1. Auschwitz

2. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi concentration camp
Auschwitz is located in Poland, near Krakow

3. The camp commandant, Rudolf Hoess testified that 3 million people had died at Auschwitz.

4. Most deaths were a result of the gas chambers
Other causes for death included starvation, forced labor, disease, execution and “medical experiments

5. Auschwitz was operated by members of the SS.
Approximately 6,000 SS members worked at Auschwitz

6. Auschwitz II is the most well known of the three camps at Auschwitz

7. By 1942, the SS began conducting selections for incoming Jews.
Jews were divided between those who were fit to work and those who were deemed unable to work

8. Nearly all children, women with children and the elderly were not deemed fit
Thousands of others were deemed unfit following a brief inspection by an SS doctor

9. Roughly ¾ of arrivals are believed to be deemed unable to work
Those deemed unable to work were immediately gassed

10. 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day

11. Those deemed able to work were used as slave labor.
Roughly 85% of these died due to executions, beatings, starvation and sickness.

12. The camp was staffed partially by prisoners.
Kapos
Sonderkommandos

13. Kapos were prisoners who served as orderlies.
Kapos kept order in the barrack huts.
Kapos were often times former convicts.

14. Sonderkommandos prisoners who worked at the crematoria.
Sonderkommandos prepared new arrivals for gassing.

15. Sonderkommandos made sure that prisoners removed their clothing and relinquished all personal possessions.
They also checked corpses teeth for gold and moved the corpses from the gas chambers to furnaces

16. However, Kapos and Sonderkommandos were supervised by members of the SS and killed periodically.
Often times the first duty of a Sonderkommandos was to prepare the previous Sonderkommandos for the gas chamber.

17. 1944 was the deadliest year at Auschwitz

18. Hungarian Jews made up the bulk of deaths during this year.

19. In 1944, Hitler demanded that Hungary give Germany control of their Jewish population.
Hungary, an ally of Germany, refused

20. Hitler sent the German army into Hungary and set up a puppet government.
In April, Hungary began deporting all Hungarian Jews

21. Most of the Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz

22. During this period, the German war effort was collapsing

23. 136 trains were used to send these Jews to Auschwitz
90% were immediately exterminated

24. By the end of 1945 only 190,000 people Jewish descent were alive in Hungary

25. Following World War II, persecutions of the Hungarian Jews continued under Communist rule.
In 2001, only 12,871 Hungarians claimed Jewish descent

26. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the massacre of Hungarian Jews “the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world”

27. Questions
How much did the Allies know about Auschwitz?
What could have been done to stop the massacres?