Holocaust: Auschwitz-Birkenau

First established as a labour camp for Polish prisoners, between 1940 and 1945 at least 990,000 European Jews, 70-75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 14,000 Soviet PoWs, and some 15,000 others were systematically murdered or died at Auschwitz-Birkenau

EXTERMINATION CAMPS
GERMANY
POLAND
Transport routes

Auschwitz-Birkenau
1 million+ dead
Belzec (1942)
600,000
Chelmno (1941-5)
320,000
Majdanek (1942-3)
360,000 
Sobibor (1942-3)
250,000
Treblinka (1942-3)
870,000
Millions also died in 1,000 other concentration camps and ghettos

AUSCHWITZ II (BIRKENAU)
B-I
B-III
B-II
Main gate
Unloading ramp
Attic: Quarters for Sonderkommandos – slave labourers who have to remove gold teeth and hair from corpses
1944: Railway extended to gas chambers
Gas chamber: Cyanide-based pesticide –Zyklon B – is dropped down wire-mesh columns. Death takes up to 20 minutes
400 metres
437 yards
Elevator
Hospital: Used for medical experiments under direction of SS chief Heinrich Himmler
Entrance: Prisoners selected for death are led to underground Badeanstalten – “bathhouses”
Changing room: Victims are made to hand over valuables and remove clothes
Sewage plant
Human ashes found in fields
Crematoria: Corpses incinerated
1940-42: First camp built for Poles, political prisoners and SS garrison
Sinti and Roma camp: Of estimated 23,000 men, women, and children, 19,000 are killed in gas chambers
Women and children: About 230,000 children and teenagers deported to Auschwitz
“Kanada” section: Belongings of victims are sorted in warehouses
Gas chambers and crematoria: Four units
Main hospital: Thousands of inmates selected by camp doctor, Josef Mengele, for medical experiments on behalf of Army and pharmaceutical companies
“Mexico” section: In final phase of war, new section is started, but only 32 of 188 barracks are completed
Men’s quarantine: Newly arrived prisoners terrorised into absolute submission
Czech Jews: Camp for families from Theresienstadt ghetto near Prague
Hungarian Jews: Within 10-week period in 1944, Nazis send 330,000 to gas chambers
Men’s camp: Opened 1943
Oswiecim
Vistula
SS barracks
Auschwitz I
Auschwitz III
(Monowitz)
Auschwitz II
(Birkenau)
SS workshops
0.62 miles
1km
IG Farben
Sources: Auschwitz Memorial, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem