The history of Auschwitz. Who liberated Auschwitz?

The history of World War II contains many unsightly pages, but German concentration camps are one of the worst. The events of those days clearly show that the cruelty of people in relation to each other and in fact knows no boundaries.

Especially in this regard, “Auschwitz” “became famous”. Not the best fame goes about Buchenwald or Dachau. It was there that the death camps were located . The Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz were long impressed by the atrocities that were committed within its walls by the Nazis. What was this place and for what purposes did the Germans create it? This topic is dedicated to this article.

Basic information

It was the largest and most “technological” concentration camp ever created by the Nazis. More precisely, it was a whole complex consisting of a regular camp, an institution for forced labor and a special territory on which people were massacred. This is what Auschwitz is known for. Where is this place located? It is located near the Polish Krakow.

Those who liberated Auschwitz were able to save part of the “bookkeeping” of this terrible place. From these documents the command of the Red Army found out that over the entire existence of the camp, about one million three hundred thousand people were tortured within its walls. About a million of them are Jews. At Auschwitz there were four huge gas chambers, each of which housed 200 people at once.

So how many people were killed there?

Alas, there is every reason to believe that there were much more victims. One of the commandants of this terrible place, Rudolf Hess, said at the Nuremberg trial that the total number of people killed could well reach 2.5 million. In addition, it is unlikely that this criminal called the true figure. In any case, he constantly bustled at the court, claiming that he never knew the exact number of prisoners destroyed.

Given the enormous capacity of the gas chambers, it can be inferred that there were actually more deaths than indicated in official reports. Some researchers think that about four million (!) Innocent people found their end in these terrible walls.

The bitter irony was that the gates of Auschwitz were adorned with an inscription that read: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”. Translated into Russian, this means: “Work makes you free.” Alas, in reality no freedom there even smelled. On the contrary, labor from a necessary and useful occupation in the hands of the Nazis turned into an effective means of destroying people, which almost never failed.

When was this death complex created?

Construction began in 1940 in the territory previously occupied by the Polish military garrison. As the first barracks, soldiers’ barracks were used. Of course, the builders were Jews and prisoners of war. They were poorly fed, killed for each misconduct - real or imaginary. So I collected my first “harvest” “Auschwitz” (you already know where this place is).

Gradually, the camp grew, turning into a huge complex, designed to supply cheap labor that could work for the benefit of the Third Reich.

Nowadays, little is said about this, but the labor of prisoners was intensively used by all (!) Large German companies. In particular, the famous BMV corporation actively exploited slaves, the need for which grew every year, as Germany threw more and more divisions into the meat grinder of the Eastern Front, being forced to equip them with new equipment.

Prison conditions

The conditions were monstrous. At first, people were housed in barracks, in which there was nothing. In general, nothing, except for a small armful of rotten straw on several tens of square meters of floor. Over time, they began to issue mattresses, at the rate of one for five to six people. The most preferred option for prisoners was the bunks. Although they stood on three floors, only two prisoners were put in each cell. In this case, it was not so cold, since you had to sleep at least not on the floor.

In any case, good was not enough. In a room that could accommodate a maximum of fifty people in a standing position, one and a half to two hundred prisoners huddled. Intolerable stench, humidity, lice and typhoid fever ... From all this, people died in thousands.

The Cyclone-B gas kill chambers operated around the clock, with a three-hour break. In the crematoriums of this concentration camp, the bodies of eight thousand people were burned daily.

Medical experiments

As for medical care, the prisoners who managed to survive at Auschwitz for at least a month had their hair turning gray with the word “doctor”. And in fact: if a person was seriously ill, it was better for him to immediately climb into the noose or run in front of the watchmen, hoping for a merciful bullet.

And no wonder: given that the notorious Mengele “practiced” and a number of “healers” of smaller rank "practiced" in these parts, the trip to the hospital most often ended with the victims of Auschwitz acting as an experimental rabbit. The prisoners were tested for poisons, dangerous vaccines, exposure to extremely high and low temperatures, they tried new methods of transplantology ... In short, death was really a blessing (especially given the tendency of the “doctors” to perform operations without anesthesia).

Hitler's murderers had one “pink dream”: to develop a means of quickly and effectively sterilizing people, which would destroy entire nations, depriving them of the ability to reproduce themselves.

To this end, monstrous experiments were carried out: genitals were removed for men and women, and the healing rate of postoperative wounds was examined. Many experiments were carried out on the subject of radiation provision. Unhappy people were irradiated with unrealistic doses of x-rays.

Career “Doctors”

Subsequently, they were also used in the study of numerous oncological diseases that, after such “therapy”, appeared in almost all irradiated. By and large, all the experimental subjects were awaited only by a terrible, painful death for the benefit of “science and progress”. It is regrettable to admit this , but many of the “doctors” not only managed to avoid the loop in Nuremberg, but also settled down perfectly in America and Canada, where they were considered almost the luminaries of medicine.

Yes, the data they received was really priceless, only the price paid for them was disproportionately high. Once again, the question arises of the ethical component in medicine ...

Feeding

They fed them accordingly: all day rations consisted of a bowl of a translucent “soup” of rotten vegetables and crumbs of “technical” bread, in which there was a lot of rotten potatoes and sawdust, but there was no flour. Almost 90% of prisoners suffered from a chronic bowel disorder, which killed them faster than the “caring” Nazis.

The prisoners could only envy those dogs that were kept in neighboring huts: the kennels had heating, and even the quality of feeding was not worth comparing ...

Death conveyor

Auschwitz gas chambers have become a terrible legend today. The killing of people was put on stream (in the literal sense of the word). Immediately after arriving at the camp, prisoners were sorted into two categories: fit and unfit for work. Children, the elderly, women and the disabled were sent directly from the platforms to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Unsuspecting prisoners were first sent to the locker room.

What did you do with the bodies?

There they undressed, they were given soap and led “into the shower”. Of course, the victims fell into the gas chambers, which in fact were disguised as shower stalls (there were even sprayers for water on the ceiling). Immediately after the batch was accepted, the sealed doors were closed, cylinders with Cyclone-B gas were activated, after which the contents of the containers rushed into the “shower room”. People died within 15-20 minutes.

After that, their bodies were sent to crematoria, which worked without stopping for days on end. The resulting ash was used to fertilize agricultural land. The hair that the captives sometimes shaved off went to stuff pillows and mattresses. When the cremation furnaces failed, and their pipes burnt out from constant operation, the bodies of the unfortunates were burned in a huge pit dug in the camp.

Today, the Auschwitz Museum was erected in that place. A terrible, oppressive feeling even today covers everyone who visits this territory of death.

About how rich ruling camps

You need to understand that the same Jews were brought to Poland from Greece and other distant countries. They were promised “resettlement in Eastern Europe” and even jobs. Simply put, people came to the place of their murder not only voluntarily, but also taking with them all the valuables.

You should not consider them too naive: in the 30s of the XX century, Jews were actually evicted from Germany to the East. It’s just that people didn’t take into account that times have changed, and from now on it was much more profitable for the Reich to destroy the “untimers” that it didn’t like.

Where do you think all the gold and silver things, good clothes and shoes seized from the dead have gone? For the most part, they were appropriated by the commandants, their wives (who were not at all embarrassed that the new earrings were on a dead man a couple of hours ago), the camp guards. Particularly “distinguished” Poles, moonlighting here. They called the looted warehouses “Canada.” In their view, it was a wonderful, rich country. Many of these “dreamers” not only enriched themselves in the sale of things killed, but were also able to escape just the same to Canada.

How effective was the slave labor of prisoners?

Paradoxical as it may seem, the economic efficiency from the slave labor of the prisoners whom the Auschwitz camp "sheltered" was scanty. People were harnessed (moreover women) to carts on farmland, more or less strong men were used as low-skilled labor in metallurgical, chemical and military enterprises, they were paved and repaired by roads destroyed by bombing of the Allies ...

Here are just the management of the enterprises where the Auschwitz camp delivered labor force was not enthusiastic: people complied with a maximum of 40-50% of the norm even with the constant threat of death for the slightest misconduct. And surprisingly there is nothing: many of them barely stood on their feet, what kind of performance is there?

No matter what the Hitler’s nonhumans said at the trial in Nuremberg, their only purpose was the physical destruction of people. Even their effectiveness as a labor force did not seriously interest anyone.

Mode relaxation

Almost 90% of survivors in that hell thank God that they were brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp in mid-1943. At that time, the regime of the institution was significantly softened.

First, from now on, warders had no right to kill any prisoner they did not like without trial and investigation. Secondly, in local feldsher points they really started to treat, not kill. Thirdly, it became much better to feed.

Did the Germans wake up conscience? No, everything is much more prosaic: it became completely clear that Germany was losing this war. The “Great Reich” urgently needed workers, and not raw materials for fertilizing the fields. As a result, the life of prisoners has grown slightly in the eyes of even finished monsters.

In addition, from now on, not all newborns were killed. Yes, until that time, all women who arrived pregnant with this place lost their children: babies were simply drowned in a bucket of water, and then their bodies were thrown away. Often right behind the huts in which the mothers lived. How many unhappy women have gone mad, we will never know. The 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has recently been celebrated, but time does not heal such wounds.

So here. During the “thaw”, all infants began to be examined: if at least something “Aryan” slipped in their facial features, the child was sent for “assimilation” to Germany. So the Nazis hoped to solve the monstrous demographic problem, which rose to its full height after the huge losses on the Eastern Front. It is difficult to say how many descendants of the Slavs captured and sent to Auschwitz live in Germany today. The story is silent about this, and documents (for obvious reasons) were not preserved.

Exemption

Everything in the world comes to an end. This concentration camp was no exception. So who liberated Auschwitz, and when did this happen?

And the Soviet soldiers did it. Warriors of the First Ukrainian Front released prisoners of this terrifying place on January 25, 1945. The SS units guarding the camp stood to their deaths: they received an order at all costs to give time to the other Nazis to destroy both all prisoners and documents that would shed light on their heinous crimes. But our guys did their duty.

That's who freed Auschwitz. Despite all the streams of dirt that are pouring in their direction today, our soldiers at the cost of their lives managed to save many people. Do not forget about it. On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, almost the same words came from the lips of the current German leadership, which honored the memory of Soviet soldiers who fell for the freedom of others. Only in 1947 a museum was opened in the camp. Its creators tried to preserve everything as it was seen by the unfortunates arriving here.