply stores, workshops, and SS companies (DAW, DEST, and Deutsche Lebensmittel GmbH). Work in these administrative and economic units and companies was the main labour assignment for the prisoners in this camp.
In October 1944, a camp for several thousand women prisoners employed producing artillery-shell fuses in the Union-Werke factory opened in the new blocks in the so-called camp extension (Schutzhaftlagererweiterung).
Himmler had decided that providing brothels across the concentration camp network would increase productivity by offering “hard-working” prisoners (excluding Jews) an incentive to work even harder. He had ordered brothels to be constructed at Mauthausen and Gusen camps in Austria after an inspection as far back as May 1941 (they were finally opened in the summer of 1942). Then, in March 1943, he visited Buchenwald and demanded that another brothel be established there and also at other camps. His faithful factotum Oswald Pohl issued the necessary orders to concentration camp commandants in 1943.
The small rooms of the former Auschwitz brothel are now used to store archival documents. The doors into the rooms still have peep-holes. This was for the protection of the women, in case one of the prisoners became violent during his visit. The prisoners were only allowed to have sex in the missionary position and an SS man had to watch in order to make sure that no “perverted” sex acts were committed. Each man was allowed only 15 minutes for his turn with one of the women.
Most of the women in the brothels came from the Ravensbrueck camp for women, but according to Rees, the women in the Auschwitz brothel were selected from the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. On page 197 of his book, Rees wrote that the women in the Auschwitz brothel “were forced to have sex with approximately six men every day.” He also wrote that one of the Auschwitz prisoners said that “the girls were treated very well” and that they were given “good food” and allowed to “take walks.”
The girls who served the prisoners in the brothels were never Jewish girls because this would have been against Hitler’s Nuremberg laws of 1935. Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit the brothels for the same reason. In spite of this, there are stories told by Auschwitz survivors that the women in the brothel were Jewish.
Inmates were forced to stand at attention for hours at least twice a day while they were counted. This was always carried out no matter what the weather and often lasted for hours. Often accompanied by beatings and punishments. This was initially conducted in the main square but later in front of individual barracks. Summary executions were also carried out here - either on the portable or static gallows. The static gallows are just out of shot in the photo below.
In 1939 he joined the Allgemeine SS and in 1940 he was drafted into the Waffen-SS. He was sent to the Eastern Front, but due to various illnesses and stays at military hospitals he was posted to Auschwitz in 1941. At first he was assigned to watch tower duties in 1942, then became Blockführer and finally Rapportführer.
"In the evening rollcall one late summer's evening of 1944, a prisoner was missing. Inmates present had to wait until the missing prisoner was accounted for. Kaduk and another Rapportführer beat the prisoner until he fell to the floor several times. [...] Eventually the prisoner remained on the ground laying on his back but still alive. Using all their strength, Kaduk and the other Rapportführer trod on the prisoner's ribcage with the heels of their boots — according to the declaration of the court — until his ribs cracked. They did not cease [...] until the prisoner was dead."
After the end of the war he assumed a false identity working in a sugar refinery in Lobau. In December 1946 he was arrested by the Soviet Military Police, a former inmate had identified him.
Block 11 of Auschwitz was the "prison within the prison", where violators of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners were made to spend the nights in "standing cells". These cells were about 1.5 m2 (16 sq ft), and four men would be placed in them; they could do nothing but stand, and were forced during the day to work with the other prisoners. In the basement were located the "starvation cells"; prisoners incarcerated here were given neither food nor water until they were dead.
In the basement were the "dark cells"; these cells had only a very tiny window, and a solid door. Prisoners placed in these cells would gradually suffocate as they used up all of the oxygen in the cell; sometimes the SS would light a candle in the cell to use up the oxygen more quickly. Many were subjected to hanging with their hands behind their backs for hours, even days, thus dislocating their shoulder joints.
The view of block 10 in the courtyard.
Block 10 where medical experiments were done on sterilization of Jewish women. The windows of Block 10 were covered with black-painted wooden boards so that no one could see what was going on inside, and the women could not see the activity at the wall. The boards are angled out a few inches to let in a little light through the crack at the top.
The steps leading up from the torture chambers in the basement of block 11.
The Black Wall. At the far end of a long, narrow courtyard between Block 10 and Block 11 at the Auschwitz I camp is a brick wall which connects the two buildings. In front of this brick wall, the Nazis placed another removable wall, constructed out of logs and covered with cork painted black; the ends of the wall were angled slightly toward the centre. The purpose of the black wall was to protect the beautiful brick wall behind it from bullet holes.
The hanging posts. There were 11 sited in this courtyard.
Jerzy Bielecki
Polish political prisoner at Auschwitz
“He wanted to hang me on the hook. He said, ‘Stand up on your toes. Finally he hooked me and then he kicked the stool away without any warning. I just felt Jesus Mary, oh my God, the terrible pain. My shoulders were breaking out from the joints. Both arms were breaking out from the joints. I’d been moaning and he just said, ‘Shut up you dog. You deserve it. You have to suffer.’”
Blocks 1-10 were, originally, the 'women's camp'. These two photos are of block 10, which was used to conduct medical experiments.
Here, the SS Doctor Carl Clauberg did tests on Jewish women to try to develop an efficient way of mass-sterilising women.
Here, too, the evil Dr Josef Mengele experimented on twins and disabled people, trying to increase his knowledge of genetics, and to develop genetic engineering. He also experimented with skin transplants, and tested the effects of different chemicals on his subjects by rubbing toxic substances into their skin.
Mengele selected his victims as they arrived on the train. When he had finished with them, he often killed them by lethal injection.
Not all of the buildings in the Auschwitz I camp are made of brick, as the photograph below shows. Wedged between two brick buildings is a prefabricated wooden horse barn of the kind used at Birkenau and Majdanek for barracks. A sign on the building said that this barracks was used to house Dutch prisoners.
Considering the functions of the camp, it is plain that it underwent significant evolution in the almost 5 years of its existence: from the concept of a quarantine camp, which was the starting point for the decision to found the camp in 1940 (the concept was never implemented), through concentration camp (a place for the annihilation of all prisoners by depriving them of the basic prerequisites for life), to a new type of camp combining a Dachau- or Gross-Rosen-type concentration camp with a centre for immediate killing on the model of Treblinka or Bełżec.
In view of the basic functions of Auschwitz, its history may be divided into two basic periods:
from its founding in 1940 to the first months of 1942, when it functioned exclusively as a concentration camp—that is, predominantly a place of slow killing as the result of deliberately created, inhuman conditions, above all starvation.
From the first months of 1942 to October 1944, when the camp continued to function as a concentration camp for prisoners of various ethnic backgrounds (from mid-1942 mainly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies), while simultaneously functioning as the largest centre for the immediate, mass killing of Jews brought here within the framework of the campaign for the destruction of the entire Jewish population of Europe.
In the last two months of its existence, after the closing of the gas chambers in October 1944 in connection with the critical military situation of the Third Reich and the expected Soviet offensive, the camp entered the phase of final liquidation, which ended with the evacuation of the prisoners.
The division of the Auschwitz camp
The difficulties in running such a large camp complex led to its formal division on November 22, 1943 into three camps with considerable autonomy. There was a formally sanctioned functional division that was clear in most, but not all, aspects:
Auschwitz I, the main camp in Oświęcim. In August 1944, it held about 16 thousand prisoners (roughly 10 thousand Jews, 4 thousand Poles, and 3 thousand prisoners from other ethnic groups). This was the location of the SS garrison administration (SS Standortverwaltung), the commander of the local garrison, and the commandant of Auschwitz I, who enjoyed the formal prerogative of “senior” service status in relation to the other two commandants (“Der Lagerkommandant des KL Auschwitz I ist dienstältester Lagerkommandant und SS-Standortältester des SS-Standortes Auschwitz”). Auschwitz I was also the seat of the main offices of the political department and the prisoner labor department. Here, too, were the main supply stores, workshops, and SS companies (DAW, DEST, and Deutsche Lebensmittel GmbH). Work in these administrative and economic units and companies was the main labour assignment for the prisoners in this camp.
In October 1944, a camp for several thousand women prisoners employed producing artillery-shell fuses in the Union-Werke factory opened in the new blocks in the so-called camp extension (Schutzhaftlagererweiterung).
This report covering the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II- Birkenau will be covered in two reports as my photographic records are vast. Also in an attempt to give both sites the justice needed in explaining and detailing the photographs - the reports would possibly be too lengthy. Where possible i will leave it to the imagination of the reader. I will attempt to detail most blocks in this report into Auschwitz I and what they were specifically designed for. It was a very strange feeling standing outside the main entrance waiting to go in. Unlike Belsen - the birds were singing, the sites were excellently maintained and despite the mass of visitors - i attempted where possible to exclude these from the photographs. Certain areas of the camp - you were not allowed to photograph out of respect so i shall attempt to give as full a report onto both sites as possible.
The drive to Auschwitz from Krakow involved a stop off to pick up another couple and then the remainder of the drive to Auschwitz I involved sitting back and watching the liberation documentary that was filmed by the Russians, as and shortly after Auschwitz II liberation.
The main car park.
Graffiti by the main entrance.
Our small group seemed to take ages to get in primarily as we had to link up with another much larger group to get the radio link and guide to take us around the site. I hung back so i could document the area in greater detail than others who followed the guide. This meant i was often losing sight of the tour guide and had a broken link on the radio connection. I really could have spent much longer at both Auschwitz I and II really but that is the trouble with a guided tour around any site. The tour was informative though when i made and lost contact with it.
Inside at last and the first view of the very famous gate.
To the right of the main gate and opposite the accommodation blocks is the canteen / kitchen facilities. The camp band used to play the labour workforce upbeat songs as they were marched on and off the site to the various sub camps located in the vicinity.
Camp kitchen
Music emphatically reminds us was specifically exploited as part of the terror of the Nazi German camps. It was used as part of the macabre SS ritual, when arriving and departing inmate work crews were accompanied by the sounds of a band situated at the gate of the main camp at Auschwitz. Music was systematically utilized by the perpetrators to destroy their victims psychologically as well as physically. In contrast to the visual arts, virtually every prisoner was confronted by music in one way or another during his or her confinement at Auschwitz.
Singing was the dominant form of compulsory music. Collective song derived from the military, where even today songs are used for disciplinary purposes, training parade rhythms, or symbolically imparting military values, such as discipline and order. SS men and prisoner functionaries ordered inmates to March in step! ...Sing! or to Sing a song! The prisoners were routinely required to sing, often various melodies, while marching, doing calisthenics, reporting for duty, compulsory labor, or punishment details. Whereas traditional German folk songs were a travesty of camp realities, the compulsory Nazi, patriotic, and military songs compounded the defenceless prisoners' helplessness. Being compelled to sing intimidated, humiliated, and demeaned the prisoners and harassed them. It required considerable tremendous physical effort after a long, hard work day, and invariably offered the guards excuses for arbitrary corporal punishments. It was, therefore, according to Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a gesture of resistance, when women prisoners sang the Marseillaise for mutual "encouragement" while returning from forced labor.
The purpose of forcing inmates to sing on command was similar to function of bands. Bands included
amateur as well as professional musicians and had been ordered or tolerated by the camp administration.
The first band was created by SS orders in Auschwitz in December 1940. As a result, seven musicians had their instruments (violin, drum, double-bass, accordion, trumpet, saxophone) forwarded from their homes to the camp and began rehearsals on January 6, 1941 in Barrack (Block) 24 of the main camp (Auschwitz I). This ensemble grew rapidly with the permission of the camp authorities and was divided into a symphony orchestra with approximately 80 players and a brass band with about 120 musicians.
The Guard house to the Left or the main gate.
The one - two man air raid shelter located just opposite the main gate and outside the perimeter fencing.
Inside the main gate and the double row of electrified barbed with is the mine field that surrounded the camp. Was it mined or a bluff - not sure.
Located opposite to the canteen block. Block 24 is the first building that visitors see on a tour of the main Auschwitz camp. This building was the location of the brothel and the camp library; both facilities were for the use of the inmates.
Most of the women in the brothels came from the Ravensbrueck camp for women, but according to Rees, the women in the Auschwitz brothel were selected from the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. On page 197 of his book, Rees wrote that the women in the Auschwitz brothel “were forced to have sex with approximately six men every day.” He also wrote that one of the Auschwitz prisoners said that “the girls were treated very well” and that they were given “good food” and allowed to “take walks.”
The girls who served the prisoners in the brothels were never Jewish girls because this would have been against Hitler’s Nuremberg laws of 1935. Jewish prisoners were not allowed to visit the brothels for the same reason. In spite of this, there are stories told by Auschwitz survivors that the women in the brothel were Jewish.
A view back to the edge of the canteen block.
Roll Call
Kaduk's Chapel built by guard Oswald Kaduk.
"Kaduk was an especially cruel SS man because he was an ethnic German, and felt he needed to prove he was just as tough as those who lived in Germany their whole lives. The other SS called him a Wasser-Pollak a disrespectful phrase for those Polish speaking Volksdeutsche from upper Silesia.
He was an unpredictable in his actions but because he felt inferior and had to prove himself to the others, he killed whenever he had the chance and he drank more schnapps than water."
He was an unpredictable in his actions but because he felt inferior and had to prove himself to the others, he killed whenever he had the chance and he drank more schnapps than water."
After the end of the war he assumed a false identity working in a sugar refinery in Lobau. In December 1946 he was arrested by the Soviet Military Police, a former inmate had identified him.
In the Roll Call square and facing those on roll call was the place where inmates were publicly hanged.
Block 16 features an exhibition entitled "The Tragedy of Slovak Jews"
Block 11 of Auschwitz was the "prison within the prison", where violators of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners were made to spend the nights in "standing cells". These cells were about 1.5 m2 (16 sq ft), and four men would be placed in them; they could do nothing but stand, and were forced during the day to work with the other prisoners. In the basement were located the "starvation cells"; prisoners incarcerated here were given neither food nor water until they were dead.
The view of block 10 in the courtyard.
Block 10 where medical experiments were done on sterilization of Jewish women. The windows of Block 10 were covered with black-painted wooden boards so that no one could see what was going on inside, and the women could not see the activity at the wall. The boards are angled out a few inches to let in a little light through the crack at the top.
The steps leading up from the torture chambers in the basement of block 11.
The Black Wall. At the far end of a long, narrow courtyard between Block 10 and Block 11 at the Auschwitz I camp is a brick wall which connects the two buildings. In front of this brick wall, the Nazis placed another removable wall, constructed out of logs and covered with cork painted black; the ends of the wall were angled slightly toward the centre. The purpose of the black wall was to protect the beautiful brick wall behind it from bullet holes.
The original wall was removed after Arthur Liebehenschel replaced Rudolf Hoess as the camp commander in November, 1943, and ordered the executions at the wall to stop.
The hanging posts. There were 11 sited in this courtyard.
Polish political prisoner at Auschwitz
“He wanted to hang me on the hook. He said, ‘Stand up on your toes. Finally he hooked me and then he kicked the stool away without any warning. I just felt Jesus Mary, oh my God, the terrible pain. My shoulders were breaking out from the joints. Both arms were breaking out from the joints. I’d been moaning and he just said, ‘Shut up you dog. You deserve it. You have to suffer.’”
Here, the SS Doctor Carl Clauberg did tests on Jewish women to try to develop an efficient way of mass-sterilising women.
Here, too, the evil Dr Josef Mengele experimented on twins and disabled people, trying to increase his knowledge of genetics, and to develop genetic engineering. He also experimented with skin transplants, and tested the effects of different chemicals on his subjects by rubbing toxic substances into their skin.
Mengele selected his victims as they arrived on the train. When he had finished with them, he often killed them by lethal injection.
Not all of the buildings in the Auschwitz I camp are made of brick, as the photograph below shows. Wedged between two brick buildings is a prefabricated wooden horse barn of the kind used at Birkenau and Majdanek for barracks. A sign on the building said that this barracks was used to house Dutch prisoners.
The roller used to level the camp streets.
A blockhouse detailing various stages of evolution of the living conditions.
Remnants of the ovens which at Auschwitz I were dismantled and the gas chamber again turned over to an air raid shelter.
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi
Thanks for reading the report.
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