a clear distinction between Polish Jews and non-Jews, especially when it began the process of deporting Jews to ghettos in the larger cities. Throughout this analysis, the terms “Poles” and “Jews” will refer to separate groups among those persecuted by the Nazi regime. Of course, both Polish Christians (who were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) and Polish Jews were Polish citizens. For the sake of clarity, however, this work will refer to ethnic Poles or Polish Christians as “Poles” and those defined and persecuted as Jews by the Nazis simply as “Jews.” The reality of identities in wartime was, of course, much more complex and should remind us that the distinction was often artificial, even if it was observed by most Christian Poles and rigorously enforced by the Nazis on the basis of their racial ideology.
The Auschwitz camp grew steadily, and in the course of its expansion the Germans evicted and deported the local population—both Polish and Jewish—in order to establish, for economic and security reasons, an “area of interest” surrounding the camp. The resulting Interessengebiet of KL Auschwitz11 covered an area of approximately forty square kilometers. On 1 March 1941 Heinrich Himmler visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz for the first time and ordered Höss : 1) to expand the base camp to accommodate 30,000 prisoners, 2) to supply the IG Farben chemical concern with the labor of 10,000 prisoners to build an industrial plant at Dwory in the near vicinity of Auschwitz, and 3) to construct a camp for 100,000 prisoners of war near the village of Brzezinka.12 Himmler would not inform Höss of plans to use Auschwitz as a center for the “final solution of the Jewish question” until the summer, but in March—three months before the German invasion of the USSR—it was clear that Auschwitz could be used as a site for the mass incarceration and exploitation of Soviet POWs.
Expansion of the existing camp was undertaken at a rapid pace, and included the construction of housing units for the SS, administrative buildings, additional quarters for prisoners, and camp kitchens. By the end of 1941 it could house 18,000 prisoners, and by 1943 as many as 30,000 (see Map 2). Construction on the synthetic rubber and fuel oil factory at nearby Dwory, otherwise known as the Buna-Werke, began in April 1941. Initially, prisoners from Auschwitz were either transported by rail or walked to the factory, but in 1942 IG Farben began construction of a second camp for its workers in the vacated village of Monowice (Monowitz). A subsidiary of Auschwitz, the camp was known until November 1943 as Lager Buna.
Map 2. Auschwitz I Camp, 1944. Selected features: 1. Camp commandant’s house; 2. Main guard house; 3. Camp administrative offices; 4. Gestapo; 5. Reception building/prisoner registration; 6. Kitchen; 7. Gas chamber and crematorium; 8. Storage buildings and workshops; 9. Storage of confiscated belongings (Theatergebäude); 10. Gravel pit: execution site; 11. Camp orchestra site; 12. “Black Wall” (Wall of Death): execution site; 13. Block 11: punishment bunker; 14. Block 10: medical experiments; 15. Gallows; 16. Block commander’s barracks; 17. SS hospital
From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s on-line Learning Center (www.ushmm.org/learningcenter), courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, the arrival of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war in late 1941 led to the hasty construction of an additional camp on a swampy moor near the village of Brzezinka (renamed Birkenau by the Germans), about three kilometers from the base camp. Birkenau was initially intended to hold 100,000 prisoners and was divided into various sectors and sub-camps (e.g., a women’s camp established in August 1942, a Gypsy camp, or a camp for Jewish families from Theresienstadt established in February 1943), each separated from the next by barbed wire and guard towers. Birkenau was also marked as the largest center for the execution of the “Final Solution,” for in 1941 Himmler had ordered Höss to begin developing facilities for efficient and industrialized mass murder (see Map 3).
Map 3. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) Camp, summer 1944. Selected features: 1. “Sauna” (disinfection); 2. Gas chamber and crematorium #2; 3. Gas chamber and crematorium #3; 4. Gas chamber and crematorium #4; 5. Gas chamber and crematorium #5; 6. Cremation pyres; 7. Mass graves for Soviet POWs; 8. Main guard house; 9. Barracks for disrobing; 10. Sewage treatment plants; 11. Medical experiments barracks; 12. Ash pits; 13. “Rampe” (railroad platform); 14. Provisional gas chamber #1; 15. Provisional gas chamber #2
From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s on-line Learning Center (www.ushmm.org/learningcenter), courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
In addition to the three main camps of the complex, forty auxiliary camps were established in the Auschwitz region between 1941 and 1944. Development of this larger network of camps was considered necessary for security reasons and helped to solve the problem of transporting prisoners from Auschwitz and its two larger subsidiaries at Monowitz and Birkenau to work sites throughout the area. The satellite camps, which housed from several dozen to several thousand prisoners, were located near industrial plants, agricultural enterprises, and mines, all of which served as part of a huge SS economic-industrial conglomerate. Thus, inmates of the nearby Harmense and Rajsko camps farmed; prisoners labored in coal mines at Jawischowitz and Janinagrube; at Chełmek they worked in a shoe factory; thousands of others were forced laborers for the coffers of German industrial concerns such as IG Farben, Siemens-Schuckert, Hermann-Göring-Werke, and Krupp.
In late 1943 a major administrative reorganization was undertaken at the Auschwitz complex. Rudolf Höss, commandant since the camp’s establishment in the spring of 1940, was recalled to the Inspectorate for Concentration Camps at Oranienburg near Berlin, and was replaced by SS Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Liebehenschel. In November 1943 Liebehenschel ordered that the camp be divided into three main entities: the base camp (Stammlager) KL Auschwitz I, which was the original and expanded main camp and administrative headquarters of the complex; KL Auschwitz II, which comprised the camp and extermination facilities at Birkenau; and KL Auschwitz III, often simply called Monowitz, which centered on the camp adjacent to the Buna-Werke industrial plant, but included as well most auxiliary camps in the region. Auschwitz II/Birkenau was under the command of SS Major Fritz Hartjenstein, and Auschwitz III/Monowitz under SS Captain Heinrich Schwarz, both of whom were subordinate to the Liebehenschel’s authority. Although this subdivision of the complex remained in effect until the liberation in January 1945, the command structure was to change again in May 1944, when SS Major Richard Baer was appointed commandant of Auschwitz. In the same month Höss returned to Auschwitz as commander of the SS garrison, this time for the purpose of coordinating the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews, an effort that bore the code name “Aktion Höss,” which he would supervise until late July 1944.
This brief description of the development and organizational structure of the camp conglomerate illustrates that there was not one, but numerous “Auschwitzes” of which the larger complex bearing the name Auschwitz was composed. Thus, the varied and fractured nature of the complex’s topography, purpose, and command structure makes it all the more difficult to arrive at a clear definition of what the Auschwitz memorial site was, is, or should be. The number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz and the manner in which they were killed remain the most unique and striking characteristics of the camp and its history, but the experience of the Jewish deportee was not definitive. As the above account suggests, the diverse experiences of the Auschwitz survivor or victim defy convenient generalization. While one prisoner worked in the fishery of a nearby auxiliary camp, another laid railroad ties; while one prisoner never saw the Stammlager Auschwitz I, another never left it; and while many prisoners may never have seen the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau, the majority of Jews deported
