Auschwitz

uschwitz camp was one of the most horrible camps of them all. Nazis established Auschwitz in April 1940, under the watchful eyes of Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was also chief of two Nazi organizations, the secret police known as the Gestapo, and also the Nazi guards known as Schutzstaffel. Auschwitz originally held political prisoners from Poland and other concentration camps in Germany. The prisoners were transported form all over Nazi-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at Auschwitz in daily convoys. When arriving at Auschwitz, the prisoners were separated into three groups.

One group went to the gas chambers within a few hours of their arrival. These people were sent to Birkenau, (another concentration camp) where they were put in to gas chambers. As many as 2,000 prisoners were sent to the gas chambers at one time. The Nazis tried to disguise the gas chambers to look like showers. Birkenau (also known as Auschwitz ||) also had four crematorias, used to cremate bodies.

The second group were used as slave labor at industrial factories such as I.G. Farben and Krupp. Some of the prisoners were saved with the help of Oskar Schindler. He saved about 1,000 Polish Jews by letting them work at his factory near Krakow, and then later at a factory in what is now Czech Republic.

The last group, mostly twins and dwarfs, underwent experiments done by Josef Mengle. Mengle was known as the "Angel of Death."

By 1943, resistance organizations had developed in Auschwitz. They helped a few prisoners out of the camp. The escapees brought with them the news of the killing of the hundreds of prisoners. In October, a group destroyed a gas chamber at Birkenau. They and their accomplices, a group of women from the Monowitz labor camp, were all put to death.