Łazy, Oświęcim County

Poręba Wielka [pɔˈrɛmba ˈvjɛlka] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Oświęcim, within Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately 7 kilometres (4 mi) south-east of Oświęcim and 48 km (30 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Osiek [ˈɔɕɛk] is a village in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Osiek. It lies approximately 12 kilometres (7 mi) south of Oświęcim and 50 km (31 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Gmina Osiek is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. Its seat is the village of Osiek; it also contains the village of Głębowice. The gmina covers an area of 41.18 square kilometres (15.9 sq mi), and as of 2006 its total population is 7,857.

Grojec [ˈɡrɔjɛt͡s] is a historic village in Oświęcim County in Lesser Poland Voivodeship in Poland. It lies approximately 8 kilometres (5 mi) south of Oświęcim and 52 km (32 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Zaborze [zaˈbɔʐɛ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Oświęcim, within Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately five kilometres (3.1 mi) south of Oświęcim and 51 kilometres (32 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Polanka Wielka [pɔˈlaŋka ˈvʲɛlka] is a village in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Polanka Wielka. It lies approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) south-east of Oświęcim and 46 km (29 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Gmina Polanka Wielka is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. Its seat is the village of Polanka Wielka, which lies approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) south-east of Oświęcim and 46 km (29 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków. The gmina covers an area of 24.08 square kilometres (9.3 sq mi), and as of 2006, its total population is 4,136.

Monowitz (also known as Monowitz-Buna, Buna and Auschwitz III) was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (Arbeitslager) run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existence, Monowitz was a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp; from November 1943 it and other Nazi subcamps in the area were jointly known as "Auschwitz III-subcamps" (KL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager). In November 1944 the Germans renamed it Monowitz concentration camp, after the village of Monowice (German: Monowitz) where it was built, in the annexed portion of Poland. SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Heinrich Schwarz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945. The SS established the camp in October 1942 at the behest of IG Farben executives to provide slave labor for their Buna Werke (Buna Works) industrial complex. The name Buna was derived from the butadiene-based synthetic rubber and the chemical symbol for sodium (Na), a process of synthetic rubber production developed in Germany. Other German industrial enterprises built factories with their own subcamps, such as Siemens-Schuckert's Bobrek subcamp, close to Monowitz, to profit from the use of slave labor. The German armaments manufacturer Krupp, headed by SS member Alfried Krupp, also built their own manufacturing facilities near Monowitz.Monowitz held around 12,000 prisoners, the great majority of whom were Jews, in addition to non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners. The SS charged IG Farben three Reichsmarks (RM) per day for unskilled workers, four (RM) per hour for skilled workers, and one and one-half (RM) for children. The camp contained an "Arbeitsausbildungslager" (labor education camp) for non-Jewish prisoners viewed as not up to par with German work standards. The life expectancy of Jewish workers at Buna Werke was three to four months; for those working in the outlying mines, only one month. Those deemed unfit for work were gassed at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.Primo Levi, author of If This Is a Man (1947), survived Monowitz, as did Elie Wiesel, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Night (1960), who was a teenage inmate there along with his father.

Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include If This Is a Man (1947, published as Survival in Auschwitz in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories each named after a chemical element as it played a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some, after careful consideration, have suggested that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could have affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally.

Norbert Wollheim (April 26, 1913 – November 1, 1998) was a chartered accountant, tax advisor, previously a board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a functionary of other Jewish organisations. Wollheim grew up in Berlin. He studied jurisprudence and political economy, but had to cease his studies in 1933 because of his Jewish origin. He then worked as a welder for a metal export firm until the outbreak of war in 1939. During that same period he played a key role in running the Kindertransport which transported 10,000 Jewish children out of the Nazi's reach and into safety. Wollheim engaged himself strongly in the Jewish life and became a managing director of the federation of German-Jewish Werkleute youth. After the night of the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht in 1938, he helped to organise the transports of Jewish children to Great Britain and Sweden. In 1939, he also personally accompanied Kindertransports to Sweden, but immediately returned to Berlin after leaving the children in safety. Until 1941 he was responsible for the vocational training schools of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland and adviser on the training relating to crafts of Jewish Germans. From September 1941 Wollheim worked at a transportation equipment factory in Lichtenberg, Berlin.

The Duchy of Oświęcim (Polish: Księstwo Oświęcimskie), or the Duchy of Auschwitz (German: Herzogtum Auschwitz), was one of many Duchies of Silesia, formed in the aftermath of the fragmentation of Poland. It was established about 1315 on the Lesser Polish lands east of the Biała river held by the Silesian branch of the Polish royal Piast dynasty. Briefly semi-autonomous, with its capital in Oświęcim, it was finally sold to the Kingdom of Poland in 1457. Annexed by the Habsburg Empire in 1772, the remaining ducal title ceased to exist in 1918 with the lands being reincorporated into the Second Polish Republic.

Łęki [ˈwɛŋkʲi] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kęty, within Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately 6 kilometres (4 mi) north of Kęty, 12 km (7 mi) south of Oświęcim, and 54 km (34 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.