Auschwitz Camp

The gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camps represent the ultimate physical manifestation and implementation of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution”. These death traps fatally gassed close to a million Jews, hundreds of thousands of Poles (Polish individuals), Gypsies and others that were deemed undesirable. Their sole purpose – to commit mass murder – was accomplished with brutal efficiency; their utilitarian design stemming from a pressing “need” to systematically dispose of large quantities of Jews.

The gas chambers do not so much shock the conscience with menacing artifacts, as would a torture chamber’s chains, straps and crude metal tools, but rather disturb the mind with their coldly indifferent operation. The buildings that housed the gas chambers were built by a military bureaucracy and teams of civil engineers, not maniacal mobs or depraved dungeon keepers. There was no passion, no virulent hate evident in their construction, there was only a focused desire to accomplish the task at hand. It is this very lack of emotion that alienates our humanity, that defies our understanding. How could so many people, so many lives be so methodically, yet casually extinguished?

The birth of the gas chambers began in the 1920′s with the fabrication of a new and more effective cyanide-based insecticide, Zyklon B. This product, packaged in innocuous looking metal canisters, was never meant to be used as an accessory to murder. The Nazis first experimented with the insecticide as a means to induce death when they gassed 250 Gypsy children in 1940. The following year, similar experiments were conducted at Auschwitz; 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners became the first gassing victims at the camp. The successful trials – and necessity – spurred the building of two dedicated gas chambers and the conversion of an additional building for the same purpose.

The gas chambers would continue to operate at Auschwitz until the advance of the Red Army in 1944 forced the the SS to demolish the buildings. The structures that housed these gas chambers are were rebuilt and the entire camp in Auschwitz, Poland now serves as a Holocaust memorial and museum.

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Auschwitz.

Just hearing the name itself brings thoughts of genocide and atrocities that the Nazi Germans were accused of in WWII.

But the camp did not begin as a concentration camp. It was originally built in 1916 for migratory workers on their way to seasonal work. From 1919 to 1939 Germany was divided into two sections- Germany and German-occupied Poland. During WWI the Polish used the camp as a military garrison. In 1939 Poland was annexed by the Greater German Reich when Nazi and Soviet troops defeated Poland. Because the camp was conveniently located near a railroad, centrally located in Europe, and had usable military buildings already available, it was chosen to be the first concentration camp in WWII, although Germany had already been employing concentration camps for seven years. On June 14, 1940 Auschwitz received the first prisoners: men of Polish political standing.

At the same time Auschwitz was made a concentration camp, a company called I.G. Farben also chose this site for a new chemical factory. On January 20, 1942 the Wannsee Conference was held, and plans were made for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which ultimately resulted in the deaths of some 6 million Jews. In October 1941, Auschwitz II was formed 3 kilometers from the original camp. Auschwitz III was opened in a factory complex constructed by the I.G. Farben company. On January 27, 1945 Auschwitz was liberated.

Today Auschwitz is known as the place of the greatest mass murder of all time. In 1947 parts of Auschwitz I and II were preserved and converted to the Auschwitz Museum by Poland. It is visited by people from all over the world today who want to see the infamous Auschwitz. The iron gates that receive the visitors is crowned with the words “Arbeit macht frei,” or Work brings freedom.

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