Auschwitz concentration camp

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Polish: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz), Poland. The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwitz I and the remains of the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Both were developed and run by Nazi Germany during its occupation of Poland in 1939–1945. The Polish government has preserved the site as a research centre and in memory of the 1.1 million people who died there, including 960,000 Jews, during World War II and the Holocaust. It became a World Heritage Site in 1979. Piotr Cywiński is the museum's director.

The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz (Mädchenorchester von Auschwitz; lit. "Girls' Orchestra of Auschwitz") was formed by order of the SS in 1943, during the Holocaust, in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. Active for 19 months—from April 1943 until October 1944—the orchestra consisted of mostly young female Jewish and Slavic prisoners, of varying nationalities, who would rehearse for up to ten hours a day to play music regarded as helpful in the daily running of the camp. They also held a concert every Sunday for the SS.A member of the orchestra, Fania Fénelon, published her experiences as an autobiography, Sursis pour l'orchestre (1976), which appeared in English as Playing for Time (1977). The book was the basis of a television film of the same name in 1980, written by Arthur Miller.

The Theresienstadt family camp (Czech: Terezínský rodinný tábor, German: Theresienstädter Familienlager), also known as the Czech family camp, consisted of a group of Jewish inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who were held in the BIIb section of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp from 8 September 1943 to 12 July 1944. The Germans created the camp to mislead the outside world about the Final Solution. Deported from the ghetto in seven transports in September and December 1943, and May 1944, the prisoners were not subjected to selection on arrival, an unusual situation in Auschwitz, and were granted a number of "privileges", including the creation of a children's block that provided the only attempt at organized education at Auschwitz. The living conditions nevertheless remained poor and the mortality rate was high. Most of the inhabitants who did not die of starvation or disease were murdered during the camp liquidations on 8–9 March and 10–12 July 1944. The first liquidation was the largest massacre of Czechoslovak citizens in history. Of the 17,517 Jews deported to the family camp, only 1,294 survived the war.

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Soviet Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive. Although most of the prisoners had been forced onto a death march, about 7,000 had been left behind. The Soviet soldiers attempted to help the survivors and were shocked at the scale of Nazi crimes. The date is recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On the night of 5 April 1944, Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp wearing an SS uniform provided by SS-Rottenführer Viktor Pestek. Pestek opposed the Holocaust; he was a devout Catholic and was infatuated with Renée Neumann, a Jewish prisoner. Pestek accompanied Lederer out of the camp, and the two men traveled together to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to obtain false documents for Neumann and her mother. Lederer, a former Czechoslovak Army officer and member of the Czech resistance, tried unsuccessfully to warn the Jews at Theresienstadt Ghetto about the mass murders at Auschwitz. He and Pestek returned to Auschwitz in an attempt to rescue Neumann and her mother. Pestek was arrested under disputed circumstances and later executed. Lederer returned to occupied Czechoslovakia, where he rejoined the resistance movement and attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland. After the war he remained in Czechoslovakia. The story of the escape was retold by Lederer and writers including historian Erich Kulka.

Brzezinka (Polish: [bʐɛˈʑiŋka], German: Birkenau) is a village in southern Poland, about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from Oświęcim, in the district of Gmina Oświęcim, Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

The International Monument to the Victims of Fascism (Polish: Międzynarodowy Pomnik Ofiar Obozu, lit. International Monument to the Victims of the Camp) is a commemorative monument in the Auschwitz II–Birkenau concentration camp in Birkenau (now Brzezinka) in southern Poland. It lies at the western end of the railway lines which cross the camp from the main gate. The monument was designed by Italian architects Andrea and Pietro Cascella, and executed in collaboration with Polish and Italian artists Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, Julio Lafuente and Giorgio Simoncini. Completion of the monument took about nine years. It was dedicated on 16 April 1967.: 228  Trees were planted behind the monument by the people of Brzezinka.: 61 

Oświęcim Basin (Polish: Kotlina Oświęcimska) is a lowland, located in southern Poland, between the Lesser Poland Highlands to the north, Silesian Foothills and Wieliczka Foothills to the south. It has the size of around 1,236 km2 (477 sq mi). Its name comes from the city of Oświęcim. It is located on the Vistula River on the confluences of Biała, Soła and Skawa which begin in Carpathian Mountains and Przemsza which begins in Silesian Highlands.

The Gostynia is a river of southern Poland, and a left-bank tributary of the Vistula. It flows through Tychy, and joins the Vistula near Bieruń.

The Auschwitz cross is a cross in front of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in Oświęcim County, Poland, which was erected to commemorate the spot where 151 prisoners (including 80 Poles) were shot by Gerhard Palitzsch on 11 November, 1941.

Block 10 was a barrack at the Auschwitz concentration camp where men and women were used as experimental subjects for Nazi doctors. The experiments in Block 10 ranged from testing bodily reactions to relatively benign substances and sterilization. Although Block 10 was in Auschwitz I, a part of the camp mainly used for male political prisoners, the experiments conducted were mostly on women. The main doctors who worked in Block 10 were Carl Clauberg, Horst Schumann, Eduard Wirths, Bruno Weber and August Hirt. Each of them had different methods in doing experiments on the inmates. The prisoners at Auschwitz were also deported to other sites where experimental subjects were needed. For example, twenty Jewish children were transported to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg where they were injected with virulent tubercular serum and subjected to other experiments, and later murdered at the Bullenhuser Damm school.

Block 11 was the name of a brick building in Auschwitz I, the Stammlager or main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp network. This block was used for executions and torture. Between Block 10 and Block 11 stood the "Death Wall" (reconstructed after the war) where thousands of prisoners were lined up for execution by firing squad.The block contained special torture chambers in which various punishments were applied to prisoners. Some could include being locked in a dark chamber for several days or being forced to stand in one of four standing cells called "Stehzelle" in German. Punishment in these special compartments (one square metre each, with a hole 5x5 cm for breathing), consisted of confining four prisoners, who were forced by the lack of space to remain standing all night for up to twenty nights, while still being forced to work during the day.It was at Block 11 that the first attempts to kill people with Zyklon B were implemented in September 1941.