Auschwitz

Visit Auschwitz

If you want to visit Auschwitz you must know that the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oświęcim-Brzezinka in Polish) concentration camp was created in 1940 on a direct order from Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to relieve the overcrowded Polish prisons.

The largest concentration camp

Jews in Auschwitz

Located due to a well develop railway connection with the General-Government and Central Europe. Auschwitz was gradually extended and eventually became the largest Nazi concentration camp. Initially the camp housed, Polish intelligence, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war, but eventually it was designated for annihilating the Jews from all over Europe. 

 Worked for free

„Arbeit macht frei”

Auschwitz was a working camp where malnourished people lived in appalling conditions, worked for long hours under constant threat of beating, or death. Sources claim that up to 5 million Jews died there in gas chambers, though the more probable estimate is approximately 1 million. Before, it was liberated by the Soviet Army, large parts of the camp and most of its documentation was destroyed by the retreating Nazis.

UNESCO

However parts of the camp survived and the Polish government decided that some of the complex should be rebuilt and a museum was created to commemorate the dead. Now it’s recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.