Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies
chgs@umn.edu
612-624-0256

Genocide in Our Time

Auschwitz Death Camp

The German Concentration camp and later death camp of Auschwitz was established on May 20, 1940 in Upper Silesia at a Polish army barracks site taken over during the German occupation.

Photos taken by Dr. Stephen Feinstein on November 1, 1992. November 1, "All Saints Day" in the Christian Calendar is a special time for remembrance of Polish political victims of Nazism. Thus, on this day, thousands of visitors came to Auschwitz I, while virtually no visitors were in camp number two-Birkenau. At the time of these photos,all numbers of victims had been removed from the monument in Birkenau. This was because the Auschwitz State Museum had determined that the figure of 4 million victims at Auschwitz was inaccurate and had been used by th Polish Communist regime since the late 1940s as a way to demonize "Fascism" and to enhance the legitimacy of the Communist regime.

After the fall of Communism, commissions determined the death toll at the three main Auschwitz camps (Oswiecim, Birkenau and Monowitz-Buna) to be between 1.25 million and 1.5 million people, which included mainly Jews at Birkenau but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWS, political prisoners from many countries, priests and others.

The change in numbers killed on the memorial does not affect the overall number of Jewish victims which varies from 5.2 million as a low figure to over six million. At his trial in Warsaw in 1946, Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of the camp, said that the number killed was "only two million." The sentence for his being a war criminal was death by hanging, and was carried out in Auschwitz, Camp I.

Auschwitz has been the scene of many controversial issues because of conflicted memory in Poland about victimization and also because of the absence of Jews. Jews were 10% of the 1939 Polish population and now number less than 20,000.

Holocaust deniers have been quick to use the revised Polish figures on Auschwitz as a means of diminishing the number of victims or claiming falsification. This is an incorrect analysis as numbers based on pre-war population records and German records themselves from killing units in the field (such as Einsatgruppen in USSR) attest to figures of Jewish victimization around 6 million.

For a view of the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument, information on the competition to build it, and Sybil Milton's comment about the numbers on the plaques, see Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.

Regarding Overall statistics of Jewish victimization:

Israel scholar Yehuda Bauer gives these statistics, considered some of the most reliable:

polish-Soviet area	approx. 4,565,000
Germany	125,000
Austria	65,000
Czechoslovakia	277,000
Hungary	402,000
France	83,000
Belgium/Luxembourg	24,700
Netherlands	106,000
Italy	7,500
Norway	760
Romania excluding Bessarabia, N. Bukovina and northern Transylvania	271,000 - 287,000
Yugoslavia	60,000 - 67,000
Greece	60,000 - 67,000
Totals number of Jewish victims	5,700,000 - 5,860,000
*Source: Yehuda Bauer. A History of the Holocaust.* New York, Frankin Watts Revised edition 2001.**

US Holocaust Memorial Museum: "approximately six million."

For the six major death camps in Poland, the numbers are:

Auschwitz	1,100,000 Jews and 200,000 others
Maidanek (Majdanek)	78,000 including 61,000 Jews, 12,000 Poles, 5,000 others including Soviet prisoners of war.
Chelmno	320,000
Treblinka	762,000
Sobibor	167,000
Belzec	434,000 - 500,000
Total fatalities	2,857,000 - 3,139,000
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

Some legitimate debate on numbers in certain areas.

Entrance
Barracks	Registration Barracks
Medical Block, Camp I, Block 10 where Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on inmates.	Kaduk's Chapel built by guard Oswald Kaduk who prayed between selections. He was convicted in the 1964 Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt.
Electric Fences	Electric Fences
Camp Fence	Gallows where Rudolph Hoess, Camp Commandent, was hanged in 1946 after a trial in Warsaw
Exhibit Shoes	Exhibit Suitcases
Gas Chamber, Auschwitz Camp I (Reconstructed)	Crematorium
Crematorium Closeup	Crematorium
Trial of Hoess	Exhibit showing trial of political inmates from Camp I
Wall of Death: Block 11 (Death Block on right); Medical Block 10 on left	Wall of Death Memorial
Wall of Death Closeup	Wall of Death Closeup
Wall of Death	Sculpture at Museum Bozane Biskupskas

Photos showing condition of the camp in 2007 and revisions to signage.

Memorial in Crematorium I, with Triangle shape on floor, symbol of prisoners (there were 32 variations of this depending on "multiple" categories).

Crematorium I Topf and Sons Manufactured ovens

Crematorium I and cart for pushing bodies into oven.

Crematorium I Outside view. This building was reconstructed by the Auschwitz Museum after the war as the Germans destroyed it on retreat. It is so designated as "reconstructed."

Double electric fence

Barracks, Auschwitz camp I

Roll call signage

Description of work detail in building camp expansion

"Kaduk's Chapel," named after Oswald Kaduk, SS Guard who prayed as he was selecting inmates for extermination. Kaduk was tried at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1964. "Kaduk was one of the cruelest, most brutal and most common SS-men in the KZ-Auschwitz." (Judgement regional court Frankfurt, 19 August 1965)

Auschwitz I Art Museum: Watercolor painting of Roma inmate by Dina Gottlieb, now the center of court case. Gottlieb was a Jewish prisoner when asked to paint these images for Dr. Jozef Mengele. She now is trying to get the images back from Auschwitz as her personal work.

For information of this issue, see:

They talked about Dinah Gottlieb-Babbitt and a mound of memory and reconciliation

An Artist Seeks to Recover Works From Auschwitz

For information of this issue, see:

They talked about Dinah Gottlieb-Babbitt and a mound of memory and reconciliation

An Artist Seeks to Recover Works From Auschwitz

Interior Auschwitz Art Musuem Camp I

Auschwitz I. Building KL/BW 160. Right side housed the prisoners bath

Post card views of the town of Oswiecim/Auschwitz at the turn of the twentieth century displayed in the Oswiecim Jewish Center, 2007.

Town of Auschwitz

Also see another set of photos taken by Dr. Michael Schneider, Macalester College in 2002, show some of the changes in the camp which is now officially the "Auschwitz State Museum."

Auschwitz Death Camp

Photos showing condition of the camp in 2007 and revisions to signage.

Post card views of the town of Oswiecim/Auschwitz at the turn of the twentieth century displayed in the Oswiecim Jewish Center, 2007.

Related Links