Posts from Auschwitz. A death camp.

The director of the Auschwitz Museum has calculated the number of victims of the death camp. The director of the Polish National Auschwitz Museum, Franciszek Piper, has published the latest data on the victims of the largest Nazi concentration camp, according to the Xinhua news agency. According to the Polish historian, a total of 1.1 million people died in the camp from April 1940, when the first barracks of the camp appeared near the city of Auschwitz, to January 1945. The total number of prisoners was 1.3 million. According to Piper, 1.1 million of the 1.3 million prisoners were Jews. This accounts for approximately 85 percent of all Jews living in Europe at the time. According to the data published in the report, only 200,000 of them were registered – the rest were killed immediately after being brought to the camp. Citizens of more than 30 countries were held in Auschwitz, including not only Jews, Gypsies, Russians, and Poles, but even Chinese. The figures that the historian published in the Polish press do not differ significantly from previous studies. All of them are based on documents from the archives of the Third Reich and testimonies from former prisoners and camp personnel. Immediately after the war, during the investigation of Nazi crimes, the USSR stated that the total number of victims was more than four million, of which about half were Jews, and the rest were Poles, Gypsies, and Soviet prisoners of war. Representatives of the Allies agreed with these figures at the time. However, later these figures were significantly reduced. Some historians have published studies according to which between 630,000 and 700,000 Jews died in Auschwitz. According to these same data, a total of 800,000 people were killed in the death camp.

Of all the extermination camps, deniers most frequently exploit the history of Auschwitz. They are dissatisfied with both the actual history of the camp and the fact that it is now a museum, and, of course, the fact that Auschwitz became a symbol of the Holocaust. As evidence of the depraved practice of Nazi ideology, it is completely unacceptable to its modern followers. Therefore, deniers claim that Auschwitz was not a death camp at all, as its plan, design, and purpose do not correspond to what should be in a death camp. The most common version of their alternative judgments is expressed in the claim that Auschwitz was an "industrial production center" (T. Christophersen, R. Faurisson).

Indeed, the Nazis' original intentions regarding Auschwitz were different.

According to Himmler's 1940 plan, Auschwitz was intended to become a center for industrial development, where a paint manufacturing plant was to be located. The situation changed after Germany's attack on the USSR, when Soviet prisoners of war began arriving at Auschwitz.

Thousands of Soviet POWs died here every month from hunger and disease. New barracks and new crematoria were quickly built in Auschwitz to destroy the bodies of the deceased. The model town, which had become a camp for POWs, effectively turned into a death camp. (30)

It was on Soviet POWs that the effectiveness of the gas Zyklon-B was tested. The camp territory expanded: Birkenau, several other smaller camps, and giant factories using free labor were added to Auschwitz.

After the Battle of Stalingrad and the resulting turning point in the war, the influx of labor from Russia began to decrease. At this time, the Nazi leadership was already prepared for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

A few days after the Wannsee Conference, Himmler sent a telegram to the concentration camp inspector Richard Glück, stating that "since no arrivals of prisoners of war from Russia are expected in the near future, I am sending a large number of Jews who emigrated from Germany to the camps. Prepare within the next 4 weeks to receive 100,000 Jewish men and up to 50,000 Jewish women."

Three weeks later, the first transport of Jews arrived at Auschwitz. The young and healthy were forced to work, while the old and infirm were suffocated with gas and burned. Subsequently, the process of gassing and cremation of corpses was moved 3 km away from the main camp to Auschwitz II (Brzezinka-Birkenau), where new crematoria were built. (31)

As noted in the works of many Western researchers, during March 1943, 200 thousand Jews from all over Europe were brought to Auschwitz, and by June 1943, all four crematoria in Birkenau were operational. After Germany's seizure of Hungary (March 1944), half a million local Jews were delivered to Auschwitz.

On May 16, the murder of Hungarian Jews began, continuing throughout June. Crematoria III and IV, which had not been used since 1943, were put into operation. SS-Obersturmführer Werner Jotan ordered them to be equipped with a ventilation system (to remove the gas after the operation). On his order, lifts were installed in crematoria II and III to transport corpses from the gas chambers on small trolleys. In addition, pits were dug for open-air cremation, as the crematoria could not handle such a volume in such a short period. (32)

It is believed that during two months (May-June) of 1944, the greatest number of Auschwitz victims were destroyed, namely 1/3 of all its prisoners.

On October 7, 1944, members of the Jewish Sonderkommando revolted and blew up Crematorium IV. By the end of November, as Soviet troops approached, Himmler ordered the gassing operations to cease and the crematoria to be destroyed. (33)

In accordance with current data based on the analysis of new sources and previously unknown archives, the estimates of the number of victims in Auschwitz have changed and were adjusted downward (approximately 1.2-1.5 million people, of whom about one million—1.1 million—were Jews). This fact points primarily to the scholars' pursuit of objectivity in their research, rather than testifying that the history of Auschwitz's existence is a myth, as deniers are quick to claim. The reality of the functioning of this largest of the Nazi death camps requires no further evidence beyond that recognized by historical science and legal practice. However, further study of the camp's history to clarify specific facts, circumstances, and the number of tortured prisoners is undoubtedly a subject of research for scientists of various countries.

Since 1979, a large group of scholars at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has worked on the preparation of a five-volume scholarly publication, "Auschwitz 1940-1945," drawing on all materials available today. This fundamental study was recently published in English in the USA and confirms the minimum figures mentioned above.