Oświęcim Castle

Gromiec [ˈɡrɔmjɛt͡s] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Libiąż, within Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland.

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.

Dwory II is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Oświęcim, within Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland.

Bobrek was a subcamp of Monowitz concentration camp located in or near Bobrek, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, and was part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. It was built by Siemens-Schuckert and held approximately 250-300 prisoners including 50 women who were used as slave labor to produce electrical parts for aircraft and U-boat submarines. The commandant of the camp was SS-Scharführer Hermann Buch.

Bobrek [ˈbɔbrɛk] is a village located adjacent to the city of Oświęcim, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany operated a concentration camp at Bobrek. It lies approximately 7 kilometres (4 mi) south of Chełmek, 2 km (1 mi) north-east of Oświęcim, and 49 km (30 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków. The concentration camp at Bobrek is mentioned in an episode of the U.S. TV show Law & Order.

Włosienica [vwɔɕɛˈnit͡sa] 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-east of Oświęcim and 45 km (28 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków.

Libiąż [ˈlʲibʲɔ̃ʂ] is a town in Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, with 17,671 inhabitants (2004).

Gmina Libiąż is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Chrzanów County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. Its seat is the town of Libiąż, which lies approximately 8 kilometres (5 mi) south-west of Chrzanów and 45 km (28 mi) west of the regional capital Kraków. The gmina covers an area of 57.2 square kilometres (22.1 sq mi), and as of 2006 its total population is 22,900 (out of which the population of Libiąż amounts to 17,604, and the population of the rural part of the gmina is 5,296).

The Janina coal mine is a large mine in the south of Poland in Libiąż, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, 350 km south-west of the capital, Warsaw. The mine has been erected by Compagnie Galicienne de Mines, a French mining company, in 1907. Between 1921 and 1939 the Janina mine was under management of its Polish chief executive, Zygmunt Szczotkowski. During World War II it was repurposed into one of the German Nazi concentration camps. After the war the Janina mine was nationalizated, as all enterprises with over 50 employees had been at that time. Janina represents one of the largest coal reserve in Poland having estimated reserves of 841 million tonnes of coal. The annual coal production is around 2.8 million tonnes.

The Soła (Polish: [ˈsɔwa]) is a river in southern Poland, a right tributary of the Vistula. The Soła originates in the Western Beskids mountain range near the border with Slovakia. It is made up of the confluence of several small creeks at the village of Rajcza. It runs downhill northeastwards through Żywiec Basin to the towns of Żywiec and Kęty, forming the border between the Silesian and the Żywiec Beskids. After 89 km (55 mi), the Soła empties into the Vistula River after passing through the town of Oświęcim. The river flows within metres of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum informs that the human ashes and ground bones of those murdered there were often dumped into the river.Soła flows through or near the following settlements: Rajcza, Milówka, Cisiec, Węgierska Górka, Cięcina, Radziechowy, Wieprz, Żywiec, Tresna, Czernichów, Międzybrodzie Żywieckie, Międzybrodzie Bialskie, Porąbka, Czaniec, Kobiernice, Kęty, Nowa Wieś, Hecznarowice, Bielany, Łęki, and Oświęcim.