Oświęcim Basin

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 

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.

Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] ; also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 others. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments. At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. After the Holocaust ended, only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial. Several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss. The Allies' failure to act on early reports of mass murder by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial. As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

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.

Pławy [ˈpwavɨ] 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) west of Oświęcim and 57 km (35 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

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.

Pszczynka is a river in Silesian Voivodeship of Poland, a left tributary of the Vistula, 45.26 km long.The sources of the river are located in Wodzisław County (near Gogołowa) and Jastrzębie-Zdrój. It flows through Pszczyna. On the river, there is Łąka retention reservoir. Its tributaries include Dokawa and Korzeniec.

Harmęże [xarˈmɛ̃ʐɛ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Oświęcim, within Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately 8 kilometres (5 mi) south-west of Oświęcim and 57 km (35 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.Marian Kołodziej's artwork, The Labyrinth, is displayed in the basement of St. Maximilian Kolbe Centre in Harmęże.

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.