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The construction of Auschwitz II - Birkenau was started in October 1942, and Rudolf Hss was appointed commandant of the camp. Auschwitz ll was a result of the ever-increasing flow of prisoners to Auschwitz l. It was no more room and a new camp had to be built. Auschwitz ll had, as all the other extermination-camps, as main goal to kill all the prisoners that came inside the gate. Birkenau vas the most effective extermination-camp, and the number of murdered lies between one and two and a half million. Unfortunately one can never find the exact number because most of the prisoners was newer registered. The camp was completely finished in March 1942, but already in January 1941 it had been built a makeshift gas chamber in an abandoned farmhouse. Between Mars and June 1943 it was built a new gas chamber and crematorium. The parts fore these was produced by the Kattowiitz firm Hoch und Tiefbau and delivered by the firm J.A. Topf & Sohns Erfurt At its peak 20 000 people could be killed and burned in one day. All in all one believe that ca. one third of the 5 Š 6 million Jews that died during the war were killed in Birkenau, but it wasnÕt just Jews that were killed in Birkenau. A large number Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies and homosexual were also killed there. Even if gassing killed the greater part off the prisoners, allot also died while working in ore outside the camp. It was founded more then 40 work camps in the area. Usually it was the big firms that created these camps to exploit the cheap labour. The biggest of the work camps, Buna, was a factory that produced synthetic rubber. It was built by I.G. Farbenindustrie and became, in November 1943, Auschwitz lll. The three camps had very close contact. Prisoners from Auschwitz l were sent off to work in Buna, witch often was the same as certain death. Those who survived Buna were usually not capable of working any more and were sent to Birkenau to be gassed. When the Germans realised that they had lost the war they started destroying all evidence of the cruel things that happened in Birkenau. They blew up almost all the gas chambers and the crematories, burned documents and in the end they took all the prisoners able to walk on a last death march into the Third Reich.
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