Pierwsi więźniowie w Auschwitz

The first group of thirty prisoners who arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp were criminals, exclusively of German nationality, transferred from the Sachsenhausen camp. They constituted the beginning of the functional staff of the camp - they became the first kapos and block leaders. This happened on the order of the first commandant of the camp, Rudolf Höss, and was the result of Himmler's decision almost a month earlier, on April 27, to establish a new KL - Konzentrationslager - in this place. It was the second - after KL Stutthof near Gdańsk - camp of this type built in the areas occupied by German troops. It was modeled on similar camps organized in the Third Reich since 1933. Initially, it was intended to be used to detain without a court verdict and for an indefinite period of time "anti-social elements" - members of the Polish resistance movement, intellectuals, political prisoners, common German criminals or (a little later) Soviet prisoners of war. Established on the site of an abandoned artillery barracks, it was supposed to accommodate no more than 10,000 people. people. After Himmler's visit in 1941, it was expanded with additional blocks by prisoners, so that it could accommodate 30,000 people. people. However, until 1942 their number did not exceed 20,000. Of the first group of political prisoners, numbering 728 people - mostly Poles - 239 survived the war. Only after the Wannsee Conference (January 20, 1942), after the decision was made about the "final solution of the Jewish question" and the expansion of further complexes, the Auschwitz camp became what it is still associated with today - an organized and large-scale extermination camp. By the time the camp was liquidated in November 1944, 1.3 million people had passed through Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approx. 80% (mostly Jews) never obtained the status of prisoners - they were deprived of their lives within 20 minutes of arriving there. Numerous pseudo-medical experiments were also carried out in the camp, violating the Hippocratic Oath. The number of victims is estimated at 1.1 million. The total number of people killed as a result of the Wannsee decision was between 5 and 6 million people. TPPL Illustration: striped camp uniform of an Auschwitz prisoner, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, CC-BY-NC.