Memories of Auschwitz

By kieran white 09

MEMORY

• October 1939: the Nazis annex the ancient Polish town of Oswiecim to the Third Reich and rename it Auschwitz.

• November 1939: new German administration installs a German mayor.

• 1940-1944: Polish peasants are being driven out of the area to make room for German settlers.

• 1940: on Himmler’s order Jewish slave workers change emptied army barracks into a concentration camp.

• June 14, 1940: the Nazis bring political prisoners, all of them Poles, to Auschwitz Concentration Camp as its first inmates.

• 1941: all Jews are forced out of Oswiecim. • October 1941: construction of the Birkenau Concentration Camp,

i.e. Auschwitz II, starts near Oswiecim. • 1979: UNESCO enters the Auschwitz concentration camp and the

Birkenau death camp in its list of World Heritage sites.

pictures

•  The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime.

• It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center.

• The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland.

• The SS authorities established three main camps near the Polish city of Oswiecim: Auschwitz I in May 1940; Auschwitz II (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau) in early 1942; and Auschwitz III (also called Auschwitz-Monowitz) in October 1942.

More facts

Auschwitz I was the original camp, and it served as the administrative centre for the whole complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940, on the basis of an old Polish brick army barracks.

The end