In Auschwitz, sport played an important and dual function. On one hand, it provided the prisoners with entertainment in their free time – in the evenings or on Sundays. On the other hand, it provided entertainment for the Kapos and SS-men. Sport was also an excellent tool for punishing and torture. Millions of people of...Read More
Władysław Bartoszewski was a very famous Pole. He was The Knight of the Order of the White Eagle, Righteous Among the Nations, and representative of the „Columbus” generation. He also was a prisoner of KL Auschwitz for 199 days, inmate number 4427. He was one of the few who did not come out „through the...Read More
Today Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum owns one of the largest collections of art made in or related to the Auschwitz concentration camp. These artworks due to the extreme conditions in which they were made stand as a testimony to a time, place, and emotion that was Auschwitz. Artworks made in Auschwitz enable us to discover...Read More
After the war and liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, its two main camps, main camp Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, were in the hands of the Soviet military. The Soviet army established a field hospital in the main camp and with help of the Polish Red Cross and their hospital started...Read More
Of all registered inmates at Auschwitz, 30 percent were female with the first mass transport of 999 non-Jewish female prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp on March 26, 1942. All of which were classified as criminal, asocial, and political prisoners and were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women’s camp. These first women...Read More
Upon entering Auschwitz, prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn to their uniforms. This serial number was not issued to the prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers and was not registered. Prisoners who were in the infirmary or who were going to be executed were marked by the SS authorities by...Read More
Establishment of Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 April 1940 on Himmler’s order Rudolf Höss became the first commandant of Auschwitz. Höss lived in a two-story stucco house near the commandants and administration building with his wife and two children. With his deputy Josef Kramer, Höss served as commandant of Auschwitz until November 11, 1943, when...Read More
With Tadeusz Wiejowski being the first prisoner able to escape from Auschwitz on July 6, 1940, according to Polish historian Henryk Świebocki, at least 802 prisoners attempted their escape from Auschwitz. Świebocki writes that of 802 escape attempts, 144 were successful, 327 failed, and were caught, while the fate of 331 remains unknown. Moreover, the...Read More
After the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp, became a primary symbol of the Holocaust. Timothy D. Snyder, a historian, comments that the reputation and symbolism of Auschwitz can be attributed to the unusual combination of industrial camp complex and killing facility, as well as the camp’s high death toll. As a result, more witnesses...Read More
The term ‘’Polish death camp’’ or ‘’Polish concentration camp’’ when used about concentration camps and extermination camps established by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland have been widely recognized as misnomers. These phrases although occasionally used by politicians and mass media about the camps’ geographical location in German-occupied Poland met strong resistance from the Polish officials...Read More
