Auschwitz
"We had reached a station. Those who were next to the windows told us its name: 'Auschwitz.' No one had ever heard that name. The train did not start up again. The afternoon passed slowly. Then the wagon doors slid open. Two men were allowed to get down to fetch water. When they came back, they told us, that, in exchange for a gold watch, they had discovered that this was the last stop. We would be getting out here. There was a labor camp. Conditions were good. Families would work in the factories. The old men and invalids would be kept occupied in the fields." ―Elie Wiesel, Night
(Video courtesy of USHMM)
"Admittedly, after some months the combustion of heavy slave labour and insufficient food of about 1,200 calories daily resulted in the majority of prisoners wasting away. And once a prisoner had spent all of his energies, so that he could no longer be used as a slave labourer, to the gas chamber he would go."- Filip Muller (Photo courtesy of auschwitz.dk/)
April 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a new concentration camp near Oswiecim, Poland. The first prisoners arrived in 1940. March 1941, there were 10,900 prisoners, mostly Polish. Auschwitz was soon known as the most brutal camp. That March, Himmler ordered a second, much larger site, built 1.9 miles away. This was the extermination camp, Birkenau, or Auschwitz II. Eventually, Birkenau held most of the prisoners, mostly Jews. This camp was most inhumane, including gas chambers and crematoria. A third section, Auschwitz III, was a forced labor camp which pushed Jewish workers to exhaustion.
Auschwitz was guarded by the cruel SS Death Head Units. The staff was assisted by privileged prisoners who received better food, improved conditions, and the opportunity to survive, if they agreed to enforce the brutal rules. By August 1944, there were 155,168 prisoners in the camp. Its population grew constantly, with death rates increasing from disease, starvation, labor, and of course, extermination.
Upon arriving at Auschwitz, prisoners would be thrown off the trains, and forced to give up their belongings. "The (officer) gave the order: 'Men to the left! Women to the right!'" (Elie Wiesel, Night). The left went to the gas chambers, the right, to the labor camps. Those sent to the right, were forced into the labor camps of Auschwitz I, and Auschwitz III, where they would only live a few months. Quarantined prisoners lived a few weeks. Every day, they woke at dawn and lined up outside for roll call which lasted from 1-3 hours. Afterwards they went to their jobs, ranging from factory jobs to nurses. They got their "meals" of bread after returning from working, followed by another roll call. Then they would return to bed and start all over again.
Upon arriving at Auschwitz, prisoners would be thrown off the trains, and forced to give up their belongings. "The (officer) gave the order: 'Men to the left! Women to the right!'" (Elie Wiesel, Night). The left went to the gas chambers, the right, to the labor camps. Those sent to the right, were forced into the labor camps of Auschwitz I, and Auschwitz III, where they would only live a few months. Quarantined prisoners lived a few weeks. Every day, they woke at dawn and lined up outside for roll call which lasted from 1-3 hours. Afterwards they went to their jobs, ranging from factory jobs to nurses. They got their "meals" of bread after returning from working, followed by another roll call. Then they would return to bed and start all over again.
“When we arrived to Auschwitz the minute they opened the wagons it was just total, complete, ah, misery. Beatings and screamings and beatings and barking of dogs and growling of dogs and whistles of trains and screaming and beating and screaming and commands given…it was just, it was just like you opened the doors and all of a sudden you find yourself in this inferno in this unimaginable horror that you as an adult or a child would see nightmares and that was just coming through and we were just holding onto each other and I don’t know within minutes my mother and my sister were dragged to one side and I was dragged with my dad to another…we were told to go to another side. and uh, I never had a chance to say goodbye to my mother, never had a chance to say goodbye to my sister uh the pace the speed of this thing…it was done by design it was done to both for the person to not be able to comprehend or understand or in any way be able to think for a second what was happening. - Ellis Lewin, Auschwitz Survivor (Photo courtesy of Yad Vashem)
"When we first came to Auschwitz we were taken to an area where they shaved our heads, we undressed and were given gray dresses, no underwear, just a gray dress, and wooden shoes."
-Auschwitz Survivor, Erna Anolik |
"To the barber! Belt and shoes in hand, I let myself be dragged off to the barbers. They took our hair off with clippers, and shaved all the hair off our bodies."
-Elie Wiesel, Night |
“It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night
Twins and dwarfs were subjected to medical experiments. They were tested for their tolerance of harsh weather such as extreme heat and cold. Despite horrid conditions, Jews managed to resist the Nazis, including escape and armed resistance. In October, 1944, members of the group Sonderkommando, working in the crematoria, killed several SS men and destroyed a gas chamber. All of the rebels died, leaving behind diaries containing documentations of the barbaric crimes committed at Auschwitz. Desperate to retreat, the Nazis sent most of the remaining 58,000 Jews on a death march to Germany, killing the majority. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz finding only 7,650 barely-living prisoners. In all, approximately one million Jews had been murdered there. Auschwitz took the rights away from the Jews and slaughtered them, thousands at a time.
"I was standing to get the soup, and a Kapo came up and said to me that I’m for the second time taking soup. I wanted to say something, he said, 'Shut up. You’re in Auschwitz. The only way out is through the chimney.'” - Aleksander Laks, Holocaust Survivor
"The order came, we are moving out because the, uh, Russians were obviously coming closer. That was the winter of 1944-45. It was a very very...the climate was very cold. We were driven on foot, through the German countryside. It was cold. It was snow. My brother could hardly walk. I supported him as much as I could. It got so bad that he pleaded with me to let him go. 'Don't,' he says. 'Let me die. I...I cannot, I...I really cannot handle it anymore. I...I want to die. Leave me here.' But it was...it was clear that the minute I let him go, he would be shot on the spot, because anybody who couldn't keep up with the march was shot on the spot. You would walk on the road, you could see corpses all over because it was an actual death march. I just couldn't give in. I just couldn't drop my brother. I carried him. I schlepped him. I kept talking to him. I'd say, 'We are not too far away from salvation. You can't give up now. You can't give up now!' Anyway, somehow I was able to schlep him to the next camp, which was a place called Gottendorf in eastern Pomerania." - Steven Springfield, Auschwitz Survivor (Photo courtesy of USHMM)
“The smell, gas chambers. When I asked, 'When will I see my mother?'—I was shown the smoke. This is how I found out where she went.”
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp,
that turned my life into one long night,seven times cursed and seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned wreaths of smoke beneath a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night
(Video courtesy of http://fcit.usf.edu)
"The prisoners assemble in ten long ranks. Every so often another group returning directly from work joins. Everyone is tired, dirty and soaked, for today it rained for a couple of hours. Alas, there is no time for rest, you have yet to survive roll call. This is one of the most tiring and hated by prisoner's ceremonies, so much celebrated by the camp authorities. A group of prisoners from one of the Kommandos carry in their arms two of their colleagues. They proceed to the end of roll call square… and lay down those whom they have brought. These cadavers also have to be present at roll call. This is their last roll call. Tomorrow there will be nothing left of them. Already six corpses are lying there. The new arrivals are laid down evenly next to them in the same row. The Blockführer must see them, so that they can be easily counted. They lie there staring at the sky, eyes open wide… Almost all the prisoners are here. Room overseers run in between the ranks, correcting them, the clerk counts. There is a discrepancy. He is clearly worried. It turns out someone was standing out of line. A sick, barely able to stand Greek [Greek Jew]. He gets a hard kick from one of the room overseers, and is now standing in line with all the rest."
- Wojchiech Kawecki, Auschwitz Survivor
(Video courtesy of USHMM)
"Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent.” ― Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
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