Auschwitz

Sean Sheehan, Britannica Digital Learning

• Publisher: Britannica Digital Learning
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781615356270
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Auschwitz examines the history of the infamous Nazi death camp—how it came to be built and how it was used.

1
DESTINATION AUSCHWITZ

On March 27, 1942, a train departed from Drancy, just north of Paris, for a place called Auschwitz in Poland. It was not an ordinary train and nor were its passengers. The train was the first to carry people from France to a Nazi death camp. In all, some 65,000 people, mainly French Jews, would be taken on trains to Auschwitz; most of them would be gassed to death there.

The first people to depart from Drancy were Jewish refugees who had fled from eastern Europe, hoping to find safety in France. They were fleeing from a Nazi Germany that regarded Jews as not worthy of life. Germany had conquered France in 1940 and a special French force had been established to round up all Jews in the country. They were then held at a detention camp at Drancy until transport to Auschwitz could be arranged.

The first train continued on to Compiègne, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Paris, where a further 558 French Jewish men were marched onto the train. Arriving at Auschwitz, the men were driven into barracks in the newly built death camp. Unlike their wives and children, who over the coming months would be gassed within hours of reaching Auschwitz, the men were worked to death as slave labor. All but a few were dead within five months.

Later, trains arrived pulling cattle cars packed with Jewish men, women, and children, including the sick, the elderly, and babies. They were forced together, often with no food, water, or toilet facilities, and with barely enough air for the two-day journey that ended at Auschwitz.

Nearly 13,000 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, were rounded up in and around Paris over two days in July 1942, and sent to Auschwitz. Some of the children are pictured here.

2
THE ROAD TO AUSCHWITZ

More than a million people were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of a network of death camps situated in Nazi-occupied Poland between 1942 and 1945. Altogether it is estimated that six million Jews were murdered in these camps and elsewhere—around two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe. This systematic attempt to exterminate an entire people is known as the Holocaust.

Rise of the Nazis

The road to Auschwitz and the Holocaust began a quarter century earlier in Germany in 1918. After World War I (1914–18), Germany’s economy was very weak and many Germans felt humiliated by their country’s defeat. Political parties offered different solutions. Right-wing groups, growing in popularity, blamed Jews for Germany’s troubles, offering people a scapegoat. Anti-Semitism, a prejudice against Jews, was common across Europe at that time. In 1919 a young anti-Semite named Adolf Hitler joined a small right-wing group, the German Workers’ Party. By 1921 he was its leader and the group had become the Nazi Party.

Nazi troops hold anti-Semitic placards in front of a locked storefront during a boycott of German Jewish businesses in Berlin, Germany. One of the signs reads: “Germans Defend Yourselves! Don’t buy from the Jews!”

By 1933, in a parliament where no single party had a clear majority to rule the country, Hitler had built up enough support to be offered the job of Chancellor. Hitler used his position to pass a law that gave him the powers of a dictator. The Nazi Party was now in control of Germany and could pass whatever laws it wished.

Anti-Semitic laws

In 1933 all Jewish civil servants lost their jobs and there were public burnings of books written by Jews. The following year saw Jewish actors and musicians banned from performing and Jewish law students were barred from taking their exams. More anti-Semitic laws were passed and in 1935 Jews lost their German citizenship.

Large prisons, called concentration camps, were built to incarcerate anyone who opposed the Nazis. Citizens were arrested, sent to the camps without a trial and lost their rights. It became dangerous to say or do anything that was not supportive of the Nazi government.

Smoke pours from a Berlin synagogue after it was set on fire by a Nazi mob during the Kristallnacht riots of November 9, 1938.

FACT FILE

Anti-Semitism: 1938

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Germany annexes Austria: 180,000 Jews lose their citizenship and jobs.

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September Germany annexes Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. Tens of thousands more Jews lose their rights.

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October 15,000 ethnically Polish Jews are deported from Germany into Poland.

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November 9 Known as Kristallnacht, or “night of the broken glass”: hundreds of Jewish synagogues are burned and Jewish shops attacked in an organized act of violence by Nazis. Jews are murdered and 20,000 are sent to concentration camps in Germany.

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German expansion

Under Hitler, Germany built up its armed forces and became, once again, a powerful country. Hitler’s plan was to expand German territory, firstly by annexing land where there was a German-speaking population (Austria and the Sudetenland), and then by conquering neighboring Poland.

By 1939 Germany’s Jews had lost their citizenship and their rights. No other country had done anything to try to stop the persecution of the Jews, although many countries had allowed some Jewish refugees in. Some Jewish citizens from Austria and Czechoslovakia were able to flee to other European countries, but many more became trapped when their countries came under Nazi control.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. This marked the start of World War II, a conflict that would last for the next six years and spread right across the globe.

Einsatzgruppen

The conquest of Poland brought two million Jews under Nazi control. Before the war, the Nazis had been content to confiscate the possessions of Jews and drive them out of Germany. Now, under cover of war, the Nazis were able to take more extreme measures in the knowledge that their actions were unlikely to be discovered. Their goal was the complete destruction of Jewish life and culture in Europe. To this end, a policy of persecution soon developed into one of mass murder.

Special murder squads were created, called Einsatzgruppen. They followed the German army as it advanced through Poland. When they arrived at a town or village, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up the Jews for execution. Usually they shot them and buried them in mass graves.

FACT FILE

German conquests 1938–41

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September 1938 Germany occupies Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

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September 1939 Germany invades Poland.

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April 1940 Germany invades Norway.

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May 1940 Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium conquered by Germany.

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June 1940 France is invaded and defeated by Germany.

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June 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union.

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German soldiers march through a street in Poland following the German invasion. The Polish capital, Warsaw, was captured before the end of September 1939.

Ghettos

Many thousands were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, but the number of Polish Jews was so great that the Nazi leadership decided that a more efficient method of dealing with them had to be found. Special areas of Polish cities were created, called ghettos, to contain Jews until it was decided what to do with them. At first, life in a Polish ghetto was hard but tolerable. It became worse as more and mo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1: Destination Auschwitz
• 2: The Road to Auschwitz
• 3: Preparing for Auschwitz
• 4: A Small Place in Poland
• 5: How Auschwitz Worked
• 6: Death at Auschwitz
• 7: Life at Auschwitz
• 8: The End of Auschwitz
• Glossary
• Further Information
• Index