Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Trip Start Aug 28, 2005
68Trip End Dec 31, 2005
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Initially only Poles were held at the camp. The majority were Polish patriots and members of the resistance movement who became the first victims of the Nazi genocide. In the mid-1941 Soviet war prisoners and deportees of other nationalities, including gypsies, were held there. In 1942 Auschwitz became the biggest extermination site in the history of mankind, part of the Nazi plan of wiping out the Jewish nation. In gas chambers, mostly in Birkenau, SS men conducted the mass extermination of the Jews brought in from countries occupied by or dependent on the Third Reich. Experimentation, hair
Towards the end of the war, to remove the traces of their crimes, SS men started to dissemble and destroy the camps key installations. Documents were burnt and prisoners were evacuated. Those inmates who the Nazis were unable to deport to the Third Reich were liberated by Soviet Red Army soldiers on January 27 1945.