Difference between revisions of "Auschwitz"
Hojimachong (talk | contribs) (IANAL, but "mass murder" is more commonly used with smaller civilian incidents... a million innocent people get "exterminated") |
Hojimachong (talk | contribs) (Auschwitz was not a genocide, it was a location. The genocide here was The Holocaust) |
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[[Category:European History]] | [[Category:European History]] | ||
[[category:Holocaust]] | [[category:Holocaust]] | ||
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Revision as of 23:32, June 22, 2007
Auschwitz is the name of the greatly feared German concentration camp that was located in the city of Oswiecim in Poland. This site is now known for the extermination of over one million European Jews and Poles.
The main camp had three smaller sub camps:
- Auschwitz I- which was the original concentration camp and the site of the deaths of around 70,000 people, mostly Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.
- Auschwitz II (Birkenau)- an extermination camp in which over 1.1 million Jews, Poles and Gypsies were murdered
- Auschwitz III (Monowitz)- work camp.
The camp was run by the SS. It was the home to the brutal German doctor Dr. Josef Mengele. When the camp first began many Poles were sent there to either work to death, be an experiment for Dr. Josef Mengele, or just rot away. Later in the war the Nazi's started sending Russians and other people that just apposed them in the slightest way.
The camp is infamous for its gas chambers and crematorium, where the Nazi's used Zyklon B to exterminate and burn over 75,000 people. The gas chamber and the crematorium, which were formerly a Polish army bunker, are still standing today.
Towards the end of the war the Nazi's had to cover up for all the murders commited there, so they evacuated all the men who could walk and forced them into the last defences of Germany. But it was not all hidden. 7,500 prisoners were liberated by the 322nd Infantry unit of the Red Army on January 27 1945. The brutality of the Nazi's was now unleashed into the news and magazines and was hated even more. Such measures of mass killing was never reached before and hopefully never again.