Auschwitz:
Work Makes You Free
In 1940, the small army barracks just outside of Oswiecim, Poland was undergoing construction. Electric fences and sentry stations were placed around the area, making it into what we know it to be today, a death camp. This camp, Auschwitz, was created to hold prisoners and enemies, to provide forced laborers, and most of all, to exterminate the Jewish population in Europe.
Auschwitz was built with a 40 square km area around it that was left unused. Later, the two sub camps, Birkenau and Monowitz, filled this area. The inhabitants of the nearby town claimed that they knew nothing of what happened in the camps, so the distance was also used for privacy purposes.
Inside of Auschwitz there was a crematorium, where fires were constantly burning to dispose of the dead bodies. Special groups of prisoners would keep the fires burning, and place the bodies inside. Some of the dead would come from the Black Wall, which was a wall where the soldiers would shoot and kill prisoners. Another source of bodies was the gas chambers, where many prisoners could be gassed at once. Many were killed at Auschwitz, but it didn’t even compare to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main death camp. It was located in the 40 km area around Auschwitz. Made in 1942, it was much larger than Auschwitz I, with separate camps for the prisoners to live in. They could be sorted into groups for men, women, or families.
Birkenau took mass murder to an extreme. Many people were killed daily, and even with the crematoria burning around 8,000 bodies a day, there were too many bodies. The soldiers would have to lay the dead out in rows until they could be disposed of.
Auschwitz III or Monowitz was built near Birkenau, but it wasn’t quite as large. Monowitz was the main forced-labor camp, where the prisoners built armory for the Nazis to use in the war. Most of the prisoners that arrived at Auschwitz III came from other camps. They only came to Monowitz if they had been selected for forced or slave labor, and were kept alive only as long as they could work.
Upon arrival at the camps the prisoners were greeted with a sign reading Arbeit Macht Frei or Work Makes You Free. This ironic phrase fooled many passerbies to believe that the camps were labor and re-education camps. The sign was made by the prisoners working in the camps, and was not the only one of its kind. Many signs like these were at the entrances to concentration camps all over Poland.
After entering the camp, the prisoners were sent through a selection process. This process decided who would work for their right to live and who would be sent straight to their deaths. In Auschwitz by Clive Lawton, Primo Levi, a survivor remembers, “When we arrived, they did not interrogate everybody, only a few. And on the basis of the replies, they pointed in two different directions. Some dared to ask for his luggage: they replied, ‘Luggage afterward.’ Someone else did not want to leave his wife: they said, ‘Together again afterward.’ Mothers did not want to leave their children: they said, ‘Good, good, stay with child.’ They behaved calmly, like people doing normal jobs. In less than 10 minutes all the fit men had been selected. From our convoy, 96 men and 29 women entered Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. Of more than 500, others, not one was living two days later.” The children and most of the women were sent straight to their deaths, while the others were chosen for labor or other jobs around the camps.
Within all of the camps there were certain jobs that were performed by the prisoners. The Canadakommando would sort all of the possessions in “Canada”, which was the warehouse where all of the belongings stolen from the prisoners were kept. The Sonderkammando were prisoners that took the bodies out of the gas chamber and put them in the crematoria. Lastly, the Kapo was a prisoner who would supervise the others. Most Kapos were criminals who enjoyed making everyone else’s lives worse.
The hospital at Auschwitz had a different use than most hospitals today. It was used for medical experiments. Most of the experiments preformed at Auschwitz were on twins and women, and Dr. Josef Mengele, the leading doctor there, could often be seen searching the crowds for new subjects to test.
In 1944 the United States bombed one of the factories at Monowitz, but the Nazis would not go down without a fight. The death rate at Auschwitz reached an all time high as Hitler tried to kill as many people as he could before time ran out.
Soon after, in January, as the Soviets approached, the Nazis took action. The gas chambers and crematoria were blown up to erase evidence, and the surviving prisoners were marched out of camp. They were heading towards Wodzislaw, and over 15,000 people died in this death march. The Soviets found and liberated the prisoners remaining at Auschwitz on January 27th, 1945.
Even after the liberation, many of the survivor’s lives could not go back to normal. Some couldn’t return to their homes, because the towns were still against the Jewish population. That is why the Displaced Persons camps were made, to aid the survivors, but even with the Russians help, the survivors still had their memories to haunt them.
According the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, at least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, and a minimum of 1.1 million were murdered. Even with all of the evidence, some people refuse to believe the mass murder that occurred at Auschwitz and agree with some of the Nazi’s ideas. Many others, however, believe in and regret what happened.
In between the years of 1940 and 1945, millions of people were killed and mistreated. Their freedom was stolen and they were sent to camps, like Auschwitz, where surviving was unlikely. The prisoners lived under inhumane circumstances and many were subject to uncalled-for experiments. Some people today do not believe that any of this occurred at all, but the truth is undeniable. It did happen, and if we choose to ignore it, it could happen again. However, if we acknowledge this event and remember it, we are working to keep our future free.
