Photo album of the concentration camp "Auschwitz Birkenau" (Auschwitz)

"Album of Auschwitz" - about 200 unique photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, compiled into an album by an unknown SS officer, will be exhibited at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow.

Historians rightly regard the Auschwitz album as one of the most important testimonies of the fate of the millions who were killed. The Auschwitz album is essentially a one of a kind archive of documentary photographs of the active camp, with the exception of a few photographs of its construction in 1942-1943, and three photographs taken by the prisoners themselves.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was the largest Nazi death camp. More than 1.5 million people of different nationalities were tortured here, of which about 1.1 million were European Jews.

What is the Auschwitz concentration camp?

The complex of buildings for the detention of prisoners of war was built under the auspices of the SS on the directive of Hitler in 1939. The Auschwitz concentration camp is located near Krakow. 90% of those contained in it were ethnic Jews. The rest are Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Gypsies and representatives of other nationalities, who in the total number of those killed and tortured amounted to about 200 thousand.

The full name of the concentration camp is Auschwitz Birkenau. Auschwitz is a Polish name, it is customary to use it mainly in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Nearly 200 photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were taken in the spring of 1944, and methodically compiled into an album by an unknown SS officer. Subsequently, this album was found by a survivor of the camp, nineteen-year-old Lily Jacob, in one of the barracks of the Mittelbau-Dora camp on the day of his liberation.

Arrival of the train to Auschwitz.

In the pictures from the Auschwitz album we see the arrival, selection, forced labor or killing of Jews who entered Auschwitz in late May - early June 1944. According to some sources, these photographs were taken on the same day, according to others - over several weeks.

Why was Auschwitz chosen? This is due to its convenient location. First, it was on the border where the Third Reich ended and Poland began. Auschwitz was one of the key trading hubs with convenient and well-established transport routes. On the other hand, the closely approaching forest helped to hide the crimes committed there from prying eyes.

The first buildings were erected by the Nazis on the site of the barracks of the Polish army. For the construction, they used the labor of local Jews who fell into their bondage. At first, German criminals and Polish political prisoners were sent there. The main task of the concentration camp was to keep people dangerous to the well-being of Germany in isolation and use their labor. The prisoners worked six days a week, and Sunday was a day off.

In 1940, the local population living near the barracks was forcibly expelled by the German army in order to build additional buildings on the vacated territory, where later there were a crematorium and chambers. In 1942, the camp was fenced with a strong reinforced concrete fence and high voltage wire.

However, even such measures did not stop some of the prisoners, although cases of escape were extremely rare. Those who had such thoughts knew that if they tried, all their cellmates would be destroyed.

In the same year, 1942, at the NSDAP conference, it was concluded that the mass extermination of the Jews and the "final solution of the Jewish question" were necessary. At first, German and Polish Jews were sent to Auschwitz and other German concentration camps of the Second World War. Then Germany agreed with the Allies to conduct a "cleansing" in their territories.

It should be mentioned that not everyone easily agreed to this. For example, Denmark was able to save its subjects from imminent death. When the government was informed about the planned "hunt" of the SS, Denmark organized a secret transfer of Jews to a neutral state - Switzerland. Thus, more than 7 thousand lives were saved.

However, in the general statistics of the 7,000 people destroyed, tortured by hunger, beatings, overwork, diseases and inhuman experiments, this is a drop in the sea of ​​shed blood. In total, during the existence of the camp, according to various estimates, from 1 to 4 million people were killed.

In mid-1944, when the war unleashed by the Germans took a sharp turn, the SS tried to transport prisoners from Auschwitz west to other camps. Documents and any evidence of a merciless massacre were massively destroyed. The Germans destroyed the crematorium and gas chambers. In early 1945, the Nazis had to release most of the prisoners. Those who could not run were wanted to be destroyed. Fortunately, thanks to the advance of the Soviet army, several thousand prisoners were saved, including children who were being experimented on.

Camp structure

In total, Auschwitz was divided into 3 large camp complexes: Birkenau-Oswiecim, Monowitz and Auschwitz-1. The first camp and Birkenau were later merged into a complex of 20 buildings, sometimes several stories high.

The tenth unit was far from the last place in terms of terrible conditions of detention. Medical experiments were carried out here, mainly on children. As a rule, such "experiments" were not so much of scientific interest as they were another way of sophisticated bullying. Especially among the buildings, the eleventh block stood out, it caused horror even among the local guards. There was a place for torture and executions, the most negligent were sent here, tortured with merciless cruelty. It was here that attempts were made for the first time to mass and most “effective” extermination with the help of the Zyklon-B poison.

An execution wall was constructed between these two blocks, where, according to scientists, about 20,000 people were killed. Several gallows and burning stoves were also installed on the territory. Later, gas chambers were built that could kill up to 6,000 people a day. The arriving prisoners were divided by German doctors into those who were able to work, and those who were immediately sent to death in the gas chamber. Most often, weak women, children and the elderly were classified as disabled. The survivors were kept in cramped conditions, with little to no food. Some of them dragged the bodies of the dead or cut off the hair that went to textile factories. If a prisoner in such a service managed to hold out for a couple of weeks, they got rid of him and took a new one.

Some fell into the "privileged" category and worked for the Nazis as tailors and barbers. The deported Jews were allowed to take no more than 25 kg of weight from home. People took with them the most valuable and important things. All things and money left after their death were sent to Germany. Before that, the belongings had to be dismantled and sorted out everything of value, which was what the prisoners were doing in the so-called "Canada". The place acquired this name due to the fact that earlier "Canada" was called valuable gifts and gifts sent from abroad to the Poles. Labor on the "Canada" was relatively softer than in general in Auschwitz. Women worked there. Food could be found among the things, so in "Canada" the prisoners did not suffer from hunger as much. The SS did not hesitate to molest beautiful girls. Often there were rapes.

Living conditions of the SS in the camp

auschwitz concentration camp auschwitz polandAuschwitz concentration camp (Oswiecim, Poland) was a real town. It had everything for the life of the military: canteens with plentiful good food, cinema, theater and all human benefits for the Nazis. While the prisoners did not receive even the minimum amount of food (many died of starvation in the first or second week), the SS men feasted incessantly, enjoying life.

Concentration camps, especially Auschwitz, have always been a desirable place of duty for the German soldier. Life here was much better and safer than that of those who fought in the East.

However, there was no place more corrupting all human nature than Auschwitz. A concentration camp is not only a place with good maintenance, where nothing threatened the military for endless murders, but also a complete lack of discipline. Here the soldiers could do whatever they wanted and to which one could sink. Huge cash flows flowed through Auschwitz at the expense of property stolen from deported persons. Accounting was done carelessly. And how could it be possible to calculate exactly how much the treasury should be replenished, if even the number of arriving prisoners was not taken into account?

The SS men did not hesitate to take their precious things and money. They drank a lot, alcohol was often found among the belongings of the dead. In general, employees in Auschwitz did not limit themselves to anything, leading a rather idle lifestyle.

Doctor Josef Mengele

After Josef Mengele was wounded in 1943, he was deemed unfit for further service and sent as a doctor to Auschwitz, the death camp. Here he had the opportunity to carry out all his ideas and experiments, which were frankly insane, cruel and senseless.

The authorities ordered Mengele to conduct various experiments, for example, on the topic of the effects of cold or height on a person. So, Josef conducted an experiment on temperature effects by enclosing the prisoner on all sides with ice until he died of hypothermia. Thus, it was found out at what body temperature irreversible consequences and death occur.

Mengele liked to experiment on children, especially on twins. The results of his experiments was the death of almost 3 thousand minors. He performed forced sex reassignment surgeries, organ transplants, and painful procedures in an attempt to change the color of his eyes, which eventually led to blindness. This, in his opinion, was proof of the impossibility for a "non-purebred" to become a real Aryan.

In 1945, Josef had to flee. He destroyed all reports of his experiments and, having issued fake documents, fled to Argentina. He lived a quiet life without deprivation and oppression, without being caught and punished.

When Auschwitz collapsed

At the beginning of 1945, the position of Germany changed. Soviet troops began an active offensive. The SS men had to begin the evacuation, which later became known as the "death march". 60,000 prisoners were ordered to walk to the West. Thousands of prisoners were killed along the way. Weakened by hunger and unbearable labor, the prisoners had to walk more than 50 kilometers. Anyone who lagged behind and could not move on was immediately shot. In Gliwice, where prisoners arrived, they were sent in freight cars to concentration camps in Germany.

The liberation of the concentration camps took place at the end of January, when only about 7 thousand sick and dying prisoners remained in Auschwitz who could not leave.

Transcarpathian Jews are waiting for sorting.

Many trains came from Berehove, Mukachevo and Uzhgorod - the cities of Carpathian Rus - at that time part of Czechoslovakia occupied by Hungary. Unlike the previous trains with the deportees, the wagons with the Hungarian exiles from Auschwitz arrived directly to Birkenau along the freshly laid tracks, the construction of which was completed in May 1944.

Laying paths.

The paths have been extended in order to speed up the process of selecting prisoners for those who can still work and be subject to immediate destruction, as well as to more efficiently sort their personal belongings.

Sorting.

After sorting. Working women.

Workable women after pest control.

Distribution to a labor camp. Lily Jacob is seventh from the right in the front row.

Most of the "able-bodied" prisoners were transferred to forced labor camps in Germany, where they were used in the factories of the military industry, which were under air attack. Others - mostly women with children and the elderly - were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival.

Able-bodied men after pest control.

More than a million Jews from Europe died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Konev and Major General Petrenko entered Auschwitz, which at that time contained more than 7,000 prisoners, including 200 children.

Zril and Zeilek, brothers of Lily Jacob.

The exhibition will also include videos of survivors of Auschwitz, who recall the horror they had to endure as children. Interviews by Lily Yakob herself, who found the album, Tibor Beerman, Aranka Segal and other witnesses of one of the most terrible events in the history of mankind are provided for the exhibition by the Shoah Foundation - Institute for Visual History and Education of the University of Southern California.

Truck with things of newcomers to the camp.

Auschwitz children

Distribution to a labor camp.



After sorting. Unemployable men.

After sorting. Unemployable men.

Prisoners declared unfit for work.

Jews recognized as incapacitated are awaiting a decision on their fate near crematorium No. 4.

Selection of Jews on the Birkenau railway platform, known as the ramp. In the background is a column of prisoners on the road to Crematorium II, the building of which is visible at the top center of the photo.

A truckload of new arrivals' belongings passes a group of women, possibly on their way to the gas chambers. Birkenau functioned as a huge enterprise of extermination and plunder during the period of mass deportations of Hungarian Jews. Often the destruction of some, the disinfestation and registration of others were carried out simultaneously so as not to delay the processing of constantly arriving victims.

This is the story of the triumph of blind cruelty, one and a half million deaths and silent human grief. Here, the last hopes crumbled to dust, in contact with hopelessness and terrible reality. Here, in a poisonous fog, shredded by pain and hardships of being, some said goodbye to relatives, loved ones, others to their own lives. This is the story of the Auschwitz concentration camp - the site of the most massacre in the history of mankind.

As illustrations, I use archival photographs of 2009. Unfortunately, many of them are of very poor quality.

Spring 1940. Rudolf Hess arrives in Poland. Then still the captain of the SS, Hess, was to create a concentration camp in the small town of Auschwitz (the German name for Auschwitz) located in the occupied territory.

It was decided to build a concentration camp on the site where once the barracks of the Polish army were located. Now they were in a neglected state, many were dilapidated.

The authorities set a difficult task for Hess - to create a camp for 10 thousand prisoners within a relatively short time. Initially, the Germans planned to keep Polish political prisoners here.

Since Hess had been working in the camp system since 1934, building another concentration camp was a matter of course for him. However, things did not go very smoothly at first. The SS did not yet consider the concentration camp in Auschwitz as a strategically important object and did not pay much attention to it. There were supply difficulties. Hess later wrote in his memoirs that once he needed a hundred meters of barbed wire and he just stole it.

One of the symbols of Auschwitz is a cynical inscription above the main gate of the camp. "Arbeit macht frei" - work makes free.

When the prisoners returned from work, an orchestra played at the entrance to the camp. This was necessary so that the prisoners kept their marching pace and so it was easier for the guards to count them.

The region itself was of considerable interest to the Third Reich, since the largest coal deposits were located 30 km from Auschwitz. Also, this region was rich in limestone reserves. Coal and limestone are valuable raw materials for the chemical industry, especially during times of war. Coal, for example, was used to produce synthetic gasoline.

The German syndicate IG Farbenindustrie decided to competently exploit the natural potential of the territory that had passed into the hands of the Germans. In addition, IG Farbenindustrie was interested in free labor, which could be provided by concentration camps packed to overflowing with prisoners.

It is important to note that the slave labor of the prisoners of the camps was used by many German companies, although some still prefer to deny this.

In March 1941, Himmler visited Auschwitz for the first time.

Nazi Germany subsequently wanted to build a model German city near Auschwitz with the money of IG Farbenindustrie. Ethnic Germans could live here. The local population, of course, would have to be deported.

Now in some barracks of the main Auschwitz camp there is a museum complex where photographs, documents of those years, things of prisoners, lists with surnames are stored.

Suitcases with numbers and names, artificial limbs, glasses, children's toys. All these things will keep the memory of the horror that happened here for several years for a long time to come.

People came here deceived. They were told they were being sent to work. Families took with them the best things, food. In fact, it was the road to the grave.

One of the most "difficult" elements of the exposition is a room where a huge amount of human hair is stored behind glass. I think I will remember the heavy smell in this room for the rest of my life.

In the photo - a warehouse where 7 tons of hair were found. The photo was taken after the camp was liberated.

By the onset of the summer of 1941, in the territory occupied by the invaders, execution campaigns assumed a large-scale character and began to be carried out constantly. Often the Nazis killed women and children at close range. Observing the situation, the highest ranks expressed concern to the leadership of the SS regarding the morale of the killers. The fact is that the execution procedure had a negative impact on the psyche of many German soldiers. There were fears that these people - the future of the Third Reich - were slowly turning into mentally unbalanced "beasts". The invaders needed to find an easier and less bloody way to effectively kill people.

Given the appalling conditions at Auschwitz, many quickly became incapacitated due to starvation, physical exhaustion, torture, and disease. For a certain time, prisoners unable to work were shot. Hess wrote in his memoirs about the negative attitude towards the shooting procedures, so the transition to a "cleaner" and faster method of killing people in the camp at that time would have been very helpful.

Hitler believed that the care and maintenance of mentally retarded and mentally ill people in Germany was an extra cost item for the Reich economy and it was pointless to spend money on this. Thus, in 1939, the murder of mentally retarded children was initiated. When the war began in Europe, adult patients began to be involved in this program.

By the summer of 1941, approximately 70,000 people had been killed as part of the adult euthanasia program. In Germany, the massacres of the sick were most often committed with the help of carbon monoxide. People were told that they had to undress to take a shower. They were brought into a room with pipes that were connected to gas cylinders, not to the water supply.

The adult euthanasia program is gradually expanding beyond Germany. At this time, the Nazis are faced with another problem - transporting carbon monoxide cylinders over long distances becomes a costly business. The killers were given a new task - to reduce the cost of the process.

German documents of the time also mention experiments with explosives. After several terrible attempts to implement this project, when the German soldiers had to comb the area and collect the body parts of the victims scattered around the district, the idea was recognized as inappropriate.

Some time later, the negligence of one SS-Soviet, who fell asleep in a car with the engine running in the garage and almost suffocated with exhaust gases, prompted the Nazis to solve the problem of a cheap and quick way to kill the sick.

Doctors began to arrive in Auschwitz, who were looking for sick prisoners. For the prisoners, they specially invented a bike, according to which all the hype was reduced to the selection of patients to be sent for treatment. Many prisoners believed the promises and went to their deaths. Thus, the first prisoners of Auschwitz died in the gas chambers not at all in the camp, but in Germany.

In the early autumn of 1941, one of the deputy commandants of the Hess camp, Karl Fritsch, came up with the idea to test the effect of the gas on people. According to some reports, the first experiment with Zyklon B at Auschwitz was carried out in this room - a dark bunker converted into a gas chamber next to Hess's office.

An employee of the camp climbed onto the roof of the bunker, opened this hatch and poured powder into it. The chamber functioned until 1942. Then it was rebuilt into a bomb shelter for the SS-sheep.

This is what the interior of the former gas chamber looks like now.

Next to the bunker was a crematorium, where the corpses were taken on carts. As the bodies were burned, a greasy, gag-inducing, sweetish smoke billowed over the camp.

According to another version, Zyklon B was first used on the territory of Auschwitz in the 11th block of the camp. Fritsch ordered the basement of the building to be prepared for this purpose. After the first loading of Zyklon B crystals, not all the prisoners in the room died, so it was decided to increase the dose.

When Hess was informed about the results of the experiment, he calmed down. Now the SS soldiers did not have to stain their hands daily with the blood of executed prisoners. However, the gas experiment set in motion a terrifying mechanism that, in a few years, will turn Auschwitz into the site of the most mass murder of people in the history of mankind.

Block 11 was called a prison within a prison. This place had a bad reputation and was considered the most terrible in the camp. Zeki tried to bypass him. Here the delinquent prisoners were interrogated and tortured.

The cells of the block were always packed with people.

In the basement there was a punishment cell and solitary cells.

Among the measures of influence on prisoners in the 11th block, the so-called "standing punishment" was popular.

The prisoner was locked in a cramped, stuffy brick box, where he had to stand for several days. Prisoners were often left without food, so few people managed to get out of Block 11 alive.

In the courtyard of block 11 there is an execution wall and a gallows.

The gallows located here is not quite ordinary. It is a bar with a hook driven into the ground. The prisoner was hung up by his hands tied behind his back. Thus, the entire weight of the body fell on the everted shoulder joints. Since there was no strength to endure the hellish pain, many almost immediately lost consciousness.

At the execution wall, the Nazis shot the prisoners, usually in the back of the head. The wall is made of fibrous material. This is done so that the bullets do not ricochet.

According to available data, up to 8 thousand people were shot at this wall. Now flowers are lying here and candles are burning.

The territory of the camp is surrounded by a high barbed wire fence in several rows. During the functioning of Auschwitz, high voltage was applied to the wire.

The prisoners, who were unable to endure the suffering in the dungeons of the camp, threw themselves on the fences and thereby saved themselves from further torment.

Photographs of prisoners with dates of admission to the camp and death. Some did not manage to live here even for weeks.

In the next part of the story, we will talk about the giant death factory - the Birkenau camp located a few kilometers from Auschwitz, corruption in Auschwitz, medical experiments on prisoners and the "beautiful beast". I will show you a photo from the barracks in the women's part of Birkenau, the place where the gas chambers and the crematorium were located. I will also tell you about the life of people in the dungeons of the camp and about the further fate of Auschwitz and his superiors after the end of the war.

Usually, after visiting an interesting museum, there are many different thoughts in my head, a feeling of satisfaction. After leaving the territory of this museum complex, there is a feeling of deep devastation and depression. I've never seen anything like this before. I never really read into the historical details of this place, I did not imagine how large-scale the policy of human cruelty could be.

The entrance to the Auschwitz camp is crowned with the famous inscription "Arbeit macht frei", which means "Work gives liberation".

Arbeit macht frei is the title of a novel by German nationalist writer Lorenz Diefenbach. The phrase was placed as a slogan at the entrances of many Nazi concentration camps, either as a mockery or as a false hope. But, as you know, labor did not give anyone the desired freedom in this concentration camp.

Auschwitz 1 served as the administrative center of the entire complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 on the basis of brick two- and three-story buildings of the former Polish, and earlier Austrian barracks. The first group, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners, arrived at the camp on June 14 of the same year. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13,000 to 16,000, and by 1942 reached 20,000. The SS selected some prisoners, mostly Germans, to spy on the rest. The prisoners of the camp were divided into classes, which was visually reflected by the stripes on their clothes. 6 days a week, except Sunday, the prisoners were required to work.

In the Auschwitz camp, there were separate blocks that served various purposes. In blocks 11 and 13, punishments were made for violators of the rules of the camp. People were placed in groups of 4 in so-called "standing cells" measuring 90 cm x 90 cm, where they had to stand all night. More severe measures meant slow killings: the guilty were either put in a sealed chamber, where they died from lack of oxygen, or simply starved to death. Between blocks 10 and 11 there was a torture yard, where prisoners were simply shot at best. The wall near which the shooting was carried out was reconstructed after the end of the war.

On September 3, 1941, on the orders of the deputy chief of the camp, SS-Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the first test of gas etching was carried out in block 11, as a result of which about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners, mostly sick, died. The test was deemed a success and one of the bunkers was converted into a gas chamber and crematorium. The chamber functioned from 1941 to 1942, and then it was rebuilt into an SS bomb shelter.

Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau) is what is usually meant when talking about Auschwitz itself. In it, in one-story wooden barracks, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Gypsies were kept. The number of victims of this camp amounted to more than a million people. The construction of this part of the camp began in October 1941. Auschwitz 2 had 4 gas chambers and 4 crematoria. New prisoners arrived daily by train to the Birkenau camp from all over occupied Europe.

This is what prison barracks look like. 4 people in a narrow wooden cell, there is no toilet in the back, you can’t leave the back at night, there is no heating.

The arrivals were divided into four groups.
The first group, which accounted for about ¾ of all those brought, went to the gas chambers for several hours. This group included women, children, the elderly and all those who did not pass the medical examination for full fitness for work. More than 20,000 people could be killed in the camp each day.

The selection procedure was extremely simple - all newly arrived prisoners lined up on the platform, several German officers selected potentially able-bodied prisoners. The rest went to the showers, so people were told ... No one ever had a panic. Everyone undressed, left their belongings in the sorting room and entered the shower room, which in reality turned out to be a gas chamber. The Birkenau camp contained the largest gas shop and crematorium in Europe, which was blown up by the Nazis during their retreat. Now it is a memorial.

Jews who arrived in Auschwitz were allowed to take up to 25 kg of personal belongings, respectively, people took the most valuable. In the sorting rooms for things after the mass executions, the camp staff confiscated all the most valuable things - jewelry, money that went to the treasury. Personal items were also sorted. Much went into the re-circulation of goods to Germany. In the halls of the museum, some stands are impressive, where the same type of things are collected: glasses, prostheses, clothes, dishes ... THOUSANDS of things piled up in one huge stand ... someone's life stands behind each thing.

Another fact was very striking: hair was cut from the corpses, which went to the textile industry in Germany.

The second group of prisoners was sent to work as slaves in industrial enterprises of various companies. From 1940 to 1945, about 405 thousand prisoners were assigned to factories in the Auschwitz complex. Of these, more than 340 thousand died from illness and beatings, or were executed.
The third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, went to various medical experiments, in particular to Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the "angel of death."
Below I have given an article about Mengele - this is an incredible case when a criminal of this magnitude completely escaped punishment.

Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi criminal doctors

After being wounded, SS Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for military service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In addition to their main function - the destruction of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied, concentration camps performed another function in Nazi Germany. With the advent of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major research center".

"Research" went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on the body of a soldier (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was the most straightforward: a prisoner from a concentration camp is taken, covered with ice on all sides, "doctors" in SS uniform constantly measure body temperature ... When an experimental person dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after cooling the body below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person.

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research on the effect of high altitude on pilot performance. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners took a terrible death: at ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. By the way, none of these aircraft in Germany took off until the very end of the war.

On his own initiative, Josef Mengele, who in his youth was carried away by racial theory, conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that the brown eyes of Jews under no circumstances could become the blue eyes of a "true Aryan." He injects hundreds of Jews with blue dye - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. The conclusion is obvious: a Jew cannot be turned into an Aryan.

Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele's monstrous experiments. What are some studies of the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the "study" of 3,000 infant twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and transplanted organs from each other. Sisters were forced to have children from brothers. Sex reassignment operations were carried out. Before starting the experiments, the kind doctor Mengele could stroke the child on the head, treat him with chocolate ...

Last year, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The creators of aspirin are accused of using concentration camp prisoners to test their sleeping pills. Judging by the fact that shortly after the start of the "testing" the concern additionally acquired another 150 prisoners of Auschwitz, no one could wake up after a new sleeping pill. By the way, other representatives of German business also cooperated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, produced not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz.

In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected "data" and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, Mengele worked quietly in his native Gunzburg at his father's firm. Then, according to new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through... the Red Cross. In those years, this organization provided charity, issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. It is possible that Mengele's fake ID was simply not thoroughly verified. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich reached unprecedented heights.

Despite the generally negative attitude on the part of the world community to Mengele's experiments, he made a certain useful contribution to medicine. In particular, the doctor developed methods for warming victims of hypothermia, used, for example, in rescue from avalanches; skin grafting (for burns) is also a doctor's achievement. He also made a significant contribution to the theory and practice of blood transfusion.

One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), Iozef moved to Paraguay. However, all this was, rather, a sham, a game of catching the Nazis. All with the same passport in the name of Gregor, Josef Mengele repeatedly visited Europe, where his wife and son remained.

In prosperity and contentment, the man responsible for tens of thousands of murders lived until 1979. Mengele drowned in the warm ocean while swimming on a beach in Brazil.

The fourth group, predominantly women, were selected in the "Canada" group for personal use by the Germans as servants and personal slaves, as well as for sorting the personal property of prisoners arriving at the camp. The name "Canada" was chosen as a mockery of the Polish prisoners - in Poland, the word "Canada" was often used as an exclamation at the sight of a valuable gift. Previously, Polish emigrants often sent gifts home from Canada. Auschwitz was partially serviced by prisoners who were periodically killed and replaced with new ones. About 6,000 members of the SS watched everything.
By 1943, a resistance group had formed in the camp, which helped some of the prisoners escape, and in October 1944, the group destroyed one of the crematoria. In connection with the approach of Soviet troops, the administration of Auschwitz began the evacuation of prisoners to camps located on German territory. When Soviet soldiers occupied Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found about 7,500 survivors there.

In the entire history of Auschwitz, there were about 700 escape attempts, 300 of which were successful, but if someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape.
It is impossible to establish the exact number of deaths in Auschwitz, since many documents were destroyed, in addition, the Germans did not keep records of the victims sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Modern historians agree that between 1.4 and 1.8 million people were killed in Auschwitz, most of them Jews.
On March 1-29, 1947, a trial took place in Warsaw in the case of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz. On April 2, 1947, the Polish Higher People's Court sentenced him to death by hanging. The gallows on which Höss was hanged was placed at the entrance to the main crematorium of Auschwitz.

When Höss was asked why millions of innocent people are being killed, he replied:
First of all, we must listen to the Führer and not philosophize.

It is very important to have such museums on earth, they turn the mind around, they are evidence that a person in his actions can go as far as he likes, where there are no boundaries, where there are no moral principles ...

24-02-2016, 09:15

From a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz gradually turned into the site of the largest mass murder in history. 1.1 million people died here, including more than 200 thousand children. “One image crashed into my memory, crashed at the very moment it was described to me. It was an image of a "procession" of empty baby carriages - property stolen from the dead Jews, which was taken out of Auschwitz in the direction of the station, five in a row. A prisoner who saw this column says that she rode past him for a whole hour, ”writes Lawrence Rees.

In the spring of 1940, the construction of one of the first Nazi concentration camps near the town of Auschwitz began in the "New Reich". Only eight months ago it was Southwestern Poland, and now it is German Upper Silesia. In Polish, the town was called Auschwitz, in German - Auschwitz. It should be noted that the functions of the camps in the Nazi state were different. Concentration camps such as Dachau (established in March 1933, just two months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany) were very different from death camps such as Treblinka, which did not appear until the middle of the war. The story of Auschwitz is interesting, the most infamous of them, which became both a concentration camp and an extermination camp…

None of the Germans, even those who used to be fanatical Nazis, admitted to "welcome" the existence of the death camps, but many quite approved of the existence of concentration camps in the 1930s. After all, the first prisoners who got to Dachau in March 1933 were mostly political opponents of the Nazis. Then, at the dawn of the Nazi regime, Jews were vilified, humiliated and beaten, but left-wing politicians of the previous government were considered a direct threat.

The regime at Dachau was not just brutal; everything was arranged in such a way as to break the will of the prisoners. Theodor Eicke - the first commandant of the camp - elevated the violence, ruthlessness and hatred that the Nazis felt for their enemies into a certain system and order. Dachau is notorious for the physical sadism that prevailed in the camp: whippings and severe beatings were common. Prisoners could be killed, and their death attributed to "murder while trying to escape" - many of those who got to Dachau died there. But the real Dachau regime rested not so much on physical violence, no matter how terrible, no doubt, it was, but on moral humiliation.

Poland was despised by the Nazis for its "perpetual mess." In relation to the Poles, the Nazis had no disagreements. They despised them. The question was different - what to do with them. One of the main "problems" that the Nazis had to solve was the problem of the Polish Jews. Unlike Germany, where Jews made up less than 1% of the population and where most of them were assimilated, there were 3 million Jews in Poland, most of whom lived in communities; they were often easily recognizable by their beards and other "signs of their faith". After Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, immediately after the start of the war (under the terms of the secret part of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939), more than two million Polish Jews ended up in the German zone of occupation.

Another problem for the Nazis, which they themselves created, was finding housing for the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans who were then resettling in Poland. Under an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, ethnic Germans from the Baltic States, Bessarabia and other regions recently occupied by Stalin were allowed to emigrate to Germany - "to return home to the Reich", as the slogan of that time was. Obsessed with the notion of racial purity of "German blood", people like Himmler considered it their duty to enable all Germans to return to their homeland. But one difficulty arose: where, in fact, should they return?

By the spring of 1940, Poland was divided into two parts. There were areas that officially became "German" and entered the "New Reich" as new imperial districts - Reichsgau - Reichsgau West Prussia - Danzig (Gdansk); the Reichsgau Wartheland (also known as the Warthegau) in western Poland in the region of Posen (Poznan) and Lodz; and Upper Silesia in the Katowice region (it was this region that included Auschwitz). In addition, an entity called the General Government was created on the largest part of the former Polish territory, which included the cities of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin and was intended for the majority of Poles to live.

Over the course of a year and a half, about half a million ethnic Germans were settled in the new part of the Reich, while hundreds of thousands of Poles were evicted from there to make room for the arriving Germans. Many Poles were simply stuffed into boxcars and taken south to the General Government, where they were simply thrown out of the cars, left without food and without a roof over their heads. Not surprisingly, in January 1940, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Himmler is now engaged in the transfer of population. Not always successful.

With regard to the Jews, Himmler made a different decision: if the ethnic Germans needed living space, which was obvious, then they needed to take it away from the Jews and force them to live on a much smaller area than before. The solution to this problem was the creation of a ghetto. The ghettos, which became such a terrible sign of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Poland, were not originally created for the terrible conditions that eventually prevailed there. Like much else in the history of Auschwitz and the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the fatal changes that took place in the ghetto during its existence were not at first included in the plans of the Nazis.

The Nazis believed that, ideally, the Jews should simply be forced to “get away,” but since this was not possible at that time, they had to be isolated from everyone else: since, as the Nazis believed, Jews, especially Eastern Europeans, were carriers of all kinds of diseases. In February 1940, while the deportation of Poles to the General Government was in full swing, it was announced that all Jews of Łódź were to "relocate" to the ghetto area of ​​the city. Initially, such ghettos were planned only as a temporary measure, a place to imprison Jews before deporting them somewhere. In April 1940, the Lodz ghetto was taken under guard and Jews were forbidden to leave its territory without the permission of the German authorities.

Auschwitz was originally conceived as a transit concentration camp - in Nazi jargon "quarantine" - in which prisoners were to be held before being sent to other camps in the Reich. But just a few days after the camp was set up, it became clear that it would function independently as a place of permanent detention. The Auschwitz camp was designed to detain and intimidate Poles at a time when the entire country was being ethnically reorganized and the Poles as a nation were being intellectually and politically annihilated.

The first prisoners who arrived in Auschwitz in June 1940 were, however, not Poles, but Germans - 30 criminals transferred here from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They were to be the first kapos - prisoners to act as agents of SS control over Polish prisoners.

The first Polish prisoners of Auschwitz ended up in the camp for various reasons: on suspicion of working for the Polish underground, or because they were members of one of the social groups especially persecuted by the Nazis (such as priests and intellectuals), or simply because some German did not like them. Many of the first group of Polish prisoners transferred to the camp on June 14, 1940 from Tarnow Prison were university students. The very first task for all newly arrived prisoners was simple: they had to build their own camp. At this stage of the camp's existence, not many Jews were sent to Auschwitz, since the policy of creating ghettos throughout the country was still in full swing.

By the end of 1940, Rudolf Hess, the camp commandant, had already created the basic structures and principles according to which the camp would function for the next four years: kapos, who controlled every moment of the life of the prisoners; the cruelest regime, which allowed the guards to punish prisoners arbitrarily, at their discretion - often simply without any reason; the prevailing belief in the camp that if a prisoner failed to somehow elude a team sent to dangerous work, he would face a quick and unforeseen death.

By the end of 1940, Hess had already created the basic structures and principles according to which the camp would function for the next four years: the kapos, who controlled every moment of the life of the prisoners; the cruelest regime, which allowed the guards to punish prisoners arbitrarily, at their discretion - often simply without any reason; the prevailing belief in the camp that if a prisoner failed to somehow elude a team sent to dangerous work, he would face a quick and unforeseen death. But besides this, in those first months of the existence of the camp, another phenomenon was created that most clearly symbolized the Nazi camp culture - it was block 11. This block was a prison inside a prison - a place of torture and murder.

In 1941, Auschwitz, designed for 10 thousand prisoners, began to expand. Since July 1941, Soviet prisoners of war began to be sent to Osvents, mainly military political officers - commissars. From the moment they arrived at Auschwitz, the treatment of these prisoners was different from that of the rest. Incredible, but true - even considering the torture that was already happening in the camp: this group of prisoners was treated even worse. Jerzy Bielecki heard how they were being bullied even before he saw them themselves: “I remember terrible screams and groans ...” He and a friend approached a gravel quarry on the edge of the camp, and there they saw Soviet prisoners of war. “They were running wheelbarrows filled with sand and gravel,” says Beletsky. “It was not an ordinary camp work, but some kind of hell that the SS men specially created for Soviet prisoners of war.” The kapos beat the working commissars with sticks, and the SS guards watching all this cheered those up: “Come on, guys! Beat them!”

In 1941, Auschwitz prisoners became victims of a Nazi program called "adult euthanasia." At first, injections were used to kill the disabled, but then the use of carbon monoxide in cylinders became a favorite method. Initially, this took place in special centers, equipped mainly in former psychiatric hospitals. Gas chambers were built there, designed in such a way that they looked like showers.

Later, at the end of August or the beginning of September 1941, a more "effective way to destroy people" was found. The basement of unit 11 was hermetically sealed, and it naturally became the most suitable place to conduct an experiment with Zyklon B gas. By the beginning of 1942, "experiments" with the cyclone began to be carried out directly in the camp's crematorium, which was much more convenient... In the autumn of 1941, the deportation of German Jews began. Many of them ended up first in the ghetto, and then in Auschwitz and other camps. As part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", the gassing of "useless" Jews from the territories surrounding Auschwitz began.

In the autumn of 1941, 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war were sent to Auschwitz to build a new camp, Birkenau (Brzezinka). Polish prisoner Kazimierz Smolen witnessed their arrival. “It was already snowing, which is rare for October; they (Soviet prisoners of war) were unloaded from the wagons three kilometers from the camp. They were ordered to take off their clothes and plunge into vats of disinfectant solution, and they walked to Auschwitz (the main camp) already naked. They were completely exhausted. The Soviet prisoners were the first in the main camp to have camp numbers tattooed on their bodies.” It was another "improvement" invented at Auschwitz - the only camp in the Nazi state where the prisoners were identified in this way. The conditions of work and maintenance of our prisoners of war were so difficult that the average life expectancy of Soviet prisoners of war in Birkenau was two weeks ...

By the spring of 1942, Auschwitz began to emerge as a unique institution in the Nazi state. On the one hand, some prisoners were still taken into the camp, given a serial number and forced to work. On the other hand, there was now a whole category of people who were killed hours and sometimes minutes after they arrived. No other Nazi camp functioned in this way. There were death camps like Chełmno and concentration camps like Dachau; but nothing like Auschwitz.

After the defeat of the Germans near Moscow, Soviet prisoners of war were no longer sent to Auschwitz - they were sent to work in military factories, and their place in the camp was taken by deported Slovak Jews, and then French, Belgian and Dutch. In the spring of 1942, both women and children were sent to the camp, until that moment it had been a purely male institution. Jews arrived in trains, and if they were not fit for work, they were mercilessly disposed of. New gas chambers appeared in Auschwitz: "Red House", "White House". However, the process of extermination of people in Auschwitz remained inefficient and improvised. As a center of mass murder, Auschwitz was still far from "perfect" and its capacity was very limited...

In the history of Auschwitz and the Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” 1943 marked a turning point. By the beginning of the summer of 1943, there were already four crematoria connected to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In total, these four crematoria were ready to destroy about 4,700 people daily. The crematoria and gas chambers of Birkenau became the center of a huge semi-industrial complex. Here, selected Jews were first sent to work in one of the many small camps nearby, and then, when they were deemed unfit for work after several months of horrendous treatment, they were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination zone, which was several kilometers from the work camps.

Over time, there were 28 subcamps operating around Auschwitz, which were located near various industrial facilities throughout Upper Silesia: from the cement factory in Holeszow to the weapons plant in Eintrachthutte, from the Upper Silesian power plant to the giant camp in Monowice, built to serve the chemical plant for the production of artificial rubber of I.G. Farben. About 10 thousand prisoners of Auschwitz (including the Italian scientist and writer Primo Levi, who after the war will try to comprehend the reasons for the cruelty of the Nazi regime in his books) were placed in Manowitz. By 1944, more than 40,000 prisoners were working as slaves in various industrial enterprises throughout Upper Silesia. It is roughly estimated that Auschwitz generated about 30 million marks in net income for the Nazi state by selling this forced labor to private concerns.

Auschwitz was famous for its medical experiments on prisoners. As part of the solution of the Jewish question, sterilization experiments were carried out. Auschwitz prisoners were even "sold" to Bayer, an affiliate of I.G. Farben as guinea pigs for testing new drugs. One of the messages from Bayer to the Auschwitz leadership reads: “A party of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain final results because they died during the experiments. We kindly ask you to send us another group of women in the same number and at the same price. These women, who died while testing experimental painkillers, cost the company 170 Reichsmarks each.

Auschwitz became the site of the largest massacres in history as a result of the events of 1944. Until the spring of that year, the number of victims in this camp was several hundred thousand people less than in Treblinka. But in the spring and early summer of 1944, Auschwitz began to operate at full capacity and even more, the period of the most monstrous and insane killings that this camp had ever seen began. Most of the Jews who suffered and died during this terrible time came from one country - Hungary.

The Hungarians have always tried to play a clever political game with the Nazis, consumed by two strong and conflicting feelings. On the one hand, they experienced a traditional fear of the power of Germany, and on the other, they really wanted to cooperate with the winning side, especially if the latter meant the opportunity to seize a piece of territory from their eastern neighbor, Romania.

In the spring of 1941, the Hungarians supported their ally - Germany in the capture of Yugoslavia, and later, in June, they sent troops to participate in the war against the Soviet Union. But when the promised "blitzkrieg" did not succeed, dragging on for a much longer period than expected, the Hungarians began to realize that they had taken the wrong side. In January 1943, the Red Army utterly defeated the Hungarian forces on the Eastern Front, causing catastrophic losses: Hungary lost about 150 thousand people killed, wounded or captured. The new "reasonable" position, decided the Hungarian leadership - to distance themselves from the Nazis.

In the spring of 1944, Hitler decided to send his troops into the territory of an unreliable ally. Hungary remained one of the few Eastern European countries that had not yet been plundered. This was a stunningly rich territory, and now, Hitler decided, it was time for the Nazis to seize this wealth. And of course, the local Jews became a special target of the Nazis. More than 760 thousand Jews lived in Hungary.

Due to the difficult military situation and the growing need for forced labor, the Nazis should have paid more attention to the selection of those Jews who could serve as physical labor for the German war economy, from those who were of no value to the Third Reich, and therefore had to be subjected to immediate destruction. Thus, from the point of view of the Nazis, Auschwitz became the ideal destination for the deportation of Hungarian Jews. It became a giant human sieve through which specially selected Jews could enter the Reich factories and factories that used slave labor. By July 1944, Auschwitz received 440,000 Hungarian Jews. In less than 8 weeks, more than 320 thousand people died here.

Everything was organized with German pedantry. The trains were unloaded in the basement of the crematorium. The gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 were located underground, so that the delivery of "cyclone B", when people were stuffed into the chamber and the door was closed behind them, was carried out almost directly. Standing outside, on the roof of the gas chamber, SS members opened the shutters, gaining access to the hidden pillars in the gas chamber. Then they placed canisters with Zyklon B in the columns and lowered them, and when the gas reached the bottom they again pushed and closed the shutters. The Sonderkommando was supposed to get the bodies out of the gas chamber, transport them using a small lift up to the crematorium ovens on the first floor. Then they went back into the cells, carrying powerful fire hoses, and washed away the blood and excrement that covered the floor and walls.

Even the hair of those killed in the prison camp was put into the service of the Reich. An order was received from the economic department of the SS: to collect human hair from two centimeters long so that threads could be spun from them. These threads were used to make "felt socks for submarine crews and felt hoses for the railway" ...

When the end came, everything happened incredibly quickly. In January 1945, the Nazis blew up the crematoria, and on January 27, Soviet soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front entered the camp complex. There were about 8 thousand prisoners in the camp, whom the Nazis did not have time to destroy, and 60 thousand were driven to the west. Rudolf Hess was executed at Auschwitz in April 1947. According to modern estimates, of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died in the camp. The staggering proportion of Jews amounted to 1 million people.

Despite the decision of the Nuremberg trials that the SS was, in general, a "criminal" organization, no one ever even tried to defend the position that it was in itself a war crime to work in the ranks of the SS in Auschwitz - a position that public opinion would undoubtedly support. The condemnation and sentencing, however mild, of every member of the SS from Auschwitz would no doubt convey the message very clearly to future generations. But that did not happen. Approximately 85% of the SS men who served in Auschwitz and survived the war escaped punishment.

Auschwitz and the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" represent the most heinous act in history. With their crime, the Nazis brought to the world an understanding of what educated, technically equipped people can do if they have a cold heart. The knowledge of what they did, once released into the world, must not be forgotten. It still lies there, ugly, heavy, waiting to be discovered by the next generation. A warning to us and to those who come after us.

The article is based on the book by Lawrence Rees “Auschwitz. The Nazis and the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, Moscow, Colibri, Azbuka-Anticus, 2014.

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The Auschwitz prisoners were released four months before the end of World War II. By that time there were few of them left. Almost one and a half million people died, most of them were Jews. For several years, the investigation continued, which led to terrible discoveries: people not only died in gas chambers, but also became victims of Dr. Mengele, who used them as guinea pigs.

Auschwitz: the history of one city

A small Polish town, in which more than a million innocent people were killed, is called Auschwitz all over the world. We call it Auschwitz. A concentration camp, experiments on gas chambers, torture, executions - all these words have been associated with the name of the city for more than 70 years.

It will sound rather strange in Russian Ich lebe in Auschwitz - "I live in Auschwitz." Is it possible to live in Auschwitz? They learned about the experiments on women in the concentration camp after the end of the war. Over the years, new facts have been discovered. One is scarier than the other. The truth about the camp called shocked the whole world. Research is still ongoing today. Many books have been written and many films have been made on the subject. Auschwitz has entered our symbol of a painful, difficult death.

Where did mass murders of children take place and terrible experiments were carried out on women? In Which city do millions of inhabitants on earth associate with the phrase "factory of death"? Auschwitz.

Experiments on people were carried out in a camp located near the city, which today is home to 40,000 people. It is a quiet town with a good climate. Auschwitz is first mentioned in historical documents in the twelfth century. In the XIII century there were already so many Germans here that their language began to prevail over Polish. In the 17th century, the city was captured by the Swedes. In 1918 it became Polish again. After 20 years, a camp was organized here, on the territory of which crimes took place, the likes of which mankind had not yet known.

Gas chamber or experiment

In the early forties, the answer to the question of where the Auschwitz concentration camp was located was known only to those who were doomed to death. Unless, of course, do not take into account the SS. Some of the prisoners, fortunately, survived. Later they talked about what happened within the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Experiments on women and children, which were conducted by a man whose name terrified the prisoners, is a terrible truth that not everyone is ready to listen to.

The gas chamber is a terrible invention of the Nazis. But there are things even worse. Christina Zhivulskaya is one of the few who managed to get out of Auschwitz alive. In her book of memoirs, she mentions a case: a prisoner, sentenced to death by Dr. Mengel, does not go, but runs into the gas chamber. Because death from poisonous gas is not as terrible as the torment from the experiments of the same Mengele.

The creators of the "factory of death"

So what is Auschwitz? This is a camp that was originally intended for political prisoners. The author of the idea is Erich Bach-Zalewski. This man had the rank of SS Gruppenführer, during the Second World War he led punitive operations. With his light hand, dozens were sentenced to death. He took an active part in the suppression of the uprising that took place in Warsaw in 1944.

The assistants of the SS Gruppenfuehrer found a suitable place in a small Polish town. There were already military barracks here, in addition, the railway communication was well established. In 1940, a man named came here. He will be hanged at the gas chambers by the decision of the Polish court. But this will happen two years after the end of the war. And then, in 1940, Hess liked these places. He set to work with great enthusiasm.

Inhabitants of the concentration camp

This camp did not immediately become a "factory of death". At first, mainly Polish prisoners were sent here. Only a year after the camp was organized, a tradition appeared to display a serial number on the prisoner's hand. More and more Jews were brought in every month. By the end of the existence of Auschwitz, they accounted for 90% of the total number of prisoners. The number of SS men here also grew steadily. In total, the concentration camp received about six thousand overseers, punishers and other "specialists". Many of them were put on trial. Some disappeared without a trace, including Josef Mengele, whose experiments terrified the prisoners for several years.

We will not give the exact number of victims of Auschwitz here. Let's just say that more than two hundred children died in the camp. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers. Some fell into the hand of Josef Mengele. But this man was not the only one who conducted experiments on people. Another so-called doctor is Carl Clauberg.

Starting in 1943, a huge number of prisoners entered the camp. Most had to be destroyed. But the organizers of the concentration camp were practical people, and therefore decided to take advantage of the situation and use a certain part of the prisoners as material for research.

Carl Cauberg

This man supervised the experiments conducted on women. His victims were predominantly Jews and Gypsies. The experiments included the removal of organs, the testing of new drugs, and irradiation. What kind of person is Karl Cauberg? Who is he? In what family did you grow up, how was his life? And most importantly, where did the cruelty that goes beyond human understanding come from?

By the beginning of the war, Karl Cauberg was already 41 years old. In the twenties, he served as chief physician at the clinic at the University of Königsberg. Kaulberg was not a hereditary doctor. He was born into a family of artisans. Why he decided to connect his life with medicine is unknown. But there is evidence according to which, in the First World War, he served as an infantryman. Then he graduated from the University of Hamburg. Apparently, medicine fascinated him so much that he refused a military career. But Kaulberg was not interested in medicine, but in research. In the early forties, he began to search for the most practical way to sterilize women who did not belong to the Aryan race. For experiments, he was transferred to Auschwitz.

Kaulberg's experiments

The experiments consisted in the introduction of a special solution into the uterus, which led to serious violations. After the experiment, the reproductive organs were removed and sent to Berlin for further research. There is no data on exactly how many women became victims of this "scientist". After the end of the war, he was captured, but soon, just seven years later, oddly enough, he was released according to an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Returning to Germany, Kaulberg did not suffer from remorse at all. On the contrary, he was proud of his "achievements in science." As a result, complaints began to come in from people who had suffered from Nazism. He was arrested again in 1955. He spent even less time in prison this time. He died two years after his arrest.

Josef Mengele

The prisoners called this man "the angel of death". Josef Mengele personally met the trains with new prisoners and conducted the selection. Some went to the gas chambers. Others are at work. The third he used in his experiments. One of the prisoners of Auschwitz described this man as follows: "Tall, with a pleasant appearance, like a movie actor." He never raised his voice, he spoke politely - and this terrified the prisoners in particular.

From the biography of the Angel of Death

Josef Mengele was the son of a German entrepreneur. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine and anthropology. In the early thirties, he joined the Nazi organization, but soon, for health reasons, left it. In 1932, Mengele joined the SS. During the war he served in the medical troops and even received the Iron Cross for bravery, but was wounded and declared unfit for service. Mengele spent several months in the hospital. After recovery, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he launched his scientific activities.

Selection

Selecting victims for experiments was Mengele's favorite pastime. The doctor only needed one look at the prisoner in order to determine the state of his health. He sent most of the prisoners to the gas chambers. And only a few captives managed to delay death. It was hard to deal with those in whom Mengele saw "guinea pigs."

Most likely, this person suffered from an extreme form of mental disorder. He even enjoyed the thought that he had a huge number of human lives in his hands. That is why he was always next to the arriving train. Even when it was not required of him. His criminal actions were guided not only by the desire for scientific research, but also by the desire to rule. Just one word of his was enough to send tens or hundreds of people to the gas chambers. Those that were sent to the laboratories became the material for experiments. But what was the purpose of these experiments?

An invincible faith in the Aryan utopia, obvious mental deviations - these are the components of the personality of Josef Mengele. All his experiments were aimed at creating a new tool that could stop the reproduction of representatives of objectionable peoples. Mengele not only equated himself with God, he placed himself above him.

Josef Mengele's experiments

The angel of death dissected babies, castrated boys and men. He performed operations without anesthesia. Experiments on women consisted of high voltage shocks. He conducted these experiments in order to test endurance. Mengele once sterilized several Polish nuns with X-rays. But the main passion of the "doctor of death" was experiments on twins and people with physical defects.

To each his own

On the gates of Auschwitz was written: Arbeit macht frei, which means "work sets you free." The words Jedem das Seine were also present here. Translated into Russian - "To each his own." On the gates of Auschwitz, at the entrance to the camp, in which more than a million people died, a saying of the ancient Greek sages appeared. The principle of justice was used by the SS as the motto of the most cruel idea in the history of mankind.