Auschwitz, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.The original purpose for Auschwitz was a detention camp for political prisoners. Although, it later evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated in gas chambers, or used as slaves..
Auschwitz was split into 3 main camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Auschwitz-Monowitz. There was approximately 1.3 million victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex during the beginning of WWII, including the prisoners in the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau where 960,000 died. It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex around …show more content…
Execution, and torture happened daily, in front of the other prisoners.
Some Auschwitz prisoners were sent to medical experimentation. The chief of this research was Josef Mengele, a German physician who began working at Auschwitz in 1943. Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” performed a lots of experiments on prisoners. For example, an effort to study eye color, he injected serum into the eyeballs of dozens of children, causing them excruciating pain. He also injected chloroform into the hearts of twins, to determine if both siblings would die at the same time and in the same manner.
At the end of 1944 the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces was certain, the Auschwitz commandants began destroying evidence of the events that had taken place there. Buildings were torn down, blown up or set on fire, and records were destroyed.
In January 1945, the Germans ordered Auschwitz to be abandoned. Before the end of the month, about 60,000 prisoners escorted by Nazis, left the camp and were forced to march to cities of poland 30 miles away. Many prisoners died during this process, those who made it to the sites were sent to other concentration camps in