Auschwitz Death Camp
By Ian Baxter
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the site of the single largest mass murder in history. Over one million mainly Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in its gas chambers. Countless more died as a result of disease and starvation. Auschwitz Death Camp is a chilling pictorial record of this infamous establishment. Using some 250 photographs together with detailed captions and accompanying text, it describes how Auschwitz evolved from a brutal labor camp at the beginning of the war into what was literally a factory of death. The images show how people lived, worked, and died at Auschwitz.
The book covers the men who conceived and constructed this killing machine, and how the camp provided a vast labor pool for various industrial complexes erected in the vicinity. Auschwitz Death Camp is shocking proof of the magnitude of horror inflicted by the Nazis on innocent men, women, and children. Such evil should not be forgotten lest it reappear.
Ian Baxter
Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than fifty books. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.
Read more from Ian Baxter
8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaffen-SS Dutch & Belgian Volunteers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNazi Concentration Camp Overseers: Sonderkommandos, Kapos & Trawniki - Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHitler's Panther Tank Battalions, 1943–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiberation of Nazi Concentration Camps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crushing of Army Group North 1944–1945 on the Eastern Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5German Self-propelled Artillery at War 1940–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe German Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1944 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWolf's Lair: Inside Hitler's East Prussian HQ Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSS of Treblinka Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Armour of Hitler's Allies in Action, 1943–1945: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOperation Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHitler's Death Trains: The Role of the Reichsbahn in the Final Solution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeritage Transformed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Auschwitz Death Camp
Titles in the series (100)
D-Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joseph Stalin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler's Defeat on the Eastern Front Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chiang Kai-shek Versus Mao Tse-tung: The Battle for China, 1946–1949 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armoured Warfare and Hitler's Allies, 1941–1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armoured Warfare on the Eastern Front Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsB-17 Memphis Belle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adolf Hitler Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hitler's Mountain Troops, 1939–1945: The Gebirgsjager Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArmoured Warfare in the Italian Campaign, 1943–1945 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Crushing of Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great War Fighter Aces, 1916–1918 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArmoured Warfare in the North African Campaign Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Allied POWs in German Hands 1914–1918 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Panzers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/56th SS Mountain Division Nord at War, 1941–1945 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Armoured Warfare in the Battle of the Bulge, 1944–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArmoured Warfare in the Battle for Normandy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armoured Warfare in Northwest Europe, 1944–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrika-Korps Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Germans on the Somme Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5German Guns of the Third Reich Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Germans at Arras Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArmoured Warfare in the Korean War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Soviet-Afghan War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armoured Warfare and the Waffen-SS, 1944–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHimmler's Nazi Concentration Camp Guards Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blitzkrieg in the West Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Blitzkrieg Russia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNorwich Blitz Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
Auschwitz and Birkenau Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Auschwitz: The Nazi Solution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nazi Concentration Camp Commandants, 1933–1945 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5People in Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Himmler's Nazi Concentration Camp Guards Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Escape from Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Escape From Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAuschwitz Camp of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler’s Death Camps in Occupied Poland: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ghettos of Nazi-Occupied Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warsaw Uprisings, 1943–1944 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Belsen and Its Liberation Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Matters of Testimony: Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitz Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Never Again: A History of the Holocaust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Final Fortress: Breslau 1945 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Belzec Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings485 Days at Majdanek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Death of Jews: Photographs and History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEscape from Sobibor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story Of Auschwitz [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Auschwitz: True Tales From a Grotesque Land Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Auschwitz #34207: The Joe Rubinstein Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Washington: The Indispensable Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of the Peloponnesian War: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Auschwitz Death Camp
3 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Auschwitz Death Camp - Ian Baxter
Chapter One
Evolution of Auschwitz
The town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) was situated in a remote corner of south-western Poland, in a marshy valley where the Sola River flows into the Vistula about thirty-five miles west of the ancient city of Krakow. The town was virtually unknown outside Poland and following the occupation of the country Oswiecim was incorporated into the Reich together with Upper Silesia and renamed by the German authorities as Auschwitz. Prior to the war, the town’s population was 12,000, including nearly 5,000 Jews.The surrounding countryside in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains, whose peaks remained covered in snow all year round, lies in a humid often foggy swampy valley. During the winter the weather is harsh and the whole area could often lie in snow until late March, or even early April. During the spring the whole area would be revived and could look very beautiful, especially when the warmer weather produced a mixture of wild flowers through the sprawling meadows.
It was here in the small district town of Auschwitz that the Germans had chosen a site for a new concentration camp. Originally it had been a former Polish labour exchange and artillery barracks.The location for the site was deemed well situated for Auschwitz had very good railway connections and was isolated from outside observation.
After visiting the site on 27 April 1940, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Höss received approval to go ahead and commence construction and adapt the new site at Auschwitz. It was also agreed that it would house around 10,000 prisoners. A few days later on 4 May 1940, Höss was officially named as commandant of the new Auschwitz quarantine camp.
1. A retouched colour photograph taken of the thirty-six-year-old Rudolf Höss holding the rank of SS-Hauptsturmfhrer in 1936 during his posting at Dachau. Höss became commandant of Auschwitz in May 1940. [Courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum -colour enhancement Richard Markey]
In order to construct and transform the new camp and adapt the twenty brick barracks for the inmates Höss had been given a construction budget of two million Reich Marks. With this generous allowance he would be given the task of cleaning the existing barracks for the guards, rebuilding the two barracks outside the fence into officers’ quarters and a hospital for the garrison, build a barrack for the Blockführer at the gate, construct eight guard towers around the perimeter of the camp, build a hayloft, install a crematorium in the abandoned powder magazine building, and tidy the three-storey house on the edge of the existing camp in order to make it habitable for him and his family.
1a. Construction of Auschwitz. I in the winter of 1940. Prisoners digging foundations of heating or plumbing pipes near the main reception building (Aufnahmegebäude) in Auschwitz I. [Courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum]
During May and early June construction of the camp progressed relatively slowly, but a fence with second-hand barbed wire was soon being installed around the perimeter of the camp, and new buildings began to be constructed. At the entrance of Auschwitz Höss had a new steel gate forged in a hurriedly built workshop and a frame built. Blazoned along the top of the gates frame he had the inscription erected that he liked so much at Dachau, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’- Work Makes You Free. For him the words marked a new journey for all prisoners that passed through these gates, and through hard labour he believed would somehow bring the prisoners a spiritual freedom.
Throughout July and early August work continued on the camp. The labour force lived and worked in appalling conditions. By October there were a mixture of inmates that consisted of Jews, members of the intelligentsia, resistance and political prisoners, together with Polish Catholic priests. All of them were struggling for survival, and yet nothing was done to alleviate the dire conditions. Under equipped, lacking protective gear, and malnourished, the inmates went about their place of work constantly being mentally and physically abused by the guards.
By early December work had considerably forged ahead in spite of the considerable harsh weather conditions imposed on the work force. The whole site, when completed, was to have a very large camp kitchen, utility, theatre, registration buildings, Blockführer officer, commandant’s office, camp administration offices, SS hospital, a fully operational crematorium, Gestapo offices, medical block, and a large water pool reserve for fire emergencies. It was also intended to have twenty-two two-storey buildings converted into prisoner quarters. Plans were drafted and approved for a prisoner hospital and offices and quarters for some of the camp’s prisoners. The majority of these buildings were constructed in red-brick and run in straight rows throughout the camp and were given block numbers for identification purposes.The Blockführer’s guardhouse, however, was a wooden structure and this was built just outside the main gate. Another building under construction outside the main perimeter was a very large red-brick building, known as the registration building. Here new prisoners would be catalogued, receive their camp registration number have their photograph taken, before being escorted by armed guard through the main gates to serve their sentence.
2. Showing the infamous gates of ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, work makes you free.The commandant of Auschwitz firmly believed that inmates gained a sense of discipline by working during their imprisonment, and this discipline would enable them to withstand the harsh environment of prison life. He believed that endless labour brought about a kind of spiritual freedom.The inscription was the work of a Polish political prisoner called Jan Liwacz. Jan was a professional artsmith and had arrived at Auschwitz in the second transport sent from Wisnicz Prison on 20 June 1940. It still stands today as a reminder. [Courtesy of the HITM ARCHIVE&Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum]