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| Auschwitz was surrounded by nine watch towers and double barbed wire electric fence. There were eventually three camps at Auschwitz, Auschwitz I Main Camp, Auschwitz II Birkenau, and Auschwitz III Monowitz. Easily the most notorious of all the killing centers, it had a dual function a concentration camp and an extermination camp. The first transportation of prisoners, who were mostly all Poles, arrived in Auschwitz in June 1940 and the SS administration and staff was established. | |
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| The fortified walls, barbed wire, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers, and cremation ovens. These are the conditions that prisoners in Auschwitz. It was located in Oswiecim, Poland. It was established on May 26th 1940. The liberation was on January 27th 1945, by the soviet army. It was the largest camp built by the Germans. | |
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| The extermination in Auschwitz took place in a court between block ten and block eleven which was blocked from the rest of the camp by two walls. At the back was the black wall. In front of the wall was sand to suck the blood from the from naked bodies when they were shot. The destiny of pregnant women in Auschwitz was especially horrible. | |
| Prisoners were housed in barracks with no windows. There was no bathrooms just a bucket. Each barrack had 36 wooden bunks. As much as six hundred inmates were housed in a single barrack. Inmates were always hungry. women wore work dresses. Men wore a long sleeve stripped shirt and long stripped pants. | |
| The inmates got a half liter of unsweetened coffee or tea in the morning. At noon, three fourths liter tasteless soup from potatoes or potato peelings. In the evening, about three-hundred grams of bread with twenty-five grams of sausage or thirty-five grams of margarine ,one spoon of jam or cheese. The bread was also part of the next breakfast. The calories amounted between nine-hundred to one-hundred calories. Heavy workers got a heavy workers bonus. The food was often old or spoiled. In the morning a bitter drink resembling coffee or unsweetened tea. Prisoners were never full they were always hungry and many died of starvation. Often prisoners would kill themselves on the fences rather than be gassed or starved. | |
| No one ever escaped Auschwitz. Those who tried failed and lost their lives anyway. Many tried to escape. A man by the name of Oskar Schindler risked his life and spent millions of dollars saving Jews from death and concentration camps. Auschwitz was easily the most notorious death/concentration camp built by the Germans. Auschwitz is definitely a Gateway to Hell. | |
| Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945. After the camp was liberated the prisoners were on their own. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, regarded the worlds largest Jewish burial ground, now houses a museum and is little changed from when the Red Army troops freed the last inmates. The Nazis killed over Five-Million people in Auschwitz, the highest number at any camp before retreating from an advancing Soviet Army which liberated Auschwitz. Auschwitz was the German name for the Polish town of Oswiecim, which has remained in the spotlight because its horrible past. | |
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Thomas Jenssen 7th Social Studies Rossville Jr. High Holocaust Project 2004 |