Auschwitz will probably forever be associated with the great tragedy that took place in the German extermination camp Auschwitz, located today on the outskirts of this city. Dz today to commemorate the horrible Nazi crime the camp is open to tourists. It was established in 1940 as a camp for political prisoners, especially Poles, only to be expanded over time, and the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp was established in the village of Brzezinka to become the site of the extermination of some one million Jews from all over Europe. Representatives of other nationalities also perished there, including Gypsies, Russians and Poles, a total of 1.5 million people. There are 28 brick residential buildings preserved at the Auschwitz camp. Some of them house expositions that often arouse enormous emotions, as the exhibits include items taken from prisoners, a huge number of them: eyeglasses, shoes and children's toys. Further tragic truths of cruelty are evoked by the wall of death, the crematorium and the starvation cell. St. Maximilian Kolbe - sentenced to death by starvation for helping another convict - died in this cell. The huge roll-call square, which gathered prisoners at its center, has a gallows that was designed to hold 12 prisoners at a time; camp commandant Rudolf Höss was hanged on the same gallows in April 1947. The tour begins with the screening of a film composed of footage shot by the Red Army during the liberation of the camp in 1945. The entire site is surrounded by barbed wire, and the entrance to the camp is crowned by a gate with the cynical inscription "Arbeit mach frei," or "Work makes free." The Birkeanu camp preserved the entrance gate and the train ramp where all the exterminated disembarked. It was here that the first selection took place into those able to work and those who were going straight to death. The camp also contains the ruins of the crematoria, gas chambers and the remains of the barracks where the prisoners lived. Not some of them have been restored, so we can learn what brutal conditions they were kept in. At the end of the ramp is the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp, where the main commemorations are held and wreaths are laid. There was also the so-called Auschwitz III Camp, established for the IG Farbenindustrie concern (Buna-Werke plant) in Manowitz. It had the character of a heavy slave labor camp. Prisoners were hired by German companies and were exterminated at murderous labor. As early as 1947, the Polish government, at the request of former prisoners, placed the former extermination camps under legal protection and established a State Museum for this purpose, which to this day protects the site, tells the story and warns new generations.
29.05.2014
