ON THIS DAY

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June 14, 1940

First prisoners at Auschwitz

On this day in 1940, the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, which became Nazi Germany's largest concentration, extermination, and slave-labour camp, where more than one million people died.

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.

Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in a single location in history.

Facts:

The division of the camp into three lesser ones was created for easier management. Each of them had a different function:

• Auschwitz I focused central offices, warehouses, and workshops.

• Auschwitz II camp was a center for the extermination of the Jews brought into extermination.

• The task of the Auschwitz III camp was slave labour.

Starvation, exposure to toxic substances, hypothermia and electroshocks are just some of all the experiments carried out at Auschwitz. Joseph Mengele was the main camp doctor, and he was obsessed with experimenting on twins.

1/6 of all Jews killed in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz.

The main reason for why it was built was to imprison Polish political prisoners, but it quickly expanded and became an extermination camp to fit the ideology of Hitler and his “final solution”.

Rudolf Höss subordinated the camp from 1940 to 1943 and was later arrested in 1946 and convicted of murder. He was hanged at the camp.

Reports state that some 22,000 Romani and 150,000 Polish people were killed in addition to the Jews. 15,000 Soviet war prisoners and 400 Jehovah’s witnesses are said to been killed as well.

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