Auschwitz concentration camp

Auschwitz was a group of concentration camps run by Nazi Germany during World War II in a town in Poland called Oświęcim. ("Auschwitz" is the German name for "Oświęcim."). 

There were three large camps at Auschwitz, and three smaller ones. Auschwitz I was the main camp, and administrative headquarters of the camp complex.  

The ‘B’ on Auschwitz I’s “arbeit macht frei” sign was placed upside down as a symbol of resistance by the prisoners who were forced to create it. This act went undiscovered by the SS. The inverted ‘B’ is now a reminder to, “never remain indifferent. Indifference kills.”

Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; It was the largest death camp run by Nazi Germany during The Holocaust. 

The gatehouse of Auschwitz II. By pzk net, Wikipedia

Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and the subcamps were forced labor camps where prisoners worked as slaves. These camps were established because there were too many Polish prisoners and not enough room in "local" prisons to hold them in. 

Deutsche Bank helped financed the construction of Auschwitz, the IG Farben chemical plant that supplied gas to concentration camps, and profited off stolen gold and property from Holocaust victims. 

The systematic deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp began on March 26, 1942, with a transport of 997 women and girls from Poprad, Slovakia.

In Auschwitz, there were "tooth-pulling kommandos", whose only job was to pry open the mouths of the gassed victims, and remove "all gold teeth, as well as any gold bridgework and fillings", then the teeth were sent to be melted down and sold as gold bullion.

A group of prisoners at Auschwitz succeeded in blowing up one of the crematoriums using gunpowder smuggled one teaspoon at a time from the nearby munitions factory where some prisoners were forced to work.

A Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-II successfully took four pictures of the death camp in action that were smuggled out of the camp by the Polish resistance in a toothpaste tube. They showed cremation of corpses in a fire pit from the chamber and naked women before they enter the chamber..

Roll call in front of the kitchen building, Auschwitz II

Witold Pilecki was a member of Polish resistance who volunteered to be imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp to gather intelligence in 1940. He later escaped and was the author of Witold's Report, the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

Dr Gisella Perl was an inmate and female doctor at Auschwitz. She was instructed to tell Joseph Mengele of any pregnant women, so that he could experiment on them. Instead, she tried to save as many lives as possible by terminating pregnancies, and doing late stage births, without any drugs.

Eva Umlauf was a Jew who arrived in Auschwitz at the age of two in 1944. Despite her young age, she was tattooed with her camp number: A26959. Getting it was so painful, that she passed out. Her mother was a digit lower. Eva thinks she was the youngest child to have been tattooed who survived.

Rutka Laskier, a Jewish girl from Poland who died in Auschwitz at the age of 14, wrote a diary describing her experiences under Nazi occupation. Her diary was published in 2006 and she has become known as the "Polish Anne Frank."

When the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, they found some 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 7.7 tons of human hair.

The Nazis ordered two Auschwitz prisoners to destroy thousands of inmate mugshot photographs as the camp was evacuated in 1945. The inmates recognized the importance of that evidence and sabotaged the furnace thus saving 38,916 photos.

More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War II combined.

The trial of Auschwitz staff acquitted only one man – SS member Hans Münch, known as The Good Man of Auschwitz because he refused to assist in the atrocities. Former prisoners testified on his behalf, as he refused to participate in inmate selection, his experiments were elaborate farces intended to protect inmates and he appealed for better rations. Münch later spoke out against Holocaust denial.

Oskar Gröning was a German soldier who worked at Auschwitz but was able to hide it for 40 years. However, he decided to publish his story after meeting a Holocaust denier, even though he was incriminating himself by doing so.

In 2015 93 year-old Oskar Groning was found guilty of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for his involvement in Auschwitz and sentenced to four years of prison.

The grandson of the commandant of Auschwitz, who has denounced the Nazis, wears a Star of David at all times and was informally adopted as the "grandson" of a woman who survived Auschwitz and Mengele's experiments.