Auschwitz concentration camp

Auschwitz is a net of concentration camps in territotiries that were annexed from Poland, during the Third Reich. It was formed by: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz-III-Monowitz, and other 45 satellite camps. There were around 6500 to 7000 personnel during the war. Approximately three in for personnel worked in security, so these camps were very patrolled.

Auschwitz I was the base camp. It first was suggested as a site for Polish prisioners, but in April of  1940 was approved to be used as a prison for political prisioners (level I). Local residents were taken out of their houses, including 1200 people who lived around in barracks. Around 300 Jewish residents of Oswiecim were brought in to lay foundations. From 1940 to 1941, 17000 Polish and Jewish residents of the western districts of Oswiecim were expelled from places near the camp. German citizens were offered tax concessions and other benefits if they would relocate to the area. By October 1943, more than 6,000 Reich Germans had arrived. The Nazis planned to build a modern residential area for those Germans who would arrived, including schools, playing fields, and other amenities. Some of the plans went forward, including the construction of hundred apartments, but many were never completly finished. Basic amenities such as water and sewage disposal were inadequate, and illnesses due to the water were very common there.

The first prisoners (30 German criminal prisoners from the Sachsenhausen camp) arrived in May 1940, intended to act as functionaries inside the prison system. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners, which included 20 Jews, arrived on June 14, 1940, from the prison in Tarnów, Poland. They were kept in the former building of the Polish Tobacco Monopoly, adjacent to the site, until the camp was ready. The inmate population grew quickly as the camp absorbed Poland's intelectuals and anti-goverment people, including the Polish underground resistance. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned there, most of them Poles.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau was an extermination camp, and in October of 1941 it became an easing congestion at the main camp. It was intended to contain 50000 prisioners of war, considered of the level II, and it was planned to expand until admitting 150000-200000 prisoners. This was the place where women and children were kept. An initial contingent of 10,000 Soviet soldiers arrived to Auschwitz I in October 1941, but by March 1942 only 945 were still alive, and these were transferred to Birkenau, where most of them died because of disease or hunger by May. At the same time Hitler had decided that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated, so Birkenau was purposed as a combination labor camp or an extermination camp.

On December of 1942 Zigeunerfamilienlager (Gypsy Family Camp)was created inside Auschwitz II- Birkenau, where around 3000 prisioners were tranfered from Rome. 2900 were killed in gas chambers.

In this camp there were different gas chambers, 'the red house' (known as well as the Bunker 1) and 'the white house' or Bunker 2. In early 1943, the Nazis decided to increase the gassing capacity of Birkenau. Crematorium II, that at the beggining was  designed as a mortuary, with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators, was converted into a killing factory by installing gas-tight doors. In 1943 Crematoria II were finished, and each one had a gas chambre. 

In this camp died around 4 millions of prisioners,and every day around 4800 corpses were burnt.

Austchwitz III was not as important as the other two. This was a working plant. Over its history, about 35,000 inmates in total worked at the plant; 25,000 died as a result of
malnutrition, disease, and the physically impossible workload. In addition to the concentration camp inmates, who comprised a third of the work force, IG Auschwitz had slave laborers from all over Europe, such as prisioners of the war.
Initially the laborers walked the seven kilometers from Auschwitz I to the plant each day, but as this meant that they had to wake up at 3:00 am, so many of them arrived very exhausted to the working plant, so theycouldn't work properly. The camp at Auschwitz III (also known as Monowitz) was constructed and began to be used as a house for  inmates on October 30, 1942, the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry.

There another 45 satellite camps or subcamps,some of the most important were:
-Raisko (livstock farm): 300 female prisioners.
-Wirtschaftshof Budy (livestock farm): around 800 prisioners.
-Neu-Dachs (industrial plant). around 3500 prisioners.
-Hindenburg (industrial plant): About 400-500 female prisoners and about 70 prisoners.

In conclusion, Auschwitz was a grup of three concentration or extermination camps plus 45 satellite camps, where lots of Jewish, gypsy people or political/war prisioners suffered and died because the Nazist policy. Even these days we all have heard about this horrible place and what happened here.

Sources of information

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-Wikipedia Spain 

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