Auschwitz X-ray of horror
Auschwitz was the most brutal and massive concentration and extermination camp set up by Nazism during World War II.
According to statistics from the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, 1,100,000 people were murdered in that field, one of the four that the regime led by Adolf Hitler installed in the territory it occupied outside of Germany.
More than a million of those victims were Jews. Non-Jewish Poles, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses were also killed. The camp, made up of three main complexes and with around 40 "sub-camps", began to function as a site of concentration, forced labor and extermination in 1940. On January 27, 1945, the Allies liberated Auschwitz.
The Polish town annexed by the Germans was called Oswiecim.
It was the Nazis who renamed the area Auschwitz.
In the suburbs, 43 kilometers west of Krakow, the concentration and extermination camp developed.
At first they used the brick barracks that had belonged to the Polish army, and then the regime expanded the facilities destined for genocide: from factory complexes and farms where slave labor was forced to gas chambers and mass crematoria.
To carry out its plan, Nazism expropriated and demolished about a thousand houses.
Location of the fields
The Nazi regime used the European railway line to carry out its plan of extermination. In that network, Auschwitz was one of the main points where freight and passenger cars arrived with the prisoners who would be forced to work or directly killed. In the wagons, usually sealed so that no one could escape, the captured people were subjected to hunger, extreme temperatures and unviable hygienic conditions. There used to be a single bucket for everyone to meet their physiological needs. By train, more than a million prisoners were transported: they were told that they were going to work, although in general they were directly killed.The German Ministry of Transport coordinated the itineraries of the victims:The use of the train was especially intensive after Nazism provided the self-proclaimed “final solution” that unleashed the massive extermination of Jews from 1942 on.
The railway route to the camps
Destined to torture, enslave and murder, Auschwitz grew to meet its goal of extermination.
The barracks of the Polish army that served to lock up the first prisoners were demolished with new buildings for these purposes and also for the execution of the victims.
Given that growth, Nazism divided the space into three camps.
The SS - an organism in charge of the police and Nazi control - coordinated the operation of Auschwitz, which had more than forty "sub-camps" under its orbit.
According to estimates by the World Shoah Commemoration Center in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, more than a million Jews, 70,000 non-Jewish Poles, 25,000 Gypsies and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in that camp, as well as other persecuted groups, such as homosexuals, witnesses. of Jehovah and people with disabilities.
The wagons of terror
These freight cars used by the German National Railway Network to transport food, livestock and other items were used during the war to deport prisoners to the Auschwitz camps.
Auschwitz I Main camp
Auschwitz I was the original concentration camp, from which other annexes began to grow.
The first victims were Polish citizens, especially intellectuals, and also prisoners of Soviet wars.
The camp came to lock up between 15,000 and 20,000 people at a time: there was a gas chamber there destined for the massive slaughter of people.
The Auschwitz I camp
It was the first concentration camp in what is now Poland.
It received the first prisoners on June 14, 1940. It became a systematic extermination camp for Jews after the Wannsee conference in January 1942, where the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was raised.
Impossible escape
Electrified fences and SS snipers firing at those approaching the perimeter made escape from the field virtually impossible.
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Auschwitz II Birkenau
Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, was the concentration and extermination camp in which Nazi cruelty reached its maximum expression.
There came to be up to 90,000 prisoners by 1944 and it was where the largest number of murders of the regime led by Hitler was concentrated.
Nazism set up four crematoria and used two old farms as gas chambers in which it was exterminated through the use of Zyklon B, a lethal substance.
The Auschwitz II camp
Construction of the concentration camp began in October 1941. A short time later it was decided to use it as an extermination camp.
It was built on exposed and marshy terrain.
The building was carried out in stages, with the ultimate goal being to house around 200,000 prisoners.
Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Jewish prisoners participated in its construction.
Birkenau Barracks
Originally designed to house 550 prisoners each, this figure was doubled, which caused poor sanitary conditions that raised the death rate among prisoners.
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The gas chamber and crematoria
In 1943, four facilities for the more efficient extermination of prisoners began operating at Birkenau.
They could cremate about 4 thousand people a day.
During the spring of 1944, this number surpassed 10,000.
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Zyklon B gas
Pesticide in the form of granules that, when in contact with the air, released a poison (liquid cyanide) capable of annihilating thousands of people in a few minutes.
Auschwitz III Monowitz
Auschwitz III, also called Monowitz, was centrally used as a forced labor camp.
In that area, prisoners were forced to carry out tasks for the Buna-Werke chemical plant of the German industry IGFarben.
Among other activities, the firm produced fuels and synthetic rubber, but at one point they were forced to participate in the manufacture of the lethal gas Zyklon B which was then applied in the chambers to assassinate them.
When the prisoners of Monowitz became irreversibly weak or ill, they were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau for execution.
The Auschwitz III camp
Active since October 1942, it was conceived as a forced labor camp serving the synthetic rubber manufacturer IG Farben.
In practice it was also a concentration camp and an extermination camp.
The SS troops collected salaries from IG Farben for the work performed by the Monowitz prisoners.
According to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires,
1,100,000 people were exterminated in Auschwitz. More
than a million of the victims were Jews.
15,000 Soviet POWs, 25,000 Gypsies, 70,000 Poles, as well as homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and people with disabilities, among other victims, were also executed. Each point on the graph represents 10 people.
Credits
Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum
Jerusalem World Shoah Commemoration Center, Yad Vashem
Clarín project credits
GENERAL EDITION / Héctor Gambini
EDITOR / Pablo Sigal
TEXTS / Julieta Roffo
EDITOR OF VISUAL PROJECTS + PM / Carlos Vázquez / @ carlosvazquez1
DEVELOPMENT / Ariel Katena and Ornella Cicalello
INFOGRAPHICS / Cristian Werb and Vanina Sánchez
VIDEO EDITING / Cecilia Vecchiarelli and Alejandro Leguizamón
PRODUCTION / Valeria Castresana and Martín Marpons
VIDEOS / AFP
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Responsible Editor:
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Intellectual Property Registry:
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Edition Nº:
869524 January 2020
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