(357 words) Auschwitz-Birkenau More than a million people were systematically exterminated at the Auschwitz network of death camps in southern Poland during World War Two. Most of those murdered were Jews – as part of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” to annihilate European Jewry – but Poles, ethnic Roma and Soviet prisoners of war also died ------------------------------------------------------ Entrance: Prisoners selected for death are led to underground Badeanstalten – “bathhouses” Changing room: Victims are made to hand over valuables and remove clothes Attic: Quarters for Sonderkommandos – slave labourers who have to remove gold teeth and hair from corpses Crematoria: Corpses incinerated Elevator Gas chamber: Cyanide-based pesticide –Zyklon B – is dropped down wire-mesh columns. Death takes up to 20 minutes 1 First camp: Built in 1942. 10,000 Soviet POWs killed during construction 2 Women and children: About 230,000 children and teenagers deported to Auschwitz 3 Men’s quarantine: Newly arrived prisoners terrorised into absolute submission 4 Czech Jews: Camp for families from Theresienstadt ghetto near Prague 5 Hungarian Jews: Within 10-week period in 1944, Nazis send 330,000 to gas chambers, 105,000 others are selected for slave labour. 990,000 European Jews and some 83,000 Poles are killed or die at Auschwitz camp complex 6 Men’s camp: Opened 1943 7 Sinti and Roma camp: Of estimated 23,000 men, women, and children, 19,000 are killed in gas chambers 8-9 Gas chambers and crematoria: Four units 10 “Kanada” section: Belongings of victims are sorted in warehouses 11 Main hospital: Thousands of inmates are selected by camp doctor, Josef Mengele, for medical experiments on behalf of Army and German pharmaceutical companies 12 “Mexico” section: In final phase of war, new section is started, but only 32 of 188 barracks are completed Human ashes found in fields Sewage plant 1944: Railway extended to gas chambers Unloading ramp Hospital: Used for sterilization experiments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 B-II B-III Main gate 400 metres 437 yards --------------------------------------------------------- Sources: The Auschwitz Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 words 357